NILS LOFGREN – THE VERY BEST OF GRIN – 1999

NILS LOFGREN – THE VERY BEST OF GRIN

CD EDITADO EN 1999 (Reeditado 2008)

Spinizzy/Epic Associated/Legacy – SONY – LEGACY ZK 65697

Detailed item info
Album Features
UPC: 886972487922
Artist: Grin
Format: CD
Record Label: Legacy
Genre: Oldies, Rock ‘N’ Roll

Track Listing
1. Everybody’s Missing the Sun
2. See What a Love Can Do
3. Like Rain
4. We All Sung Together
5. Nobody – (previously unreleased)
6. Sing For Happiness – (previously unreleased)
7. White Lies
8. Hi Hello Home
9. Slippery Fingers
10. Lost a Number
11. Moon Tears
12. Soft Fun
13. Just to Have You – (B-side)
14. Love or Else
15. Sad Letter
16. Ain’t Love Nice
17. All Out
18. Rusty Gun
19. You’re the Weight

Details
Contributing Artists: Neil Young, Graham Nash
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution
Recording Type: Studio
Recording Mode: Stereo
SPAR Code: n/a

Album Notes
Personnel: Nils Lofgren (vocals, guitar, keyboard, accordion); Tom Lofgren (vocals, guitar); Bob Gordon (vocals, bass); Bob Berberich (vocals, drums, percussion); Neil Young, Graham Nash.Producer: David Briggs.Compilation producer: Bruce Dickinson.The failure of Grin to sell large numbers of records in the early ’70s is one of those mysteries of popular music. They seemed to have everything, all in the person of leader Nils Lofgren, an accomplished guitarist and songwriter with a connection to the CSNY axis who had played on Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush when he was only 18-years-old. He was still under 21 when the first self-titled Grin album was released in 1971. Maybe his youth had something to do with the band’s limited commercial success; he often let other band members take lead vocals on the songs he wrote, preferring a group context that sometimes hid his talents. Nevertheless, the band’s albums garnered good reviews and the first three (of four) made the charts, with «White Lies» charting as a single. Those albums were stylistically diverse and somewhat uneven, but contained catchy pop/rock songs («Like Rain,» «Love or Else,» «Sad Letter»), any one of which could have changed Grin’s story with the right promotion. This well-chosen best-of (actually the second one, following a 1976 LP, despite a sticker on the CD proclaiming «1st-Ever GRIN ‘Best-Of’ Collection!»), containing a couple of previously unreleased tracks and a non-LP B-side, accurately portrays the band’s pop-folk-rock-country sound, from «Everybody’s Missin’ the Sun» (which could have fit on After the Gold Rush easily) to «You’re the Weight,» from the band’s 1973 swan song Gone Crazy, licensed from A&M Records. Lofgren, of course, went on to a more successful solo career from the mid-’70s to the mid-’80s before becoming «the most overqualified second guitarist in rock» in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, as Springsteen himself put it. But the work of Grin is more than juvenilia: In the early ’70s, it was good enough to make fans frustrated that the band didn’t get more of a hearing. And it sounds just as good more than 25 years later. ~ William Ruhlmann

Editorial Reviews
4 stars out of 5 – …Grin are one of the great lost bands of all time….Buy this album and help to correct a long-standing injustice…
Uncut (20000301)

3 stars out of 5 – …Lots of amiable country rock to start with, acquiring a bitter edge by the mid-’70s. Hey, that’s ‘Nam for you.
Q (20000401)

…first CD overview of [Grin’s] brief career….Cocky rock that’s still warm and lovable – it’s enough to make anyone grin. – Rating: A
Entertainment Weekly (19990611)