Building to a mega release of Bob Dylan and The Band work comes to this. Preparing for a compilation of over four hundred songs is no small feat. They are keeping ravenous fans a little bit starved as they wait to explore the backlog of material from a tour like no other. Forever Young: The Best of 1974 has, frankly, a bit of dreck in it. Floating there in the flotsam are a few serviceable songs worth extracting, namely those two pieces from Dylan and The Band. They will likely feature in The 1974 Live Recordings, but those who picked up a copy of MOJO can access them a bit earlier. As a whole, Forever Young: The Best of 1974 is a bit light on quality.
Besides the two Dylan and The Band pieces, a sincerely brilliant version of Something There Is About You and a furious, fast-paced The Times They Are A-Changin’, there is little which fits the theme of this compilation. Say what you will about compilation efforts, beyond them often being a waste of time and the wrong way to experience the relatively easy-to-find works of an artist, they do struggle for theme. With Forever Young: The Best of 1974, the “best of” slogan is held up more by Dylan than anyone else. Bits from Roy Harper and King Crimson can be heard within, the big names of the 1970s but not from their prolific periods. As great a collection as it is on paper, what with Hawkwind, Robert Wyatt, Can and Fela Kuti all featured in there too, it lacks something. There is a cobbled-together feel to this collection.
These are more artists of interest at the time in the news than of any considerable musical weight. King Crimson’s Red closes out the compilation because it too closes the band out as Robert Fripp called time on it shortly after this release. Fela Kuti’s I No Got Eye For Back is more a retaliation to the compound raid of the time and the Gram Parsons $1000 Wedding is a chance to include the late artist and his second album. All of these selections make sense on paper but the narratives are so different between them, so elusive and wild was this time in the 1970s. Putting them together makes for nothing more than fragments of people, moments in time which need further exploration. Forever Young: The Best of 1974 is a chase of stories from the time rather than the music which made it.
But then this is the joy of a compilation laid bare. Forever Young: The Best of 1974 is a smorgasbord of potential. What we can gain from this in storytelling is lost only by the songs chosen to represent them. We can launch from this MOJO collection of very fine recordings, nicely timed and relevant to the period. A practical compilation of interesting bits and pieces. It serves as a remnant of the pre-Spotify age where new music could be revealed through the backs of magazines and compilation albums. How very retro it is to hear Betty Davis and Little Feat on this piece. But now if we want to hear from them, we can just see their entire discography on the screen. For those not convinced by compilations in the first place, this may be one to skip – though some of these recordings, for now, are limited only to this CD.
where does this CD exist? I’ve found nonevidence of it anywhere. As for the Dylan set, there are really only about 38 songs duplicated again and again and unlike the present Dylan sets he played them pretty much the same eveywhere back then I’m thinking plushis vocals were not always the best. The Band on the other hand was spectacular which made up for his shortcomings.
It was released alongside MOJO Magazine’s feature edition on Dylan and The Band’s 1974 tour. Picked mine up from Tesco, with the magazine.