The best of Jim's Big Ego Sep 11, 2008

After my last post reviewing the new Jim's Big Ego album, "free*", I got to thinking that the band has now produced enough material that they might be able to make a good compilation album out of it.  So I decided to take a stab at that.

In compiling this track listing, I started by simply choosing what I thought were their best songs.  I then cut it down to just under 74 minutes (which is the amount you can fit on a standard CD) with an eye towards producing an album you could listen to as a whole, which would flow nicely.

Here's my list:

  1. International, from free*
  2. Stress, from noplace like nowhere
  3. Cheat to Lose, from Don't Get Smart
  4. Desperate Times, from More Songs About Me
  5. Prince Charming, from noplace like nowhere
  6. Math Prof Rock Star, from They're Everywhere!
  7. Everything Must Go, from free*
  8. Smells Like Big Chinos (Live), from Y2K Hooray!
  9. Boston Band, from noplace like nowhere
  10. The Ballad of Barry Allen, from They're Everywhere!
  11. Pascagoula Pawn and Gun, from free*
  12. How It Happens, from Support the Truth
  13. Award Show, from free*
  14. Vandals, from More Songs About Me
  15. Depravity, from free*
  16. Utopia, from free*
  17. She's Dead, from noplace like nowhere
  18. Meanies (Live), from Titanic
  19. Hidden track: She's Dead (Reprise), from noplace like nowhere

Observations: One could feasibly see these selections as reflecting back on the albums they're from.  Let's do the math:

Album Total Tracks "Best of" tracks Percent "best of"
Titanic 19 1 5.3%
More Songs About Me 14 2 14.3%
Don't Get Smart 11 1 9.1%
Y2K Hooray! 5 1 20.0%
noplace like nowhere 15 4 26.7%
They're Everywhere! 12 2 16.7%
Support the Truth 6 1 16.7%
free* 13 6 46.2%

I think these numbers don't really reflect how I actually would rate the albums, though.  They seem to suggest that my favorite two albums are free* and noplace like nowhere, with free* far outstripping everything else.  But I'd suspect that there's two factors going on here: free* is the New Thing, which led me to unconsciously favor it, and free* has a pretty wide variety of songs on it compared to some of the other albums, which my selection criteria tended to favor.

I actually think that They're Everywhere! is a much better album than these numbers suggest, but it's greater than the sum of its parts - individual songs on it don't stick out much, but the album still works very well.  The relative rankings of noplace like nowhere and Don't Get Smart are absolutely correct, though - noplace is a much better album.

The EPs are kind of in their own categories - the percentages are all wacky because of the low track count.  They're also hard to compare, because Y2K Hooray! is mostly humorous songs, and Support the Truth is all serious political ones.

Then there's Titanic, which actually has a lot of really good material on it, but unfortunately, a lot of it is spoken word/poetry stuff that I didn't want to put into a "best of" compilation.

So, Jim, how about it?  When can we expect to see The Best of Jim's Big Ego? :)