Steve Miller Band: Young Hearts: Complete Greatest Hits

By GRAHAM REID

In the 80s it was fashionable to slag off 70s rock. Well who's laughing now, huh?

The big hair and chintzy-synth 80s sound pretty fey and vapid now and, thanks to movies like Dazed and Confused, and Led Zeppelin's recent live compilation, the 70s no longer suck.

Steve Miller is long overdue a reappraisal and anyone over 35 will be astonished by how many of these 22 snappy tracks are familiar: Take the Money and Run, the white funk-lite of Rockin' Me and Swingtown, The Joker, Space Cowboy, the trippy Fly Like an Eagle.

This is 70s AOR rock at its most crisp with Miller's memorably steely and distinctive guitar work scattered throughout.

And those odd signatures like "whoo-whoo" choruses and the wolf whistle in The Joker. You don't get covered by Seal, Run DMC, Smashing Pumpkins and kd lang, or have McCartney in'69 singing and playing on a track, if you ain't one of the best — and here's the evidence Steve was.

Label: EMI