Greentrax Recordings

Eric Bogle - Singing The Spirit Home (5CD boxed set)

CDTRAX4001B (released June 2005)

category: singers and songwriters

This 5 CD boxed set includes sixty songs written and recorded by the Scottish-Australian singer and songwriter Eric Bogle.

Eric has chosen the songs from his recorded output spanning the period from 1980, when he released Now I'm Easy, to 1997 and the release of Small Miracles.

All of Eric's 'big' songs are included in this collection. Tracks have been taken from the following albums, most of which have been deleted and are no longer available:
Now I'm Easy * Small Miracles * Plain and Simple * Hard, Hard Times * Just The Funny Stuff * Scraps Of Paper * When The Wind Blows * Voices In The Wilderness * Something Of Value * Singing The Spirit Home * I Wrote This Wee Song * Mirrors * The Emigrant and The Exile.

'Boxed sets of Greatest Hits usually appear after the songwriter in question is safely dead, but I'm in reasonable health and I need the cash now. Anyway, this isn't really a Greatest Hits compilation, it's more a collection of the songs that are most requested at my live concerts, plus a few of my personal favourites. Taken together they form a pretty fair cross-section of the type of songs I have written over the last 30 years or so.' (Eric Bogle)

'Most of the best contemporary songs of the 70's were written by Eric Bogle' (Melody Maker)

'A somewhat wide-ranging collection * if any one word could sum it up, it is probably 'iconoclastic'... An extraordinary ability to get into the mind of ex-servicemen, both those remembering comrades they left behind, and those wondering why they went. In Oz this means the Anzacs and Gallipoli, of course... Eric is also spot-on when he marks sadness and poignancy, with songs about children with cerebral palsy and worse, and break-ups of marriage... A fascinating collection, much enhanced by Eric's ability to deliver a song exactly as it should sound.' (Scots Magazine)