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"The Best Of..." 2 (1986)
EMI has put out compilations of what they consider to be the Kidd's "best" at fairly regular intervals since 1971, in the UK at least. What's interesting about any record company's "best Of..." compilations is that, with a suitably (and sometimes quite radically) altered track listing, fans of the pop/rock act in question must get a little confused from time to time as to whether their previous purchase was really the definitive collection! When I came across this release in a (no- long-gone) local record store I thought that here might be an opportunity to add some rare tracks, allowing that some repeated tracks would be okay. As it happened, the only track I didn't already own was "Longin' Lips", and its appearance here was not enough to make me buy it.
Maybe others felt the same as consequently it seems to have become one of the harder-to-find LP's for the dedicated collector. The back featured sleeve notes by Adam Komorowski, described as editor of "New Kommotion" magazine. This publication is believed to have ceased in the early 1980's (although there are plans to re-launch it as an Internet magazine) so the date of the sleeve notes origin is slightly unclear.
As it stands, 12 tracks are repeated from the Colin Miles compilation "The Best Of..." from 1978, while "You Got What It Takes" and "Shop Around" had appeared only a couple of years previously on "Rarities". "Always and Ever" meanwhile made it's debut on LP in glorious mono, having been only available on the original "Starline LP". Eleven of Kidd's first thirteen singles are represented up to and including the unsuccessful 1964 coupling "Jealous Girl" / "Shop Around". That excellent but schizophrenic 45 showed the group's then divided loyalties between the popular commercial route and the pioneering R&B furrow. The singles that got away were the "If You Were The Only Girl In The World" and "Please Don't Bring Me Down" releases, thus missing out on two classic flipsides in "Feelin" and "So What". Nevertheless, this collection WAS the first UK collection of the band's work to contain all nine chart hits. Thankfully, the "stereo reprocessing" that was the "Shakin' All Over" collection in 1971 had been long forgotten and only original mono masters were used.
P.S. - Anyone notice something odd with the front cover photo? For those who wish to be put out of their misery, it is back-to-front, Kidd always wore his trademark eyepatch over his right eye....