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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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loved it
Different Cat work; Never the less, it is greatto play it and relax to it.
Rating: 
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The U.S. Release of Harold & Maude Motion Picture Soundtrack
FINALLY, fans of the film Harold and Maude can have all the songs!
The actual original soundtrack recording from the film was only released
in Japan (go figure) and do you think we can get a copy of it here in the
U.S.????
Harold and Maude fans, Cat Stevens fans, this is as good as it gets for
us in the U.S. A Harold and Maude Soundtrack w/ a few extra tracks thrown
in for good measure. Wigwam was released in the U.S. as a single at the
time the CD was released...they'd have been better off and more successful
releasing one of the lesser known tracks from Harold and Maude.
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Like rediscovering an old friend
Envision, for a second, if you will, finding your high school yearbook somewhere completely unexpected. You open it up, assuming you'll find the old familiar faces, only to discover the black & whites are now full color audio and video. The sounds are so fresh, each note is so clear, each syllable so precise, you begin to wonder whether you'd ever heard these songs to their fullest extent.
I know no selection will ever be complete. That's inevitable, natural, and expectable: that's precisely why they're called selections. But each of the tracks -from "Katmandu" to "Daytime", even the self-deprecating "(I never wanted) To be a star", and the classic "Father and Son"- shares a renewed vitality, an unexpected spark, an intimacy that makes you wonder what it was you'd been listening to all these years.
For the absolutist and obsesive collector (i.e. those who've got to have ALL the recording and versions of their favorite artists), "Footsteps" may be a little overkill.
But for the rest of us, who enjoy a good afternoon with Cat -and that have earned out way to a more than decent sound equipment not to be shared or touched by anybody else- this is an album worth re-purchasing, if only for the joy of hearing Cat Stevens they way it was meant to be heard.
And I can assure you, without a doubt, that you'll be singing along, at the top of your lungs, before you even realize it. If that's not what a reissue is for, then I've been buying them under the wrong pretences.
Rating: 
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Disappointing song selection
With such a wealth of excellent material to draw from, Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits Volume 2 could have been tremendous. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Not only is nearly every song slow, making the album drag terribly, but they picked some real clunkers ("I Want to Live in a Wigwam", "Daytime", "Don't be Shy"). Where are "Tuesday's Dead", "Longer Boats", "(Remember the Days of) The Old Schoolyard", "Later", and "Changes"? Some of these uptempo songs would have been much better choices than the previously-mentioned dirges. While I'm complaining, why in the world did they repeat a song ("Father and Son") from GH1? The best thing that I can say about this collection is that they reached back to include material from the frequently-overlooked "Mona Bone Jakon" album. Unless you're looking for relief from chronic insomnia, save your money on this set, and either hope that they release a GH3 containing some of Cat Stevens' better material, or pick up "Teaser and the Firecat" or "Tea for the Tillerman".
Rating: -
The better of the two volumes.
Volume 1 definetly has its share of memorable tracks like "Moonshadow" and "Oh Very Young" to boast about, but this disc includes songs from the motion picture "Harold and Maude" as well as other tunes like "The Wind" that made its way onto the Rushmore soundtrack a number of years back.
The reason to make this album your preferred choice is that it does not shimmer with the same pop varnishings that Steven's better known hits are remembered for. Rather here you have a more idiosyncratic and personal set of songs that capture a mood that only Cat Steven's seemed to have written about. Lyrics such as "if you want to sing out/ sing out/ if you want to be free/ be free/ because there's a million things to be/ you know that there are" could be mistaken for a Peter, Paul and Mary song. . . but that voice! Who sings like Cat Stevens? Whose tunes have that same baroque/pop/revivalist amplifier reaching out to you and making even the most upbeat, danceable song remain private, even intensely personal?
These songs are for the more devoted fans, the listeners attracted to songs like "Morning Is Broken," (Steven's adaptation of a traditional Koranic tale), as opposed to a top-forty selection.
Five stars. Unique
