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ROD STEWART THE VERY BEST OF RAR HOW TO
He knows how to pick a good song to cover, like his version here of Tom Waits' "Downtown Train," and he had a hit with the song, but it doesn't even come close to carrying the emotional power of Waits' original.
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One wonders if Stewart can really tell the difference anymore. It's the artistic difference between "Maggie Mae" and "Hot Legs." The former feels like a real portrait based on real emotions while the latter feels like a cheap Madison Avenue jingle for women's stockings. Most of what you get is the disco and post-disco Stewart when he was well past his sell-by date, and while his Sam Cooke phrasing and rough as sandpaper voice were still well intact during this middle period, one gets the nagging feeling that he was mostly going through the motions, no matter how many of his recordings hit the pop charts. Oh, "Maggie Mae" is here, as it should be, but the version of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe" that comes at the end of disc two is an inferior late period re-recording.
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The irony of calling this two-disc Rod Stewart collection The Story So Far is that it only tells part of the story, and leaves off the one song, 1971's magnificent "Every Picture Tells a Story" from the album of the same name, that would have given this anthology's title some real credence.