REVIEW: David Lee Roth, The Best (Rhino)
Nearly one year to the week after Van Halen released Greatest Hits, Volume One featuring a one-off appearance by their former lead singer, David Lee Roth has issued his own greatest hits collection, The Best .
Roth has always been surrounded by top-shelf guitarists, and his solo career showed him making excellent choices such as Steve Vai, Jason Becker and Billy Sheehan. But in-between the bonafide rock and roll band, Roth's alter-ego - Vegas, showman style - appears. It's this reason that Van Halen would perform the periodic "Happy Trails" and other kitschy cover songs, which Roth carried to his solo career. Most of the covers, such as "Tobacco Road", "Easy Street," and "California Girls" have aged well. "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody" doesn't fare quite as well and thankfully, his atrocious cover of "That's Life" is omitted from this twenty song compilation.
However, the strength of Roth falls back into the original rockers co-written by Roth and other collaborators - "Yankee Rose" and "Goin' Crazy" (Steve Vai) and "Just Like Paradise" (Brett Tuggle"). The new track, "Don't Piss me Off", is not written by Roth, and suffers from a Bill Haley-style guitar chord sequence.
The Best is definitely a solid compilation of David Lee Roth's solo material, and most people who own the Roth solo catalog could probably toss those five discs in favor of this one. The question that remains, however, is how many people actually own that collection. TRACK LISTING: Don't Piss Me Off, Yankee Rose, A Lil' Ain't Enough, Just Like Paradise, Big Train, Big Trouble, It's Showtime, Hot Dog And A Shake, Skyscraper, Shyboy, She's My Machine, Stand Up, Tobacco Road, Easy Street, California Girls, Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody, Sensible Shoes, Goin' Crazy, Ladies Night In Buffalo, Land's Edge
