The Very Best of the Ventures [Import, Best of]

Worldwide, the Ventures are the most successful instrumental rock band ever, although they were more popular in America and Japan than anywhere else. Britain had its own instrumental bands, notably the Shadows, the Tornados, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan (a duo of two ex-Shadows) and Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. So while the Ventures had a couple of big UK hits (Walk don't run, Perfidia), the local competition was too strong for them to develop the level of sustained popularity that they had in America and Japan. That said, there has always been a market for the Ventures' music in Britain, and this British compilation of their music caters for it.

The music here is dominated by cover versions (even some of their hits were covers), but their sound was so distinctive that even when recording covers, they at least sounded fresh and a little different. That doesn't make them better than the originals (for the most part, they're not) but at least they stamp their own identity on each track.

In America, they had fourteen Billboard top 100 hits and some singles that just missed the top 100. They also had a lot of complete misses, but their albums sold well (at least in America and Japan) so they weren't dependant on singles sales. Of those hits, this compilation includes Walk don't run, Perfidia, Ram-bunk-shush, Lullaby of the leaves, Silver city, Blue moon, Lolita ya-ya, 2,000 bee part 2 (actually the version here is parts 1 and 2), Diamond head, Secret agent man, Hawaii Five-O and A theme from a summer place. The omissions are Walk don't run `64 (an American top ten hit) and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (an American top forty hit). I would have thought these should have been included, especially as many lesser hits were included, but I'm not going to mark down this compilation because of those omissions. If either or both of them matter to you, by all means mark it down accordingly.

Among the covers, there are inevitably covers of tunes by other instrumental bands and most of them work well although I'm not sure about their version of Telstar; I far prefer the original. Elsewhere, the covers are taken from a diverse range of sources that even includes the occasional country and folk songs, but mostly they are covers of theme tunes and the major pop hits of the time, including five Beatles tunes and two Carpenters hits (three if you count Jambalaya, which was a UK hit but not a UIS hit for them).

This compilation was released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band's formation and demonstrates the versatility of the Ventures. If you enjoy sixties instrumental music, you should enjoy this collection.

It was all that i expected and more. Really enjoy their version of Hawaii 5-0. The Ventures are always unique in their versions of these old songs.

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