Roth Greatest Hits

Cheers for finally releasing the videos on DVD. WTF is with that track list though? No DLR Band or Diamond Dave, and singles from Skyscraper and YFLM ignored in favor of obscure album tracks. DVD should have included That’s Life, Skyscraper music videos, She’s My Machine and Shoo Bop. Good thing we still have Cato’s Napalm DVD!

Kind of silly to put out another “Best Of” of Roth solo stuff without adding anything new to it. We already have “The Best”. The DVD sounds like a nice addition, but why do these guys always leave stuff out of their collections? Why not just release all of the videos? I guess so they can continue to rerelease stuff over and over and just change a couple tracks or videos and call it “new”.

I pre-ordered it, solely for the DVD contents, and am thoroughly prepared to be disappointed once it shows up. Still in denial about the cover art and track selection.

I got notification from Amazon today that it has been shipped.

Got this yesterday. It is what it is. My impressions:
- Bare-bones packaging: CD/DVD comes in a double-disc clear jewel case. Like the front cover you’ve seen, the rest is simple black background with current B&W photos that you’ve seen on Facebook and The Roth Show. Liner notes list photography by Mark Rojas and graphic design by Shelly Toscano – they’re his crew that shoot and edit (respectively) The Roth Show. The liner notes are just the lyrics to the songs in black text laid over black & white photos. No colorful historical photos like on the previous The Best CD. For a greatest hits set by arguably the most colorful front man in the history of rock and roll, this sparse B&W design is the OPPOSITE of what it should have been.

- The music: not much logic to the track order. I will say that it sounds crisp, and the mastering is decent. I am pleasantly surprised that there’s still quite a bit of dynamic range to the tracks, doesn’t sound like much, if any, compression was used at all. That in itself is pretty rare these days. Kudos to Joe Reagoso for not brickwalling the music.

- The DVD: simple static menu to select songs or play all. The video content appears to be hacked together without much care. The entire “Dave TV” home video release looks like it literally was transferred from VHS. Cato’s Napalm DVD actually has slightly better image quality for the first 4 songs. For the rest of the videos, the quality varies. Goin Crazy in Spanish video looks decent, and is a little bit of an upgrade, same with ALAE, Tell The Truth and Sensible Shoes. The audio for the DVD is PCM, so at least it sounds pretty good throughout. They obviously put very little effort into creating this, though, as they didn’t even bother to edit the videos together tightly – there’s the production slates at the start of each video, followed by a lengthy chunk of black before each song starts. They even left the damn FBI warning and Warner home video logos from the VHS of Dave TV!

Overall, it’s nice to have these videos in an official capacity, but if you’re already happy with the Napalm bootleg DVD, there’s really no need to buy this. Seems like a lot of missed opportunities – no previously unreleased tracks, seemingly random sequencing of songs, no music from DLR’s post-Warner albums, no videos from Skyscraper or Diamond Dave LPs, along with boring packaging = fail. Stick with The Best CD from 1997 and Napalm Up Yo’ Ass DVD and you’ve got everything you need.

Here’s what SHOULD HAVE been on Dave’s greatest hits, just going by what was released as singles. This is chronological order, but it could be re-sequenced for maximum impact.

1 Just A Gigolo (I Ain’t Got Nobody) 04:43
2 California Girls 02:51
3 Yankee Rose 03:55
4 I’m Easy 02:11
5 Goin’ Crazy! 03:10
6 That’s Life 02:45
7 Just Like Paradise 04:03
8 Stand Up 04:40
9 Damn Good 05:49
10 A Lil’ Ain’t Enough 04:41
11 Sensible Shoes 05:09
12 Tell The Truth 05:18
13 She’s My Machine 03:53
14 Night Life 03:34
15 Slam Dunk! 02:37
16 King Of The Hill 03:52
17 Shoo Bop 05:11
18 Ice Cream Man 03:23
19 Ain’t That Peculiar (bonus unreleased track) 04:57

77:27 total

It really makes you wonder about the thought process behind this project. I can maybe understand why there’s no content from after 1994′s Your Filthy Little Mouth, as that newer stuff was not released on WB, so it has to be licensed separately from the rest of the catalog, okay. You’d think Dave retains the rights to his independent releases, but whatever. Probably just too lazy to go through the proper channels to get permission from Magna Carta, Detonator Records, etc. who put out Diamond Dave. Maybe it’s this same lack of effort that resulted in the crappy DVD – too much work to track down the best sources for the videos.

And now for the promotion: DLR has not said one thing about this coming out – no Facebook posts or tweets, not a peep. For someone who supposedly “hand-picked” the songs for this, you’d think he’d have his people try to promote it at least a little bit. He’s posted pictures on Facebook about how colorful his new socks are, for Christ’s sake, but he can’t be bothered to promote a new album release?!