The Beatles aren't in it despite their entire career being in the 60s. Neither are The Rolling Stones. Or Simon & Garfunkel.
It appears to be a section for "all that pre-70s music that isn't popular enough to be in the Popular section but isn't Jazz or Blues."
Within this section I finally found a copy of The Pretty Thing's "S.F. Sorrow". Pity me for expecting to find it in Popular, or Rock, or who knows where.
When will we see a 1970s section appear? 80s? "Last Millennium"?
Is the existence of this pre-70s section merely a recognition that the late 60s changed music forever when stereo became the norm, splitting the "popular/rock" music world into three parts: Pre-Rock, 50s-60s Rock, Post 60s Rock?
On "S.F. Sorrow", it is clearly a new stereo remix of a mono album, and it sounds very strange as a result, stranger by far than the mono-to-stereo mixes I'm used to from S&G, Beatles and the Beach Boys. Yes the drums are all in one ear, and the harmonies are messed up by splitting the two voices into 100% stereo, but it is more than that... The "bonus tracks" at the end are mostly mono, and sound better for it (but harsher, you can't win).
I see that catalog albums sales are doing much better than current albums.
Undercover with some great stats on music sales:
Music sales are up 50% on 5 years ago according to new figures released today by Nielsen SoundScan.For the first time ever, music sales exceeded 1.5 billion units, a raise of 2.1% over 2008 and 50% over 2004.
Nielsen Soundscan track music sales in the USA and Canada.
These are pure unit numbers and are the result of the rise of single track digital sales.
While unit numbers are up, physical sales are way down, and the increase in units hasn't necessarily meant more money.
I'd love to see some stats on total sales of single tracks and the year those tracks were released. Are people only buying new tracks, or are people increasingly buying old tracks too?
Greatest Hits was released on November 2, 1981 and compiled tracks from all of the band's albums released at the time, except Queen, the first album.
The track listing wasn't the same in every country. The edition you've probably seen on CD is the UK edition. As the compilation was intended to compile their "greatest hits", and in some countries different tracks were released as singles, the track listing was altered accordingly. The following is a list of all differing tracks from the various versions:
Queen's Greatest Hits II was released in October 1991, a month before Freddy's death, and compiled tracks from the albums released since Greatest Hits.
Queen online boasts that Queen became the first band to have two genuine Greatest Hits compilations that were full of tracks that were actual hits.
Many (most?) of the versions of tracks on II are the single (edited) versions. Greatest Hits II was apparently released at the time with a second disc of unedited (album) versions of the tracks. If all of the tracks fit unedited, why edit them? I suppose as the compilation was of the hits, and the hits were the singles, it made sense to put the singles on there.
Having grown up with Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits II, the idea of a diluted single disc version of those two amazing compilations vaguely offended me, so I took it upon myself to see what tracks from 1 and 2 are not considered Absolutely great.
The track listing for Absolute Greatest is:
The brackets indicate the album the song is from. The * tracks are from Greatest Hits III.
Despite removing 16 tracks and adding two, the new compilation still covers all of the albums except Flash and Queen, and to be fair Greatest Hits doesn't have any Queen (album) tracks either.
Of the two new tracks, "These Are the Days of Our Lives" is a great song and stuck out like a sore thumb when listening to all of the albums recently. "Heaven For Everyone" isn't great, but it isn't terrible, and I suppose they really wanted something from that last album on there, but on that argument, "Keep Yourself Alive" (Queen) should really be on there.
The following tracks are on Greatest Hits but not on Absolute Greatest:
The following tracks are on Greatest Hits II but not on Absolute Greatest:
I might put these rejected tracks on a CD and call it Queen's Lesser Greats or something equally cheesy.
As an aside, the following tracks are on Queen Rocks but not on the first two Greatest Hits (ignoring the fact that Queen Rocks has different versions of tracks on the Hits albums):
Now if you'd have asked me before this research I'd have sworn blind that Tie Your Mother Down was on Greatest Hits but I'd have been wrong.... or maybe not. Queen Online indicates that the Australian version of Hits included Tie Your Mother Down and Keep Yourself Alive but not "Don't Stop Me Now", "Save Me", "Now I'm Here", "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" or "Seven Seas Of Rhye". It is possible I at first heard an early version on tape and have since upgraded to the full UK version on CD, not realising what was missing.