A somewhat unnecessary greatest-hits for the Seventies power-pop band the three albums big star recorded during its poor-selling four-year run in the Seventies combined Beatles-style pop clarity with lovelorn fragility and a rhythmic propulsiveness derived from the R&B they heard growing up in Memphis. Radio City and #1 Record brim over with punchy songs that served as the blueprint for almost every power-pop band to follow, and the much darker Third/Sister Lovers is a depressive masterpiece. This compilation collects winners from all three albums, along with live cuts and a couple of tracks from solo records by co-founders Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. The uninitiated would do well to start with this solid sampler, though they'd do even better to pick up a copy of the 1992 reissue of Radio City and #1 Record, which collects both albums on a single disc and has long been one of the CD era's greatest bargains.

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.