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Weir Here: The Best Of Bob Weir Review... I don't feel like this collection has enough Bob Weir! Oh sure, every song on here is great and Bob sings all of them. That's not in doubt. It just seems like the label defeats its own purpose of trying to spotlight Bob Weir the individual by putting on too many Grateful Dead performances, which dominate disc two of this collection. Weir's lived in Jerry Garcia's large shadow his entire adult life, and in some ways he still is with Weir Here.
By my count, Weir's released seven albums on his own outside of the GD. His excellent solo debut, Ace (which was really a GD album with all Weir songs), is well represented on Weir Here. So well represented that buying Ace is almost redundant now. That leaves six more albums, most of which are underserved and two of which -- the outstanding Weir & Wasserman Live and the less than stellar Where the Beat Meets the Street -- are completely ignored. Admittedly, there's not much to recommend from "Beat," but that's the beauty of compilations. Find one or two gems from what's otherwise a dud and rescue them from obscurity. Maybe that album is best left forgotten, but it doesn't explain the exclusion of either the Weir/Wasserman album, or the fine songs "Heaven Help the Fool," "Bombs Away," "Festival," and "Josephine," all of which have become Weir standards. "Book of Rules" is another really cool song that probably deserved consideration.
Then there's Weir's most recent effort (with current band Ratdog), the triumphant Evening Moods. It might be Bobby's best non-GD release, and it's also the best Dead or Dead-related studio album in ages. Why only two Evening Moods songs on Weir Here? You don't want to kill sales of that recent album, but at the very least "Bury Me Standing" and either "Odessa" or "Corrina" should've made the cut. I suppose you can't have a Best of Bob by not including songs like "Truckin'," "Sugar Mag," "Throwing Stones," etc. Still, why give us a bunch of live GD performances, several of which were the very same versions previously released on live GD albums? This might've been a great opportunity to add live Ratdog, Kingfish or Bobby & The Midnites instead!
The best reason to get Weir Here is that there are a handful of sweet rarities included. "Easy Answers" from Rob Wasserman's Trios album (which also has Neil Young on guitar) is on here, but "Eternity" (featuring Weir, Wasserman and the late Willie Dixon)sadly is not. You also get a song from a children's album ("Wabash Cannonball") and a blistering cover of Dylan's "Masters of War," which Ratdog quickly recorded out of anger over the misguided invasion of Iraq. It's all great, but again there's stuff missing. Studio recordings of "Fever," "Take Me to the River," and "Knocking on Heaven's Door" (all cover songs that have become Weir concert favorites) are out there and in need of reissue. How about "She Said," an original song that Ratdog's been playing for years but didn't include on Evening Moods?
Still, this is a great collection of songs. I'm only knocking it down to four stars because of the omissions I would've preferred to see included, and because I don't feel like all those Dead songs flow terribly well in the way they're presented here, with earlier and later recordings mixed together. Since many of them are previously released, you can get 'em elsewhere. Weir Here does, however, mark the first official release of "Man Smart, Woman Smarter". I guess that's a plus. I read an interview where Bobby said there will be a Weir Here Vol. II. That's great, but wouldn't it have made more sense to make Vol. I a more complete collection of Weir outside of the GD? I think so. If you're a Weir newbie, however, this isn't such a bad place to start. Bob Weir is a seriously underrated composer and guitarist, and this honor is long overdue.
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