Island 40, Volume 4: Electric Currents (Various Artists, 1998)

The fourth volume of Island's 40th anniversary series is probably the most accessible to classic rock fans. In most cases all of the artists should be familiar, though in some cases the song choices are unusual. For almost all of the artists represented here I have built them further into my collection.

Traffic and John Martyn showed up on volume 3 (the folk collection, even though the songs identify better as acoustic rock), although here their songs are much heavier. We also get a double dose of Traffic from the pre- and post-Blind Faith era. The Jethro Tull track, a cover of "Cat's Squirrel" from their first album, is unusual in that I don't believe Ian Anderson performs on it. In fact it sounds closer to Black Sabbath than the kind of music Tull would be producing a couple years down the road. After that is a slightly edited "In the Court of the Crimson King" which segues neatly into a live version of Free's "Mr. Big". The next two tracks are among the most obscure: Spooky Tooth's "Better By You, Better Than Me" (which may be more familiar in the form of Judas Priest's cover version), and Heavy Jelly's "I Keep Singing That Same Old Song". In fact, the Heavy Jelly track is truly bizarre in that it's the only thing the band ever did. It's an interesting song, but very weird to see it here. Traffic's second song closes the first half of the album.

The second half of the collection is more glam-oriented. John Martyn takes things in a new direction even though his song doesn't scream glam. The Roxy Music family (Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry solo, then together) move in for a few tracks, which is where the real sound shift occurs. The last songs leave us in a very different place than the beginning of the album, with songs from Robert Palmer (long before he was addicted to love), John Cale (channeling Elvis - no joke!), and Bad Company.

Like some other compilations in my life, this came around at a good time. Before this fell into my hands, the only song replicated by my existing collection was "Cat's Squirrel". Since then I've used many of the songs as a springboard to collecting more from these artists. The only artists here that show up uniquely here still are Spooky Tooth, Heavy Jelly (of course), Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Robert Palmer, and John Cale. As you can see, I've still got some work to do!