Search - Dri :: Greatest Hits

Cleopatra/Anarchy botched this one up...

Speaker of the House | Los Angeles, CA United States | 11/15/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"O.K. I made the mistake of buying this & later not realizing that the track listing was completely screwed up. A mild-to-meager collection of fast-thrash era D.R.I. tunes, but the poor, callous production efforts are appalling.



Still, if you made the same mistake of purchasing this, well, here is the correct track listing for this "Greatest Hits" release as well as the "Dirty Rotten Hitz" release:



1. Who Am I

2. Commuter Man

3. Yes Ma'am

4. The Explorer

5. Violent Pacification

6. I Don't Need Society

7. Couch Slouch

8. Mad Man

9. Argument Then War

10. Nursing Home Blues

11. A Coffin

12. Redline

13. Probation

14. No Religion

15. Five Year Plan

16. Hooked

17. Sad To Be



I hope this mitigates things."

Ugh

Riley | Canada | 06/12/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"In the words of Spike, guitarist of DRI:



"Cleopatra Records contacted us through a middleman who called us and said, "Cleopatra wanna do a DRI greatest hits CD. Are you interested?" We said, "Sure!" He said they wanted thirteen songs blah blah blah and they'll give us so much money and that was it. Okay! Sounds good. So we signed a contract.



Then Cleopatra realized, "Oh. But we only wanna do your first two records." So it would be the greatest hits from the first two records!? How can that be called "Greatest Hits"? We have eight albums! "No, we just want stuff from the first two." So rename it! Call it "Greatest Old School Hits" or something. Don't make it a false statement! "Okay blah blah blah."



Then they decide they wanna do the first THREE records and also they realize that 13 early DRI songs is only gonna add up to 18 minutes! Well you should've thought of this a long time ago! "Oh, well we just want these short fast songs." Okay, you have them - if the CD's too short, that's your problem. And they're like, "Look, we're taking 17 song whether you like it or not, and we don't care if we're breaching our contract." We could have sued, but we let `em do it because we didn't want them putting out a CD by us that's 18 minutes long!



So we agreed. And the agreement stipulated that I'm supposed to send them the songs - pull the songs off our CDs and send it to them, along with all this artwork, interviews, photographs. I sent them all this stuff - a ton of stuff. And they called and said, "Okay, we've got everything. So we'll assemble the CD and the artwork, and then forward it to you for approval." Okay, great!



It never happens. Next thing I know, our fans are saying, "Hey, I bought this Greatest Hits CD and it's crap!" And I'm like, "Oh god, you gotta be kidding me." So I call Cleopatra and they say, "We ran out of time, sorry." The artwork is total crap. It looks like a bootleg thing someone did on computer. The songs are in the wrong order, they're labeled the wrong names, and they didn't use any of the stuff I sent them. Everything I would have checked and approved and said, "This is wrong. Do this. Do that," I wasn't given a chance to do. They probably didn't send it to me because they realized that I wasn't gonna let em get away with it. So they put it out and it's complete crap. The songs themselves are there; there's nothing they could do to destroy them. They sound exactly the same as on the original CDs, but they're labeled wrong, they're in the wrong order and the artwork is terrible!""

No Laws In The Pit

Darkslide | New York, NY USA | 03/12/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"DRI's Greatest Hits... The guys in the band were probably doubled over laughing at the irony in the title since these guys, unlike bands like Metallica, Judas Priest or Maiden, have never had a song or album go platinum. They've never had a song in heavy roation on Rock radio, etc... What they HAVE done is heavily influence alot of hard rock fans and managed to be one of the first bands in the then budding "crossover" scene which blended hardcore punk with heavy metal. They were (and are) one of my favrite bands because not only did they have great riffs, intense speed and even political messages, but they also had humor in their music, lyrics and album covers. Something that I feel is sorely lacking in the metal world.This disc has a good song selection for new fans and even for people that already own all their discs. Live standards like I Don't Need Society and Sad to Be are from their first, The Dirty Rotten LP. Plus you've got some great stuff from Dealing With It like "Mad Man" and "Couch Slouch". And of course the huge fan favorite "5 Year Plan" is included. The disc compiles some of the blinding speed punkier stuff of their early days with the more heavy and chugging stuff from their later years. The later stuff also benefits from WAY better production.I think this disc is a good one disc comp for veteran fans, but mostly this should appeal to new fans or people that have heard Probot (Kurt from DRI sings on "Silent Spring") and now want to seek out some DRI. If I have any complaints it's that none of these songs are from one of my favorite DRI albums, DRI Live. Lets face it, these guys were only huge in the underground so they didn't have alot of money or backing from the studios to record great sounding records so some of the production really takes away from some of these great songs. Spike Cassidy gets a much better sound for the live record and the songs just leap out of the speakers and really shine."