Back in The Academy Days, I bought Abracadabra by Steve Miller. For some reason I became motivated to grab this Greatest Hits compilation. While the specifics are long gone, I would not be surprised if the story went like this, because they often do. During the course of my day, I hear a song, maybe Jet Airliner. It stays in my mind all day long and I eventually find myself at the local record store shopping for a CD with that song.
Over the past three decades, I’ve found the song on the original album, a Greatest Hits compilation, a movie soundtrack, a themed compilation like “Cool 70’s” or “Best Of The 80’s”. Each of these approaches has it’s benefits. If I’m interested in a particular artist aGreatest Hits makes sense if the artist has a large catalog of albums. The next logical step being to get the full albums that contain my favorites from the Greatest Hits.
The movie soundtrack is often a good option too. Usually a movie soundtrack is attempting to express a theme or emotion. All the songs will often continure to suppor that emotion. For example a soundtrack about racing cars will have several tracks that convey the feeling of speed or danger. Not always the case though.
The Chronologically based compilations are good because they will often include several radio favorites from that same era. This often manifests itself in a “Wow, I remember this song.” moment as you listen. As you’ve seen in previous posts, even when I’m not actively pursuing music, ambient stuff still creeps in and has its effect whether we realize it or not.
This Steve Miller album has all those great songs that you know even if you don’t think you know them. It feels like grown up musician type music but yet not stuffy or stale. In 1993 I saw Steve play at the Coliseum. I was shocked at how well behaved the crowd was. Most of my concert experiences were rowdy, loud, unruly pushing and shoving types of events. With Steve Miller, the audience was a little older and everybody sat quietly in their seats and simply evjoyed the music and the mellow evening. They weren’t there to be drunk and rock out or get into fights. It was a great night. My little sister happened to go to that show as well and out of all those people we happened to run into each other at some point.
One of my all time favorite quotes comes from this CD.”Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.”
Swingtown
Jungle Love
Take The Money And Run
Serenade
The Joker
Fly Like An Eagle
Jet Airliner