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Ain't Ever Satisfied: The Steve Earle Collection

Steve Earle - Ain't Ever Satisfied: The Steve Earle Collection Audio CD

A fair review of the Steve Earle "Ain't Ever Satisfied: The Steve Earle Collection" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Steve Earle reviews here, or go back to the Steve Earle tabs.

Band: Steve Earle
Title: Ain't Ever Satisfied: The Steve Earle Collection
Rating:

Release Date: 1996-07-30
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Guitar Town 2: Good Ol' Boy (Gettin' Tough) 3: Hillbilly Highway 4: My Old Friend the Blues 5: Fearless Heart 6: Think It Over 7: Someday 8: Goodbye's All We've Got Left 9: State Trooper [Live] 10: I Ain't Ever Satisfied 11: Nowhere Road 12: Rain Came Down 13: I Love You Too Much 14: Week of Living Dangerously 15: Continental Trailways Blues 16: Six Days on the Road 17: Copperhead Road 18: Snake Oil 19: Even When I'm Blue 20: Devil's Right Hand 21: Nothing But a Child 22: Johnny Come Lately 23: Dead Flowers [Live] 24: Other Kind 25: When the People Find Out 26: Billy Austin 27: She's About a Mover [Live] 28: West Nashville Boogie [Live]

The best of the first 4 albums - and then some!
This double CD contains the best tracks from Steve's first 4 albums, as well as a few, well chosen live tracks.

Too Expensive for what it is
But I would assert that the set would be too costly even if Amazon sold it for 15% off list price. Yes, this two disc set does contain 28 cuts, and not one of them should have been omitted. The reason is simple: the most casual fans would be happy with one disc and the true fans of Earle, or at least of his early period, cannot be satisfied with this compilation.

Earle's masterpiece of a debut is represented by 8 of its 10 cuts here, and also by the live version of 'State Trooper' that is the bonus cut on the remastered version. Yet even that is insufficient, for 'Down the Road,' which closed the original album, is classic Earle and is omitted. The other omitted cut, 'Little Rock 'N' Roller,' may be the weakest song on Guitar Town, but it is well worth having. In fact, I know one afficionado of '70s Southern Rock who swears that is the album's best cut.

Earle's second masterpiece, Exit 0, is represented on this complation by only 5 songs. It seems to me that
'Sweet Little 66,' 'No. 29,' 'Angry Young Man, and 'It's All Up To You' are all vintage Earle, better than at least a third of disc two of Ain't Ever Satisfied, and will be desired by anyone who loves the better known early Earle songs.

That means that the person who finds this compilation to be great should soon thereafter purchase both Guitar Town and Exit 0; and he would get only 7 songs that he does not already have. Especially as the material on the second disc of Ain't Ever Satisfied (when Earle was falling head first into addiction's death grip), is, while still very good, not on the level of the first disc, 25 bucks is far too much to pay for this compilation.

The problem for fans is that the next three Earle releases were inconsistent. The six cuts from Copperhead Road are enough from that disjointed effort, and I only love three of them. 'Billy Austin' may be the sole masterwork on The Hard Way, and the live album Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator is, shall we say, not another Running On Empty or Live Rust and thus is well represented on this compilation. That trio of albums is so weak - though each has excellent high points - that I don't know a single person who owns more than one of them though I know people who own every disc Earle has released since getting cleaned up as well as his first pair.

The record executives should do the right thing and make this a single disc. It should be disc #2 with the final two cuts of disc #1 ('Continental Trailways Blues' and 'Six Days on the Road') added. If there is room, another song from each of the three albums could be tacked on ('Blue Yodel #9' is my recommendation from Shut Up). This compilation could be titled 'The Descent Into Hell. ' The notes could explain that it is not a Best Of in any sense but only the (often amazing) highlights of the ragged period between Earle's first two brilliant albums and his brilliant comeback: Train a Comin'. If for no other reason than the inclusion of 'Copperhead Road,' which certainly is among Earle's half dozen best songs and keeps drawing fans of Classic Rock and Celtic-Rock fusion, that one disc compilation would sell reasonably well, and the liner notes could direct fans to buy both Guitar Town and Exit 0.

The other option would be to make this a larger two-disc set, Disc 1 containing the 20 studio cuts on Guitar Town and Exit 0, and Disc 2 containing 'State Trooper, 'Continental Trailways Blues,' 'Six Days on the Road,' the 12 cuts now on disc two, and perhaps another song or two. That expanded 2 disc Ain't Ever Satisfied would be well worth a list price of, say, $33. 95.

A good buy for the money
For your money, this is the one to get. For his earlier stuff, you're not going to get a better compilation on two cds. It has virtually all the tracks from "The Essential Steve Earle" and "Fearless Heart". All the classics like "Guitar Town", "Copperhead Road", "Nowhere Road", etc. plus a live version of "Dead Flowers" from "Shut Up and Die. . . " They're all here and I know I've mentioned this before, but if you're new to Steve, this is the best place that I can think of to start without breaking your bank.

Now the stuff that he's done in the last ten years, that's a different story. Once you've broken this one in a little, then pick up "Train a Comin'", "I Feel Alright" and "El Corazon". Let those sink in and then work yourself up from there. Then again, if you're already a fan, then you know all of this.

Short but sweet
And, everyone makes such a big deal about the 4 live cuts, but they've all been released before. Pretty good survey but not enough music to justify the price. "State Trooper" is from Guitar Town; and the other 3 are from Shut Up and Die Like An Aviator, which at 77 minutes, is a good deal.

Good starting place
Earle. This two-disk set has replaced "The Essential Steve Earle" as a greatest hits package covering the early part of his career (1985-1990) when MCA was trying to figure out how to market the talented but trying Mr. I would like to thank the thief who stole my copy of that CD in a burglary for encouraging me to purchase this one. I can only hope that you have the taste to appreciate what you stole.

Steve Earle is a good musician and an astonishing songwriter. Bruce Springsteen is probably his only contemporary in American popular music to have such a lyrical facility with American vernacular.

The songs in this package tend to be narrower both stylistically and thematically than Earle's later work, which, depending on one's taste could be a good or a bad thing. The cuts on the first disk, in particular, largely taken from his first two albums, are much in the mold of mainstream Nashville production of the time - heartbreak, white lines, stadium drums, and overdubbed guitars galore. In evidence is the populism that would later turn more explicitly political (again, a good or a bad thing depending on one's perspective).

The second disk is more transitional - by this point MCA's country division in Nashville had given up dealing with the notoriously difficult Earle and transferred his contract to the rock division in LA. Less formulaic rock producers and deepening personal problems lent themselves to more musically diverse, darker, songs, and by the set closing live recording of "West Nashville Boogie" from 1990, Earle is howling desperate lyrics over the John Lee Hooker/ZZ Top "LaGrange" riff.

This, in turn, would give way to jail and drug rehab, followed by an artistic and personal renewal in the latter half of the 1990s. Highly recommended as an introduction to Earle's music.

You can see a complete list of all Steve Earle discography, or go back to the Steve Earle tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.