David Lee Roth – The Best
Tracks:
Don’t Piss Me Off (new)
Yankee Rose
A Lil Ain’t Enough
Just Like Paradise
Big Train
Big Trouble
It’s Showtime
Hot Dog And A Shake
Skyscraper
Shyboy
She’s My Machine
Stand Up
Tobacco Road
Easy Street
California Girls
Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody
Sensible Shoes
Goin’ Crazy
Ladies’ Nite In Buffalo
Land’s Edge
Label: Rhino
Year: 1997
Producers: Ted Templeman, DLR, Bob Rock, Nile Rogers & wawazat!!
Total Playing Time: 77:36 m:s
As I said when reviewing the VH Best Of Vol I, the Roth era years passed without me taking much notice. I started taking an interest in both DLR and VH (Sammy era) at about the same time. If you read that review you’ll see that I mostly prefer Roth era VH.
Diamond Dave always struck me as the talented frontman, but I’ve never thought that he had a great voice. It’s more about the vibe he generates, than his technical singing abilities. I’m not even sure that some of DLR’s music qualifies as Rock. DLR tunes are mainly party rock with a jazz/blues groove.
The highlight of his solo career is undoubtedly his first solo album – Eat Em And Smile, closely followed by the Crazy From The Heat EP. I also used to own Skyscraper and I can’t remember ,but I might have owned A Lil Ain’t Enough (can’t have been that good if I can’t remember). The general consensus is that his solo career was a gradual progression downhill. Actually, someone mentioned recently that they had heard a couple of new studio tracks and that he is back on form again.
First up is the new track. A blues tunes, which ranks in the OK category. Nothing to get excited about. Looks like the rule when compiling this was "The earlier the album, the larger the contribution to this collection". It’s also true to say that the earlier material is also the better material.
Clocking in a 77 mins, it’s making good use of the space available on a CD, but there is some filler in here and I’m sure I’ll usually program my CD player to skip a few tracks when I’m playing this. If you’ve already got Eat Em & Smile and Crazy From The Heat, then there isn’t much point in getting this. There is still enough good material on here, for me to reckon it’s a good buy for someone investigating DLR for the first time. If they had just included his version of That’s Life, then I’d have bumped the score up to a full 8.
Rating: 7/8
