The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals 1966-1968 (1992)

This isn't a comprehensive career-overview collection, but rather a focus on the more Eric Burdon dominated period of Animal history. For those wanting "House of the Rising Sun" and other hits from the Alan Price/Mickie Most era, there are about 1000 compilations out there to help you; just make sure they are the original recordings! There is a lot of crap out there, so make sure to sample before you buy anything (chances are somebody out there kindly uploaded something on to Youtube).

This one kicks off with three of the best songs recorded by the band. "Don't Bring Me Down" is generally regarded as the swan song of the "original Animals" era, even though only 3/5 of the original band is featured. However it's track two, "See See Rider", which formally brought the era to a close, though it was released posthumously. Finally there is "Inside Looking Out", which actually predates the other two and is the only track here to feature original drummer John Steel. This track is made all the more amazing by the context of where the band was at when it was recorded. They had finally rid themselves of producer Mickie Most in favor of the far more progressive Tom Wilson. Furthermore, Alan Price was out. Even though Price is a fine musician ("O Lucky Man!" is a classic), there was just too much drama between him and Eric for the band to continue. The result of these two departures is a veritable music explosion, leaving all past endeavors in the dust.

The compilation moves on more or less chronologically from this point. There is one more song from the 1966 period ("Hey Gyp") from the highly underrated Animalism (no "s" - that's a different album). "Help Me Girl" is essentially an Eric Burdon solo number, backed by an orchestra, a fairly common thing for British Invasion singers to do, but not a lot of spark. For fans of the more bluesy/R&B Animals it gets a little too psychedelic, starting with "When I Was Young" and the tracks from the Winds of Change album and its supporting singles. Whoever was in charge of this compilation must have really liked that album because it has more representative tracks than the next three albums put together. The last songs are really the ones you can't get around when covering this era: "Monterey", "Sky Pilot" and "River Deep Mountain High".

Aside from some alternative mixing of a few tracks, I already have all the songs here on other albums, and with a recent remastering of the psych albums, even those I think are now covered. I would recommend this for the Animals novice, but not the completist. The only massive omission here is "Paint It Black", an eerie cover of the Stones' original. There are better tracks from Animalism and some killer B-sides that would have fit well here, but they aren't particularly well-known which defeats the point of the album, so I'll give it a pass for that.