Below Average Hit Collection

I agree with many reviewers: this is a disappointing collection. There is no "The World Is A Ghetto", "Gypsy Man", nor "Ballero" for starters. I had the original "Greatest Hits" from 1976, but is only available on vinyl records. Your best bet is to get the "War: Anthology (1970-1994)". It's 2 CDs but has all the essentials.

Good Music -- Disappointing Selections

The music of War sounds invariably recalls a sticky summer day in LA for me. Their sound was fairly progressive for the 1970's: combining latin sounds, jazz, funk, and rock. They racked up an array of great hits in the 1970's, first as the backup band for Animal's lead singer Eric Burdon and then on their own. The majority of their hits are here, including the Top 10 songs "Spill the Wine" (#3 in 1970), "The Cisco Kid" (#2 in 1973), ""Why Can't We Be Friends?" (#6 in 1975), "Low Rider" (#7 in 1975), and "Summer" (#7 in 1976). These songs are venerable enough to be "oldies," but they sound astonishingly current. Unsurprisingly, these songs have been sampled by numerous acts and used in numerous movies, perhaps most recently "21 Grams."



Unfortunately, this collection omits two of their biggest and best songs: "The World is a Ghetto" (#7 in 1973) and "Gypsy Man" (#8 in 1973). If a band has seven Top 10 singles, all of those songs should be on their greatest hits collection! The CD also culminates on a low-note - a 1987 remix by Arthur Baker of "Low Rider." You might not recognize that name, but you'll recognize Baker's sound; he scored such 80's movie as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and he injects the remix with an unhealthy dose of 80's cheese.



Ultimately, this anthology is arguably the best single-disk compilation of War's music although with some serious flaws. Casual fans will probably be satisfied, but others should seek out one of their double-disk collections.

The food is great but the portions are small

War was a joyful band of rhythmic funksters with clever vocals and gorgeous harmonies. This collection includes most of their best songs from the 70s, but is missing some real gems (notably "Gypsy Man" and "The World is a Ghetto"). Another reviewer pointed out that some of the tracks are shortened radio edits. There may be more cases of this than I can recognize, but either way there are some songs here, like "Slipping into Darkness" and "All Day Music", that are just too good to be this short.. "City Country City" is whittled down to just the "country" section, and lacks the journey from and back to the city that made the original so evocative. But the music is superb (except for "Living in the Red"), and even the songs that have never disappeared from radio play still stand up well ("Low Rider" and the charmingly weird "Spill the Wine"). But like a delicious meal with too-small portions, this CD leaves me hungering for more. A great band needs a strong "best of" collection, and this CD just isn't it. So why 5 stars? Because setting aside all the coulda-woulda-shouldas about this as a compilation, 4 stars just doesn't quite describe the superior quality of the music it contains.