The Greatest Gifts

Paul McCartney: Another Day

[Purchase]

A fresh batch of greatest hits compilations hit record stores in November of 1978, just in time for the Christmas rush. Not yet the music snob who disdained greatest hits records, I would have put Wings Greatest at the top of my list for the singles I didn't own like "Another Day", "Hi Hi Hi" and "Juniors Farm". I never got it.

Here's the memorable ad for the album:

The Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits 1974-78 is culled from three albums, the title track from The Joker and the rest from Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams. No bonus tracks. Nevertheless, it has sold 14 million copies.

Steely Dan's Greatest Hits is a double album with one bonus track, the forgettable "Here In The Western World", which was originally recorded during the Royal Scam sessions.

The Best of Earth Wind and Fire Volume 1 arrived with three bonus tracks: the Grammy winning "Got To Get You Into My Life" for those who didn't buy the Sgt Pepper soundtrack; "Love Music" and the Top 10 hit, "September", surely one of the best singles of the year.

Barbra Streisand's Greatest Hits Volume 2 came with "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", her #1 duet with Neil Diamond. Diamond and Streisand had each recorded the song for separate albums, but radio DJ Gary Guthrie  spliced their versions together as a going away present form the wife he was divorcing. When Columbia Records got wind of the sensation the sing was causing they convinced Diamond and Streisand to go into the studio and cut a real duet. They'd surprise Grammy viewers in 1980.

40 Year Itch : Can't Buy A Thrill

                                                           [Purchase for $4.99]

The greatest debut album of 1972, Can't Buy A Thrill , released in October of 1972, introduces Steely Dan as a fully formed, sophisticated, complex and cynical rock band. Best of all, they knew how to write and play catchy radio-friendly hits like "Do It Again" (US#6) and "Reelin' In The Years" ( US#11). They may have been a mystery to many, but Steely Dan founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were already well known by one music legend: Barbra Streisand. That's right! Barbra recorded the Becker-Fagen tune "I Mean To Shine" on her 1971 album Barbra Joan Streisand.

 

They've since disowned the song blaming Streisand's arranger for screwing it up.

So we move on.

In 1998 Becker and Fagen wrote new liners notes for Can't Buy A Thrill, explaining how most of the album was written in L.A.


As for material, we had touched down in California with a fat notebook crammed with what we called "the dyno". It was our opinion that this collection of songs, our life's work to date, would morph effortlessly into classic albums, swank long-running careers, juicy bank accounts, houses with swimming pools, powerful mid-engine sports cars, happiness, security, girls, girls, girls, in short, everything we needed to get by. In fact, it turned out later that only half the songs on the first Steely Dan album were already in the book; the rest were written in California, in a style which had been adjusted and refined to take into account the new musical environment in which we found ourselves operating and also to reflect our belated understanding of the aesthetic shortcomings of some of our less-than-accessible, more doggedly surrealist efforts.

While recording the album, the duo discovered--surprise, surprise--that the label expected their band to tour the album.

The surprise was not a good surprise, especially for Donald, who had reluctantly agreed to be the band's lead vocalist for the purposes of recording but who was essentially terrified of singing in public and thus somewhat reluctant to be pressed into service as the frontman for a touring rock band. That's when the Skunk ( Jeff "Skunk" Baxter) called his chum David Palmer, and Dave came out from New Jersey to try out for the job. Luckily, the tracks for "Dirty Work" and "Brooklyn" were in his key, more or less.

This would be David Palmer's only appearance singing on record with the Dan.

And finally a note on one of the year's greatest solos.

For the occasion of Denny's solo on "Do It Again" we hired in a Coral Electric Sitar. This novel instrument, replete with dual lipstick tube pickups and sympathetic strings and a special bridge that produced the sitar-like buzzing sound, added that extra something that the tune called for. Similarly, Donald rented for himself a strange Yamaha organ that had, amongst other things, a felt strip for producing glisses that were heretofore unheard of on a keyboard instrument.