"Counting Crows - Films About Ghosts: The Best Of..."

Greatest Hits and Best Of albums are always contentious issues. What's the difference between the two? A "greatest hits" collection generally collects a band's biggest charting songs, the singles and maybe a few well-loved album tracks. On the other hand, a "best of" is much more subjective, gathering together what are generally considered the band's best songs, whether those songs are radio hits or not. This means you can often dig deeper into a band's work, getting past the singles and into the meat of each album.

And that's sort of the case with the Counting Crow's best of disc, Films About Ghosts. It offers a pretty fair portrait of the band's various strengths and styles, giving the listener enough to whet the appetite but not enough to sate.

The disc contains all of their big hits--"Mr. Jones," "Round Here," "A Long December," "Hanginaround," "American Girls," and "Big Yellow Taxi" (at least, those were the songs that were popular in this area of the country. I'm sure they had radio hits elsewhere that weren't hits here, because let's face it--most Oklahomans wouldn't know good music if it slapped them in the face and started insulting their mothers). There's also a decent selection of album cuts, such as "Rain King" (one of my personal favorite Crows songs), "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" (one of my other favorite Crows songs), "Omaha," and "Recovering the Satellites." There are also two non-album songs thrown in to attract the fans who already own all the albums--the infectous "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)" (the reason I bought the CD) and two new songs, a cover of the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil" and the gorgeous "She Don't Want Nobody Near."

The disc focuses mostly on the Crows' first two albums, August and Everything After (five tunes) and Recovering the Satellites (three cuts, and not even the best songs from that record), skimping on This Desert Life (only two cuts) and Hard Candy (three songs) and skipping the two-disc live set Across a Wire altogether. While their first two records were arguably their biggest sellers, the scant treatment of their latter day works is downright criminal--only two cuts from This Desert Life? If nothing else, the track "Colorblind" (featured prominently in the movie Cruel Intentions) deserves inclusion, or the hidden track "Kid Things," or even "Speedway" or "Saint Robinson in his Cadillac Dream." Why is "Holiday in Spain" on here instead of the title track from Hard Candy?And track selection from their first two records is sometimes questionable--"Angels of the Silence" instead of "Daylight Fading?" "Recovering the Satellites" instead of "Have You Seen me Lately?" "Anna Begins" instead of "Murder of One" or "Raining in Baltimore?" This sort of nitpicking can go on for hours, depending upon the personal preferences of the listener.

All told, though, Films About Ghosts is a great set. It presents Counting Crows as a consistant, energetic band with a great sense of melodicism, lyricism, and an understanding of its classic rock roots (you can hear the influence of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Tom Petty, and the Beatles). This record is a great introduction to one of the best roots rock bands of the 1990s and early 2000s.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Counting Crows, "Friend of the Devil"