A COLLECTION OF GREAT DANCE SONGS

"A Collection of Great Dance Songs". A funny title for a compilation album from a band which obviously didn't record dance songs, and with also a funny cover design from Hipgnosis. Released in November 1981. A strange compilation, I think. I don't know the real reasons why this compilation was released then. Maybe it was to make time between the release of "The Wall" (which was released in November 1979), the release of "The Wall" movie (in 1982), and the release of their next album, titled "The Final Cut" (a thing which happened until March 1983). (Bands in those years were expected to release new albums every year or at least every two years). Anyway, by late 1981 maybe Rick Wright's status in the band was still of an ex-member who was recruited to play in "The Wall" shows in 1980-81, or maybe by the time this compilation album was released he really was not associated with the band in any role anymore. At the time this wasn't known yet for the general public. It was until the release of "The Final Cut" that it was known that he wasn't in the band anymore.

So, the band released this compilation album in late 1981. The selection of the songs for this compilation is not bad, but it has a bias, at least in that of the six songs which were included, three of them ("Money", "Another Brick in the Wall Part Two" and "Sheep") were composed alone by Roger Waters, who since 1977 became the main songwriter in the band. And it was later known that those times were not very happy times for the band, with increasingly strained personal relationships between the rest of the members of the band which in late 1985 led to Waters to leave the band and to the legal battles for the name of the band in later years.

This album has the next songs:

"One of These Days" (from the album "Meddle", 1971): it sounds like being the same version from that album.

"Money": a then new version of this song which was originally recorded and released in their "The Dark Side of the Moon" album from 1973. This new version was recorded in 1981, by David Gilmour playing all the instruments. The reason given for this new recording was for copyright reasons in the U.S. Apparently Capitol Records didn't want to license the track to Columbia Records. But "One of These Days" also was originally released by Capitol in the U.S....so? Maybe the real reason was to give to the fans a new "rare" track to buy this compilation album (a marketing trick, maybe), and with Wright being out of the band by then and with the internal tensions between the rest of the musicians Gilmour took the task to record a new version of the song alone, with only Dick Parry appearing again on sax solos.This new version has the same sound effects from the original version. But it is clear for me that Gilmour, while still being a very good guitarist and lead singer, couldn't play the drums as well as Nick Mason or the keyboards as well as Rick Wright. So, this new version is not as good as the original version, in my opinion.

"Sheep" (from the album "Animals", 1977): it sounds like being the same version from that album.

"Shine on You Crazy Diamond" (from the "Wish You Were Here" album, 1975): shows several edits which are very clear for the listener. It sounds well, anyway, for a compilation album like this.

"Wish You Were Here", from the album of the same title, 1975: with also some edits done for this compilation album, it also sounds well.

"Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2": it also sounds like being the same version from "The Wall" album from 1979, but also with some different edits.

Maybe with the passing of time this compilation now could be considered as not as relevant as it maybe was in 1981. But the selection of songs is not bad, and if some of the most dedicated fans of the band still want to listen to some different edits of these songs or to the then new version of "Money", it maybe could work very well for them. It is maybe a good "sampler" of some songs of the band from the seventies. The album as a whole sounds well despite the songs were taken out of context from the original albums. It was done in a good way, and it is a good compilation from that period of the band.