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Review by PaulHoncoop June 19, 2005 (3 of 8 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S/MC): / |
All of Rory Gallagher's best on a double mc sacd? at the first i can't believe it but it's true, and the best of it all is; jus't sound great!!
Rory Gallagher was one of the best blues guitarists. Try this double best of album and you will not be dissapointed. Cabrio, long road, sun on your head and this cd in your player; still got the blues...
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Review by YianniD October 8, 2008 (1 of 1 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S): |
The prospect of a definitive "best of" collection from the late blues master Rory Gallagher is long overdue. Rory's expansive career from his early days with Taste through his passionate studio and live albums have needed a retrospective overview. The added bonus of "Big Guns: The Very Best of Rory Gallagher" is that it is also a hybrid CD featuring an SA-CD layer. However, the unfortunate truth of this career spanning two-disc collection is that it is an absolute mess, and it certainly is NOT the very best representation of Rory's music. Add to this the horrendous sound quality in both the SA-CD format and the normal CD format, and you have one big disappointment.
Disc one is the worst of the two CDs with the sound quality making Rory sound like he recorded inside a tin can. Compare, for example, the excellent track "Bad Penny" on this CD with the remastered version on the "Top Priority" CD. They are worlds apart in sound quality. The mix of this song on "Big Guns" buries Rory's blistering guitar leads and makes the rhythm guitar sound muddy and sloppy. The same thing happens with "Shadow Play," with the mix sounding inferior to the remastered version on "Photo Finish." Since the individual album remasters were released on Capo, as is this compilation, one must ask, who messed with the mixes when it came time to release these songs on "Big Guns"?
Disc two fairs better in terms of sound quality, but still falls below the sound quality on the individual releases.
Another problem with this compilation is the fact that it claims to represent Rory's very best, yet there are no tracks culled from Rory's high watermark live album, "Irish Tour '74"! The live tracks that do appear (including a pair of inferior unreleased tracks from 1974-"Bullfrog Blues" and "Messin' with the Kid") do not highlight just how amazing Rory is in the live setting.
If you are a true Rory fan, skip this compilation and purchase the individual remasters on Capo/Buddha. If you want to buy only one Rory release, pick up the remastered "Irish Tour" CD.
Rory's musical legacy deserves much better than this sloppily compiled and abominably mixed CD release.
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Review by jimmyjames8 July 11, 2005 (1 of 1 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S): |
| Let's see, where to begin? The Very Best Of? I don't think so. The Only One Of Rory on SACD thus far? Yes. "He also appeared on two seminal blues recordings: Muddy Waters London Session and Albert King Live"? What about Rory on the "Killer's" (Jerry Lee Lewis for the very uninitiated) London Session? And the guy that wrote this is the Editor in Chief of Guitar Player magazine? Come on! The sound on SHADOW PLAY and BOURBON is terrible. The Buddha Remaster Cd's are better. I can't believe Donal signed off on this. But it's not all bad cuz it is after all Rory and it is after all SACD. Worth getting just for that. If you don't know Rory and you don't own Rory and you have an SACD player, you could do worse than buy this disc. My idea of a Rory best of would be studio versions of all the songs on LIVE IN EUROPE and IRISH TOUR '74 and then off course the those two live packages. IRISH TOUR has got to be one of the top 10 live rock-n-roll records of all time. That would be an SACD worth buying, but the remaster cd is damn good except for that infernal "bumping" sound every now and again. AGAINST THE GRAIN, TATTOO, CALLING CARD and BLUEPRINT are must have Rory records. I think you get one track from each on this SACD. Not enough to be called a best of. You have been warned. Good stuff anyway cuz it's Rory, the Ole Stringbuster!
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