Bad Company Album: “Original Bad Company Anthology”

Unless you're a very devoted fan, this is pretty much all you'll ever need from Bad Company.

"The Original Bad Co. Anthology" collects twenty-three of their best singles and album tracks. It draws from all their records, yet the compilers have wisely chosen to lean heavily towards the group's first two albums, which were also their best.

Their eponymous debut album is represented by no fewer than six tracks (out of eight!), and five are culled from "Straight Shooter". Elektra Records have even managed to find two pretty good songs from the awful "Rough Diamonds" album, and it's actually very hard to find anything to say against the track selection, which is one of the best and most thorough I've ever seen.

Six B-sides and unissued songs are also included, as well as four brand new songs which make their debut here...and believe it or not, they're really good!

Most of this is lean, mid-tempo rock music, bordering on hard rock. Bad Company had the ability to combine cruchy hard-rock riffs with great melodies, and they had a magnficent front man in Paul Rodgers, and a fine lead guitarist in Mick Ralphs.

This music is somewhat less bluesy and more mainstream than Paul Rodgers' previous band, Free, but it has a timeless sound that makes you wonder just why Bad Company ended up being lumped in with all the stale 70s rock dinosaurs, and all but forgotten in later years. They certainly deserve better, as this collection demonstrates.

Highlights include the slow, groovy rockers "Ready For Love" and "Feel Like Makin' Love", the tough, guitar-driven (but exquisitely melodious) "Movin' On" and "Rock And Roll Fantasy", the ballad "Shooting Star", the bluesy hard rock of "Deal With The Preacher" and "Rock Steady", and Bad Company's remake of Paul Rodgers' "Easy On My Soul", in a funky rendition that blows the Free version out of the water.

And the new tracks! Well, it's such a rare thing for a thirty-year old band to come up with truly credibly new material, but just listen to the swaggering blues-rock number "Tracking Down A Runaway" and the blustery rocker "Hey, Hey". They won't take the place of "Ready For Love", sure, but they're really good.

Almost everything is worth a listen, actually, even though the material on the first CD is slightly stronger than on the second.

"The Original Bad Co. Anthology" is a fine collection for the fan who wants a little more - and it virtually eliminates the need to pick up the group's original albums.

4 1/4 stars - definitely recommended.

Over all a pretty good selection of tunes here, but they are missing some essentials in my book. It is nice to hear some of the 'previously unreleased' songs, but do you ever wonder why they didn't release them at the time they wrote the songs - because typically they weren't all that strong. There are one or two pretty good 'unreleased' songs here ("Hey Hey" and "Superstar Woman"), but the rest are below average. Classic songs missing are: "Live for the Music", "Simple Man", "Sweet Lil Sister", "Crazy Cirlces" and "Morning Sun" (a gem from their weakest album 'Burning Sky'). They hit all the good tunes from their first two releases on 'Anthology', but disc 2 is wildly inconsistent. If you are just getting into this 1970-80's classic rock band, this is a good place to start. If you want their best album or two, start with their first, "Bad Co", or second "Straight Shooter".

I absolutley love this collection. I grew up with my mom blasting this on the stereo and we would dance all around. Plus my brother and I played a mean air guitar! From "Can't get enough" to "Feel like makin' love" you have it all. My personal favorites is "Seagull and Silver, Blue and Gold" Buy this if you are a classic rock fan it rocks!

This compilation was a long time coming, but well worth the wait. The previous Bad Company "hits" compilation simply cannot hold a candle to this Anthology. In addition to the generous helping of 33 songs (compared to the 10 [obviously] tracks on "10 from 6"), the remastering job brings new life to classic tunes such as "Can't Get Enough" and "Feel Like Makin' Love" -- they have never sounded better. On "10 From 6" these tracks all sounded muddy.

I only have one complaint about the mastering -- there is still a fair amount of tape hiss evident, particularly at the beginning of some of the more quiet songs (such as "Rock Steady" and "Bad Company"). I guess that's what can happen when working with recordings almost 30 years old.

Remastering aside, this is still a 4-star collection because of the omission of some of Bad Company's chart hits. With so much extra room on these discs, it's amazing that tracks such as "Young Blood" (which reached #20 on the Pop charts in 1976) and "Gone, Gone, Gone" (which reached #56 in 1979) were left off. In fact, 2 tracks from "10 From 6" are missing (the excellent "Live For The Music" and "Electricland"), yet were definitely worthy of inclusion.

Finally, as the title "Original Bad Company Anthology" implies, this set includes tracks only from the Paul Rodgers days. Bad Company fans from the late 1980s and early 1990s will be disappointed to learn that there are no tracks from "Dangerous Age", "Holy Water" or "Here Comes Trouble", when the band was arguably at the height of its commercial popularity. The tunes on these discs also deserve a remastering job -- and I remain hopeful that a "Second Generation Bad Company Anthology" containing tracks from the Brian Howe years is forthcoming.

For now, this the best that you can get of Bad Company. Unless, of course, you are a huge fan of the group -- in which case you probably have all of the original albums which were remastered in 1994. Happy listening!

The single-disc

has the major Bad Company hits PLUS "Electric Land," one of their strongest songs. Come on, folks...how do you start with TWO CDs as your blank canvas and exclude a song as strong as "Electric Land?"

This collection was a bit of a reconciliatory gesture among the band members...Paul Rodgers, in particular (after years of a Rodgers-less BadCo cleaning up on the tour circuit) made a lot of noise about the purity of the "original" band. So how did he follow up on that?

He did the

DVD and CD with Dave "Bucket" Colwell on guitar in place of Mick Ralphs and Jaz Lochrie on bass in place of Boz Burrell.

So much for principles. And don't even get me started on the Queen thing.

Get "10 from 6." It's all the Bad Company you'll ever need, and it costs less..."all killer, no filler."