Compare Greatest Hits 1970-1978

Somewhere in every good music fan's basement is a worn-out copy of either the vinyl, eight-track, or cassette of 's . The 1976 compilation captured the darkest and beefiest moments from the years and served as a right of passage for millions of aspiring musicians, burnouts, pastor's kids, and closet miscreants. 's 16-track anthology only trumps the single-disc CD by two songs, but it offers superior sound and features at least a few cuts from 1976's and 1978's , the band's last two pre-millennium records. All of the faves are here ( ), as well as fan classics like and but there is enough material missing to call it a sampler rather than a "best of." Fans who are unwilling to shell out the extra money for 's superior two-disc collection from 2005 will find this sparse yet solid overview to be a useful "CliffsNotes" rendering of the birth of . ~ James Christopher Monger