Notes

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Kind of a baffling lot, EMI's 15-track The Best of the Spencer Davis Group is pretty representative if you don't want to go the full nine yards with the two-CD Eight Gigs a Week complete anthology on Island. Hell, "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "I'm a Man" are '60s Brit-beat monuments, and the bass overdrive of "Keep On Running" and "Somebody Help Me" aren't far behind — Jamaican tunesmith Jackie Edwards really knew how to fit their beat band groove. But Best Of doesn't seemed to be programmed to make chronological or musical-flow sense, so it jumps all over map as the group takes chances beyond its solid take on straight-up '60s Brit-beat. The string-laden "Every Little Bit Hurts" is ambitious, gender-switching Brenda Holloway's Motown hit and going for James Brown "Prisoner of Love" drama, and it isn't half-bad. Steve Winwood sings pretty great on "Searchin'" (kind of an Anglo cousin of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Girl From New York City") and rips off some serious soul shouting on "I Can't Stand It." Winwood really was a staggeringly great singer as a youth — "When I Come Home" is basic beat fare with blues experience lyrics, and damn, he makes you feel like he's lived the emotions, a rare feat for young Brit rockers of the era. He can't pull off the "working for the railroad" lyric to "This Hammer (The Hammer Song)," though, like "Strong Love" built on a country train rhythm reflecting the group's Americana fascination. And "Stevie's Blues" could be a primer on every Brit blues lyrical and musical cliché you'll ever have to suffer through (except length, but it was plenty long for a single B-side). As you might suspect from "Gimme Some Lovin'," he was a superb keyboard player, be it rollicking boogie-woogie piano on "Goodbye Stevie" or the flashier-than-Booker T. organ-with-piano instrumental "Trampoline." And kudos to whoever included "Waltz for Lumumba," a brilliant organ-and-percussion orgy over bass riff that looks ahead to world music, Winwood's later work with Traffic, and even Mike Ratledge-era Soft Machine. This Best Of is frustratingly uneven, particularly as you get farther into the disc. It features the key songs and shows the different sides to the Spencer Davis Group, but the tracks seem to be haphazardly thrown together, as if no one took the trouble to look at and program the selections to hang together as a whole. Guess that's why they have random play on CD players