Search - April Wine :: Best Of

So many compilations, so little time...

T. LeBaron | NH | 11/25/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Speaking as someone who's seen this band several times over the years live, and who's been a fan ever since I heard "You Could Have Been a Lady" cranking out of my transistor radio in 1972 (when the band had two albums out, only one of which was available in the States), I find that a lot of these budget-priced collections contain too few of the hits and more than a few album cuts that I liked but weren't really representative of the band's best work. Being also a completist, I have all their original studio albums...parallels can be drawn between this band and fellow Canadian rockers Harem Scarem, who have no less than eight live albums if you count the Japanese imports and their two internet-only live collections, April Wine has six live ones and almost twice that many best-of compilations. My suggestion for those really looknig for the best hits collections: search out "The Hits" on Capitol of Canada, and the 4-CD box set "The Collection" (hard to come by but worth every penny). Those are really the most complete representations of what these guys have done over the years. It says even more for the band that they reunited in the early 90s and have done four new albums of material since then...plus a number of other compilations and three more live discs have come out, the best of which would be "Live 2003" were it not for the omission of the afore-mentioned "Could Have Been a Lady" (which they still do live to this day). For the benefit of the Americans reading this who might not be aware (this is aimed at the "casual" Wine fans), their Canadian output of studio albums numbers sixteen, many of them released in the Great White North on the Aquarius label, and only someof them down here in the US on labels like Big Tree (where Brownsville Station lived for a while back then). Starting with First Glance in 1978 and running through 1985's WalKing Through Fire, the band was signed to Capitol for the States and were much more in the public eye down here. Worth a listen at the very least are the albums they've released since reuniting (all available here at Amazon: Attitude, Frigate, Back to the mansion and their latest, the all-too short but very bluesy Roughly Speaking. But for those wanting the best hits collections, I recommend The Hits and The April Wine Collection, just for being such good and comprehensive collections. Enjoy your Wine!"