No End in Sight: The Very Best of Foreigner (2008)


  
Disc One 1. Feels Like the First Time 2. Long, Long Way From Home 3. Cold as Ice 4. Headknocker 5. Starrider 6. Double Vision 7. Blue Morning, Blue Day 8. Hot Blooded 9. Dirty White Boy 10.Head Games 11.Women 12.Night Life 13.Break it Up 14.Jukebox Hero 15.Urgent 16.Waiting For a Girl Like You Disc Two 1. I Want To Know What Love Is 2. Down on Love 3. Reaction to Action 4. That Was Yesterday 5. Say You Will 6. I Don't Want To Live Without You 7. Can't Wait 8. Heart Turns To STone 9. Lowdown and Dirty 10.I'll Fight For You 11.Under the Gun 12.Too Late 13.Say You Will (Live) 14.Starrider (Live) 15.Jukebox Hero/Whole Lotta Love (Live)

 

I've honestly lost track of all of the "best of" packages that this band has released. Usually, when a band is hanging on to its existence by touring non-stop in venues about 1/3 the size of the places they were playing in their glory days, it makes better sense to re-release the hits over and over again instead of spending a considerable amount of cash to record a brand new collection of new songs that most casual fans will never hear. Think about it for a minute: If the average fan happens to stop in at a local gas station/convenience store, and there's a spindle of CDs on the counter, the fan might pick up one that says "Foreigner" on the cover, but unless the track listing featured songs such as Hot Blooded and/or Urgent, that consumer would probably pass.

All this to say, that this release probably is the best of the best that is out there. It's ironic since, in many ways, this record is a copy of the last 2 CD set Jukebox Heroes: Anthology from about eight years ago. Of course, I'm not even sure if that one is still in print.

Anyway, this release makes some minor improvements over that one, and that album was pretty good to begin with. They've essentially gotten rid of all the non-Foreigner stuff that Gramm and Jones were a part of, and they stick to the hits and the best known tracks of the band.

They even include a new, soon to be released song from 2009's Can't Slow Down. In addition, they duplicate three tracks in a live format. Say You Will, Starrider and Jukebox Hero. The latter is mixed with the Led Zepplin song Whole Lotta Love. The live version of Say You Will is actually a quiet, unplugged type deal, done somewhere in front of a small audience. It's nice, but I would prefer a version that replicated its studio counterpart (mainly because, surprisingly, there isn't already one out there anywhere). The only reason that I can think that they include Starrider in a live version, is that during the song, new singer Kelly Hanson shouts to the crowd something like "How about a big hand for the leader and creative genius of this band: Mick Jones!!". So I'm guessing Jones wanted his ego stroked a bit.

Really the only Foreigner album you need if you're on a budget.

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