Greatest Hits - Squeeze

In my book, and it's quite a lengthy tome, any band who has nearly as many 'best of' albums as they do studio albums are either not very discerning when it comes to picking songs or are milking it.

Squeeze are dangerously close to the latter. Admittedly they have written some great singles; 'Cool For Cats', 'Hourglass', 'Labelled With Love' and the fantastic 'Tempted'. But fourteen compilation albums? Seriously? Surely one is enough? Like this one.

With such a pop pedigree it was with some expectation that we went to see them in Leeds Town and Country Club in 1995. I was really looking forward to hearing some of those great 45s played live.....but they were, pardon my language, rubbish. Rather than entertaining the crowd with a string of hit singles they proceeded to play each track from their latest album. One-by-painful one with hardly any acknowledgement that there was an audience in front of them. Maybe they'd heard how hard us Northerners were and thought they'd better just get on with it? Maybe they weren't speaking? Or maybe they just couldn't be arsed? Well neither could we. We walked out and went to the pub. A much better alternative in this instant.

So I always approach any band with a penchant for Greatest Hits releases with some caution. Do they really have that much to brag about, are they just plain lazy or is it milking time?