Track Listing

1. Understanding (from the Motion Picture Teachers)
2. The Fire Down Below
3. Her Strut
4. Beautiful Loser
5. Sunspot Baby
6. Katmandu
7. Shame On The Moon
8. Fire Lake
9. Tryin' To Live My Life Without You (Live)
10. Shakedown (from the Motion Picture Beverly Hills Cop II)
11. Manhattan
12. New Coat Of Paint
13. Chances Are (with Martina McBride from the Motion Picture Hope Floats)
14. Rock And Roll Never Forgets
15. Satisfied
16. Tomorrow
17. Turn The Page (bonus video)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5826 in Music
• Released on: 2003-11-04
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Best of, Enhanced
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Customer Reviews

THE BEAUTIFUL LOSER MAKES GOOD
As with his first collection of Greatest Hits, I find myself thinking that this album just does not do Bob Seger justice. Yes, a lot of great stuff is here-but somehow the greatness of the man is missed.

Bob Seger is one of our own here in the Midwest. For years he toured extensively putting on one hell of a show; but he could not break out nationally. Then he came very close with BEAUTIFUL LOSER. Having got the scent of becoming known across the country in a big way, Seger then released LIVE BULLET and NIGHT MOVES. Suddenly Seger was the hot ticket with a deep back catalogue of records in the past. Several of those albums were cleaned up and re-released where an eager audience quickly snapped them up.

Unfortunately, Seger's last good album was LIKE A ROCK back in 1986. He released a few more albums that didn't quite hit it and then he went home to raise his children for a while. This collection seems to sew up some loose ends. Some of the remaining classic songs that were not on the first collection are presented here along with some non-album songs done for movies. Along with these are two new songs made especially for this collection.

Don't get me wrong: this is a very fine collection. If you don't know Bob Seger, then by all means get this CD along with his first GREATEST HITS. But if you want to get a better flavor of this great rock artist, I would recommend any of the following:

LIVE BULLET (1976)---Seger's first "live" album and in many regards his best.
NIGHT MOVES (1976)-The classic Bob Seger album of all time.
AGAINST THE WIND (1980)-Many overlook this album but it contains many of Seger's most memorable songs.
LIKE A ROCK (1986)-Seger's last great album. Really rocks. Remembered mostly for its title song but the rest of the album is just as good.

If you're like me, these four CDs will make you hunger for more and so you might end up getting the rest of Seger's CDs. If not, you still will have an excellent CD or two for your record collection. But maybe you're not that interested in getting that deep into the "ancient rock cannon". Short of getting an actual Bob Seger album, there is nothing wrong and everything right in getting this CD and the first GREATEST HITS. Bob will understand.

Still waiting...
Anyone who ever turned on a rock/pop radio station during the 70's or 80's surely needs no convincing to buy (or not) music from Bob Seger. So this commentary is about the purpose of this particular CD, not the relative merits of the music it contains. With that being said, just what do we have here in this Seger compilation and how have we arrived here? Probably, in an effort to keep up sales of the individual albums on CD, a greatest hits collection for Bob Seger didn't appear until 1994. And when it did finally appear, what a letdown it was. More than half of his top-10 tunes were missing, there were a paltry 14 tracks and several non-hit songs appeared instead of the many bona-fide hits Seger had during his long tenure on the charts. Now, along comes volume two of greatest hits which does fill in some of the gaps but still falls far short of what it should be. Three top-20 tunes are yet to be accounted for with an additional ten, incredibly, top-100 tunes not to be found while several non-charting tunes have somehow nuzzled their way into a supposedly "greatest hits" piece. How many more greatest hits volumes do we need to see and purchase before Seger's music gets compiled correctly? Giving credit where at least minimal credit is due, between these two greatest hits volumes you can gather up most of Seger's biggest tunes but for the casual collector these two pieces are sadly inadequate. For the more avid fan, there is little reason to purchase either of these if you already have the CD's of the original albums. The only real benefit is here in volume two, where a couple of tunes from soundtracks are available for the first time on a Seger CD although these tracks can be found on the soundtrack CD's themselves. So either we wait for a comprehensive box set or a two-disc "very best"-styled compilation to get a decent overview of Seger's long run on the music charts. It doesn't look like Capital has much interest in this so maybe it'll have to be done by the likes of Rhino or some foreign label (which ironically often outdoes our domestic record companies). All in all then, a frustrating and disappointing Seger compilation CD, again.

Helping round out first hits volume
In an Amazon.com review I wrote a couple of years ago about Bob Seger's first "Greatest Hits" CD, I of course applauded the music there but lamented the fact that certain songs were missing. Specifically, here is what I said about songs I would like to see on a "volume 2":

"...For starters, I would like to see the movie songs "Understanding" and the # 1 "Shakedown" included, as they aren't anywhere else besides their respective sound tracks. As for other album songs, I'd like to see most if not all of the following: "Katmandu" (live version), "Travellin' Man", "Beautiful Loser", "Rock And Roll Never Forgets", "The Fire Down Below", "Feel Like A Number", "The Horizontal Bop", "Her Strut", "Fire Lake", "Let It Rock", "Even Now", "Shame On The Moon", "American Storm", and maybe even "The Real Love" and "Lock And Load" off of his two '90's albums of all new material...."

Based on this, how should I grade the actual volume 2 release? In all, 8 of the 17 songs I recommended in the version I specified are on this collection. Another "half a song" credit can go to the classic "Katmandu"; while I prefer the live version, at least it was put on here. So I guess you could say that in my opinion of two years ago they got it exactly half right (8 1/2 of 17 songs "requested" made it to this compilation).

In reality, much of the best of what I hoped for is here. First of all, I was foolish to leave the tracks "Sunspot Baby" and the live "Tryin' To Live My Life Without You" off of my list two years ago--they are both great tracks included on this collection. The two movie songs I mentioned, plus a third relatively recent one that I didn't even know about ("Chances Are"--a nice, if generic, duet pop ballad), are here. I was really happy to see rockers like "The Fire Down Below", "Her Strut", and of course "Rock And Roll Never Forgets" included. "Beautiful Loser" is a worthy classic from right before Bob became really big on the pop charts. "Shame On The Moon" and "Fire Lake" are great top 10 hits to include. The later material is misrepresented, as "New Coat Of Paint" and "Manhattan" should be replaced with "The Real Love" and "Lock And Load" off of the two 1990's albums the former tracks were taken from (as stated in my review of two years ago). The two new tracks at the end, "Satisifed" and "Tomorrow" are both surprisingly solid rock tracks--not ballads, proving that Bob may still have a bit of rock left in him.

If you have volume 1, get this for a more complete picture of the legendary Bob Seger. It's not perfect, but--as at least one other reviewer said--what compilation is for someone with this long a career? Enjoy it for what it is--and if you need more Bob buy his old original albums. Most if not all of his material is highly recommended for true classic rock fans. This collection is recommended to "round out" the first Greatest Hits CD. Throw in a video for the classic "Turn The Page" on the enhanced CD, and my overall grade of this album is actually closer to 4 1/2 stars.