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Throbbing Gristle, "Greatest Hits"
As much as I love Throbbing Gristle, I've long viewed them as a Marcel Duchamp-like entity: bold, brilliant, and hugely influential, but dramatically less potent outside of their original context and in the wake of everyone who later built upon their vision. After a deep re-immersion in their work, however, I can honestly say that several pieces still sound remarkably vital even today and that this album remains a condensed and inspiring blueprint for being awesome (albeit an imperfect one).
I generally view "greatest hits" albums with apathy (bordering on hostility) whenever "serious" music is concerned, no matter how much irony is involved.  In this case, I was always perplexed by the need to assemble a "best of" retrospective from essentially just two albums (D.O.A. And 20 Jazz Funk Greats) that stand on their own as complete artistic statements and don't need to be culled for their high points.  Also, the aforementioned high points here are somewhat dubious, incomplete, and lean disproportionally heavily towards 20 Jazz Funk Greats: Second Annual Report is only represented by a backwards version of "Slug Bait," which I don't mind terribly much, but D.O.A. is woefully underrepresented (which I do actually mind).  Also, I can't understand how a Throbbing Gristle retrospective can possibly fail to include answering machine recordings of death threats.
Despite all that, I still find this album charming, mostly owing to the exotica-themed art (particularly the picture of the band wearing aloha shirts and grinning) and Claude "Kickboy Face" Bessy's rambling and over-exuberant stream-of-consciousness liner notes.  Also, it admittedly provides a broad-stroke overview of a remarkably varied and innovative career: pre-Sonic Youth guitar noise ("Six Six Sixties," one of my favorites), proto-power electronics ("Subhuman"), twinkling proto-synth pop ("Ab/7a"), queasy faux-dub ("20 Jazz Funk Greats"), proto-techno ("Adrenalin"), and blunt, unapologetic ugliness ("Hamburger Lady").  It is "Hamburger Lady" that might be the single most important piece on the album for me, as it is so beautifully sick, uncomfortable, and self-sabotaging.  I can't think of any other songs that so brazenly make it clear that a band does not care at all whether or not anyone likes them–I still smile every time I hear it.
As this is part of TG's deluxe reissue series, there are some features that differentiate this version from its previous incarnations and make it something of a noteworthy event.  In theory, the big one is that Chris Carter has painstakingly remastered everything.  He did a fine job, of course–the album sounds vibrant and crisp.  However, that only truly matters on the synth-based pop excursions.  It is hard to imagine anybody being especially concerned about the fidelity of grinding, primitivist sludge like "Subhuman" or the dumb, murky rock of "Zyklon B Zombie."
For me, the big surprise was that the CD version contains essentially another full disc of "great hits" and rarities.  There are a couple of alternate mixes that haven't been released before for obsessive fans ("The Old Man Smiled" and "Ab/7a"), but they aren't wildly different from the originals or particularly revelatory in any way.  Still, "The Old Man Smiled" definitely belongs on any Throbbing Gristle retrospective (even if it is basically an alternate version of "Six Six Sixties"), so an injustice has been righted as far as I am concerned.  More important to me is that fact that it compiles a handful of non-album songs from Throbbing Gristle's singles, so Greatest Hits now includes all of them except "Something Came Over Me."  That is obviously quite nice from a convenience and completeness perspective, but one of those stragglers is actually one of my favorite TG songs of all time, the darkly shimmering synth pop of "Distant Dreams (Part Two)."
Also, I was extremely pleased that the one regular album song added to this reissue is "Persuasion," which highlights an aspect of the band that I had forgotten about: Genesis P-Orridge may seem like an affable eccentric now, but he could be an extremely magnetic and unnerving presence in his younger years (particularly when he was at his most deadpan).  It was very easy to understand why Throbbing Gristle were deemed "Wreckers of Civilization" after hearing him lecherously expound on panties.  Being shocking and provocative is always far more effective when it is done in a bored-sounding and casual manner–it seems ingrained and sincere rather than an attention-getting affectation.
There are, of course, several songs that have not aged especially well here.  Also, a lot of the more pop-based themes were later greatly improved upon by Chris and Cosey. And, of course, Peter Christopherson went on to do similarly aberrant, but far more sophisticated work with Coil: this album merely summarizes one early phase in the lives of four individuals that continued to evolve and release compelling work for another three decades.  Nevertheless, Throbbing Gristle achieved an utterly unique chemistry during their best moments that is still apparent today and many of those moments are here: a song like "What A Day" is so viscerally simple in its bludgeoning repetition and directness that it is difficult to envision it ever sounding passé.  This may not be a perfect retrospective (nothing about TG was ever perfect), but it is definitely a very good one and it has never looked or sounded better.
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