The Very Best of the Doobie Brothers in Bloomington, MN

There have been plenty of single-disc
Doobie Brothers
collections released over the years. There have been two-part vinyl
Best of the Doobies
, there have been budget-line collections, and there have been OK overviews as well as excellent generous discs with all the big hits. There's even been a comprehensive four-disc box, but what there hasn't been is a double-disc set -- something that falls between the conciseness of 2001's terrific
Greatest Hits
(the first CD to contain all the big hits on one CD) and 1999's four-disc
Long Train Runnin' 1970-2000
. That's what 2007's
The Very Best of the Doobie Brothers
is, a double-disc helping of
the Doobies
' biggest songs from
"Listen to the Music"
to
"The Doctor."
Actually, this
Very Best
stretches a little further than
"The Doctor,"
which arrives five songs from the end, illustrating the point that for the average listener, this may be just a little too generous at 33 tracks. That's a long running time, providing room for all the hits plus a bunch of album tracks that weren't necessarily on
album rock
radio, so this may be too much for listeners who just want the hits; they should stick to that 2001
. But for fans who want a lot of
' best without investing in either the original albums or the box, this
is welcome. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine