Five Guys Walk into a Bar... is a four-disc retrospective of the British rock group Faces released in 2004, collecting sixty-seven tracks from among the group's four studio albums, assorted single A- and B-sides, BBC sessions, rehearsal tapes and one track from a promotional flexi-disc, "Dishevelment Blues," which was never actually intended for release.
Eight of ten tracks from 1973's Ooh La La appear, as do eight of nine from 1971's A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...To a Blind Horse, five of nine from 1971's Long Player (with an additional two in alternate versions) and three of ten from 1970's First Step (Small Faces) (with one extra track appearing in a- and/or B-side that had never appeared before on compact disc appeared on the set, such as the single version of their take on Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" and the dobro-driven B-side "Skewiff (Mend the Fuse)."
Many tracks from BBC sessions appear throughout, including takes on Rod Stewart's own "Maggie May" and "Gasoline Alley," the latter as part of a medley including Faces' own "Around the Plynth." From rehearsal tapes come Faces' earliest recordings from the summer of 1969, including covers of Big Bill Broonzy's "I Feel So Good" (featuring Stewart on guitar) and Howlin' Wolf's "Evil."
The set was compiled by the group's keyboardist, Ian McLagan, who had previously compiled 1999's Good Boys... When They're Asleep.
Five Guys Walk into a Bar... has received a largely positive response from critics since its release. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic praised the box set as the best of its type: "There has never been a better box set than the Faces' Five Guys Walk into a Bar.... There has never been a box that captures an artist so perfectly, nor has a box set taken greater advantage of unreleased and rare material, to the point where it seems as essential and vital as the released recordings."
Read more about Five Guys Walk Into A Bar...: Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words guys, walk and/or bar:
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The figures of the past go cloaked.
They walk in mist and rain and snow
And go, go slowly, but they go.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege, gives forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music. But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful sweep of the notes.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)