Various Artists - Nice Enough To Eat

Ah, how quaint, I do believe it's a "sampler", non? And that green circle with the fifteen-forwardslash-six - isn't that one of those sticky price labels that seemed such a good idea but rip the sleeve to f*** when you try to peel it off? And damme, methinks that's pre-decimal coinage!

Fifteen and a half bob (although I'm almost certain that mine says 14/6). Less than eighty "pee". And that at a time when most albums were well over two quid - can ya remember? And over half an hour each side - and look at those bands!!! Tull! Fairport! Crimson! Traffic! Free! Er, Quintessence! Eavy Jeccy (I think that's what it says)! Never heard of some of the others but they're on Island so they must be pretty good - yeah, I'll buy that. An impulse purchase that I'll never regret. It's even got Mott The Hoople (they weren't always Bowie's stooges, ya know)!

From "Cajun Woman" till the last dying embers of "I Keep Singing That Same Old Song" this is one of the best - by which I mean consistently good & not stuffed with fillers and dross that wouldn't otherwise shift at all - samplers of all time. Naturally it suffers from a certain lack of cohesion since the 12 artists represented are so different, and there are a couple of uneasy contrasts - it goes straight from Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me" into the screaming opening of "21st Century Schizoid Man".

I've got the source (vinyl, natch) albums of nearly every track on this album (a quick little quizlet - which is the only track on here that doesn't come from a full-price Island album?) so my featured track was kinda difficult to choose - although there are Fairport and Nick Drake tracks featured on other pages. But I picked 40000 Headmen because it's the track that made me realise that Traffic weren't just a pop singles band (Hole In My Shoe).