PETE TOWNSHEND : ANTHOLOGY

 

Disc One (72:08)

  1. English Boy
  2. Secondhand Love
  3. A Little Is Enough
  4. Heart to Hang Onto
  5. Sheraton Gibson
  6. The Sea Refuses No River
  7. Brilliant Blues
  8. Now and Then
  9. I Won't Run Anymore
  10. Keep Me Turning
  11. Let My Love Open the Door
  12. Slit Skirts
  13. A Friend Is a Friend
  14. Let's See Action
  15. Street in the City
  16. Empty Glass

Disc Two (76:22)

  1. Rough Boys
  2. Give Blood
  3. Exquisitely Bored
  4. Jools and Jim
  5. Crashing by Design
  6. Don't Try to Make Me Real
  7. Face the Face
  8. Uniforms [Corp d'Esprit]
  9. My Baby Gives It Away
  10. Outlive the Dinosaur
  11. Keep on Working
  12. White City Fighting
  13. All Shall Be Well
  14. Time Is Passing
  15. I Am Afraid
  16. Misunderstood
  17. Pure and Easy
  18. Parvardigar

Label : Revisited

Release Year : 2005

Review (AllMusic) : This set is essentially the European equivalent of the Pete Townshend Gold double-CD, in a more creative format with cooler cover art and a more elaborate booklet, but the same 34 tracks. The same virtues and drawbacks apply - excellent sound and a wide overview of Townshend's solo career, extending back past his solo debut, Who Came First, to the Scoop material, and up into the 1990s. It's also pricier than Gold, but apart from the packaging has nothing to recommend it over the U.S. release.

Review for Gold (AllMusic) : Nearly ten years after he released his first solo compilation, Coolwalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking, Pete Townshend released Gold. At two discs and 34 tracks, this is considerably longer than the previous comp, which was just one disc and 15 songs, but since that 1996 best-of, Townshend hasn't released any new albums: he's dug into the vaults to nearly finish Lifehouse as a box set, issued another installment of the Scoop demo series, and spent sometime reuniting and remastering the Who, but there have been no new albums from Townshend since 1993's Psychoderelict. That said, Gold does cover more ground than the earlier disc: it has more of the Scoops; almost all of his original work from Rough Mix, his 1977 duet album with Ronnie Lane; and it also contains selections from his first solo effort, 1972's Who Came First. So, it's a more thorough overview, and even if it's assembled in a befuddling, seemingly random order, it does give a sense of the range of peculiarity of Townshend's solo work. That said, it's hard to tell who this is for: all the hits are on the 1996 comp and this is so sprawling and densely packed that it's primarily for the serious Townshend fan, who will already have all the albums. But for those handful of fans who want a far-ranging sampler of his best solo work without having to own Empty Glass, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, or White City, this is a useful set.