To Hit, or not to Hit?

I think I need a bit of help here, guys. It’s these infernal ‘Best Of’ compilations and I don’t know what to do about it and it’s driving me nuts!

But let’s start at the beginning. To my eternal shame, I own no albums by those purveyors of quintessential English whimsy, The Kinks, except a late 1970s vinyl copy of, oh dear, I can hardly bear to say it…20 Golden Greats on the Ronco label (now there’s a great 70s brand for you). But I’d like to replace it with a CD, and what I’ve been toying with recently is not buying a replacement ‘Best Of’ but a copy of their 1967 effort, ‘Something Else by the Kinks’ as it contains their best ever single ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and is recommended heartily by those who review it (not always a good indicator but let’s go with it for the moment).

But here’s the problem. On the one hand, whilst original albums (without those annoying ‘Bonus’ tracks), have a certain completeness about them, which means that the content works as a collective whole - a piece of art reflecting a given moment in time, they don’t have all the hits on them, do they? What they do have is a period consistency, which means that listening to them makes sense. You have an understanding of the time and place of their creation and each track has a relationship with every other. The downside is that there is bound to be a variation of quality otherwise every track would end up on a ‘Best Of’.

On the other hand, ‘Hits’ compilations do have all the hits on them but they always feel like a disjointed mess and I don’t tend to play them very often. Even if the tracks are ordered chronologically (which many aren’t) there is no sense of ‘creation’ about it. Hearing a couple of tracks from say, Sgt Pepper, jostling for position with other earlier or later works on a Beatles compilation does not give you a clear sense of 1960s psychedelia as expressed by the original album, does it? I’m sorry, I’m not expressing myself very well here, but I hope you understand what I mean?

I suppose what it comes down to is this: do I buy a hits collection or a period piece?

Really, I’d like all the hits as well as the period pieces but do not intend to buy the entire Kinks’ back catalogue to achieve it. In fact, this would not work in practice, as in the 60s singles did not always appear on albums. Which brings us back to the ‘Best Of’. Oh God! Perhaps I’ll just buy both.