Rory Gallagher: The Best of Rory Gallagher At The BBC

The Best of Rory Gallagher at the BBC is actually a distillation of a 20-disc box, compact disc 15 of which is the second half of this compilation. And, like its larger counterpart, it serves as not only a retrospective on Gallagher's career as a whole (not just at the Beeb), but also reaffirmation of the guitarist's often breathless stage presence.

Nephew Daniel Gallagher has now assumed the role of producer from his uncle Donal and his supervision of this exhumation from the vault has resulted in two sequences of tracks that replicate the flow of a Rory Gallagher concert right down to the inclusion of acoustic pieces.

"Bankers Blues" and "Can't Be Satisfied" are positioned roughly in the center of the first 11 cuts. Meanwhile, on disc two, "Out On the Western Plain" and the late lamented Tony Joe White's "As The Crow Flies" (abandoned bottleneck and all) serve the same purpose for pacing. 

Two of Gallagher's most frenetic rockers, "Walk On Hot Coals" and "Messin' With The Kid," close the first hour and their corollaries,"Hellcat" and "Cruise On Out," are similarly positioned to further enhance the dynamic flow of the show. As on "Follow Me," Gallagher often takes torrid guitar solos throughout these intervals, but invariably plays with as much purpose as a sense of discipline.

While all these recordings have been remastered at Abbey Road Studios by Frank Arkwright, the resounding clarity and near booming depth most obviously benefits the second half of The Best of Rory Gallagher at the BBC. In front of an audience almost as raucous as the performers themselves, Gallagher and his band hit the ground running with "Shin Kicker" and proceed at an almost unrelenting pace for the duration. 

As the high-velocity of "Wayward Child" gives way to "Mississippi Sheiks" in all its glorious grit, it is difficult, if not impossible, to discern who is playing harder, Gallagher, bassist Gerry McAvoy or heavy drummer extraordinaire Ted McKenna.

Spanning the years from '71 to '84, 10 of the first 11 selections are designated as previously released on the back cover of this handsomely-designed triple-fold housing. Yet there is no overlap of songs between these two discs (nor any repeats from the two virtually identical BBC Sessions issued in 1999).

Action photos, both color and black-and-white, appear under the clear CD trays as an adjunct to a comparable array in the enclosed booklet. Within those 12 pages, too, lies an essay by Colin Harper that, equal parts information and insight, is thankfully bereft of the fanboy hyperbole that suffuses too many such pieces of writing. And that matter-of-fact tone is also right in keeping with the intense but nonetheless sober adulation afforded Gallagher and his work in the wake of his tragic passing in 1995. 

While this release, in its varied configurations, maintains and enhances Gallagher's legacy, it might also have led to the egregious omission of anniversary box sets devoted to the third and fourth albums in the man's solo discography: expanded versions of Blueprint (Polydor, 1973) and Tattoo (Polydor, 1973) may well have suffered because much of the otherwise useful content resides in these BBC editions.

Of course, it is also possible that, in the wake of prior collations based on the eponymous debut and Deuce (Polydor, 1973), audio and video documents of appearances at Montreux, the expanded version of Irish Tour '74 (Legacy Recordings, 2014), as well as Notes From San Francisco (UME, 2011), have saturated the marketplace and thus lessened the commercial prospects for such curations.

Known for his refusal to allow his record labels to release singles from his albums and otherwise kowtow to company brass, Gallagher was staunch in his opinion that playing his music was its best promotion and The Best of Rory Gallagher at the BBC is proof positive of the validity of the iconoclastic musician's stance.