Dead! The Grim Reaper's Greatest Hits CD

Not to be confused with a best-of celebrating the career of Grim Reaper, the famously fugly hair metal band so memorably eviscerated by Beavis and Butthead, Dead! The Grim Reaper's Greatest Hits instead compiles 24 early rock & roll classics exploring/exploiting death. Cataloging biker tragedies (Twinkle's "Terry"), pill-popper overdoses (Walter Jackson's "The Bed"), and watery graves (the Rivaires' "Death of a Surfer"), the disc embraces mortality and music in all its forms, spanning from girl group pop to trucker country and proving as indiscriminate as death itself. Sometimes sappy (Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel"), sometimes electrifying (Jack Kittel's "Psycho"), and sometimes eerily portentous (Jan & Dean's "Dead Man's Curve"), Dead! is above all well executed (pun intended), boasting the encyclopedic scope and attention to detail for which Ace is famed. L'chaim! ~ Jason Ankeny

Dead!, a compilation that would speak for itself if only it could! This collection brings the fan who likes their black humor on the lighter side, the first of a planned 2-volume set of Death Discs from the classic era of the late '50s through to the end of the '60s. Included are huge pop hits like 'Terry' by Twinkle and 'Give Us Your Blessings' by the Shangri-Las, both of which straddle the Death Disc and Girl Group sounds. The Joe Meek production 'Johnny Remember Me' shares digital space with 'Tell Laura I Love Her'. The hit-makers on this set also include the Everly Brothers, Jan & Dean and Bob Luman to name a few. Ace. 2006.Uncut (pp.128-129) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]hree-minute vignettes with liberal doses of melodrama, romanticism or warped humour."