I agree about Du having some serious duff tracks–no doubt due to the fact that they were working like crazy between 1984 and 1987–but I’ve always really felt that they came up with an astonishing number of catchy hardcore punk songs on that album, all the more remarkable because I don’t think “hardcore punk” and “catchy” go together very well. But really, aside from maybe “Pride” and “The Biggest Lie,” I wouldn’t cut any of them.

I wouldn’t mind CAG as an entry point–“Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely” is allegedly their most widely-heard song–but I disagree about the piano ballad–as far as big obvious angsty heartache songs I actually think “No Promise That I Made” is one of their very best songs! Oh well, can’t win them all. I never bought that album on CD, for whatever reason, which is irrelevant now that I only pick up maybe four CDs a year, tops.

Flip Your Wig has some weak stuff, particularly in the second half, but I feel it was generally more good than bad. At the very least, I listen to “Flip Your Wig,” “Private Plane,” “Find Me,” “Games,” “Green Eyes” and “Makes No Sense At All” every year. I think it’s a big improvement over New Day Rising which seems to feature more than half its songs in the same key and ends on four absolutely terrible tracks in a row.