From Gary Moore comes Best Of The Blues, a blues compilation on Virgin Int'l. This is the CD edition, a 2-disc set. This edition was released on February 19, 2002.
Gary Moore Like the guy in Spinal Tap, Gary Moore has an amp that goes up to 11, and at times during the two and half hours of The Best Of The Blues you wonder if it's stuck there. Luckily episodes of thunder and lightning are interspersed with performances like "Still Got The Blues", "Need Your Love So Bad" and "Midnight Blues" on the first disc of this 2-CD set, or "Cold, Cold Feeling" on the second--calmer passages where the storm clouds yield to shafts of silver light. Disc 1 is a selection from four early-90s albums (Still Got The Blues, After Hours, Blues Alive and Blues For Greeny), with guest-spots by Albert King, B.B. King and Albert Collins, plus a concert recording of "Parisienne Walkways". Disc 2 has the same guests (though on different songs) and half-a-dozen of the same titles, but this is all unissued concert material. Live performance only stimulates Moore's tendency to skip the foreplay, producing music that is urgent, active and seething with testosterone. Great stuff for a night in with the lads. --Tony Russell
