Gary Glitter - Ultimate Gary Glitter (CD)

All Music Guide

Amid the wealth of Gary Glitter compilations to have hit the shelves since the mid1970s, few truly do the job of telling his story in all its garish glory. This set, however, comes close, as two CDs not only round up every significant UK hit he enjoyed, together with a clutch of crucial album cuts and bsides, but also dips into the Glitter Band's own canon, to remind us of what they got up to while the Leader wasn't looking.

Neither is the disc confined exclusively to Glitter]"s purple period, as the presence of "Rock Hard Men" confirms. There's also a rare airing for the "All That Glitters" medley, an early 1980s attempt to leap aboard the Stars On 45 style bandwagon, and an excellent one at that. But still great swathes of Glitter's catalog remain uninvestigated, both here and in the marketplace in general a situation that, thanks to his welldocumented brushes with the law, remains sadly unlikely to change.

- Dave Thompson, All Music Guide