Michael Monroe Releasing Career Spanning Collection The Best On June 30th

Michael Monroe is releasing an official career-spanning collection of his solo musical career called The Best, out June 30, 2017 via Spinefarm. This 29 track, 2 CD collection features prime tracks from 1987 until 2017, covering his 30 year solo career along with bonus cuts and unreleased songs.

“This album is a great representation of my 30-year solo career, including four songs from the Little Steven-produced Demolition 23 album, which has been unavailable for over 20 years, plus some special rarities and previously unreleased bonus tracks.”

Icon, song-writer, multi-instrumentalist, media personality, flamboyant force of nature, and one of rock’s most celebrated and uber-kinetic frontmen, Michael has been a name and a (much-photographed) face on the scene since 1979, when he played a central role in the formation of Hanoi Rocks – the legendary Finnish glam-punk heroes who came within a rolling paper’s width of taking the world by glitter-storm.

The frontman has shared stages and studios with them all, but since that first break-up of Hanoi in the mid-’80s, he’s essentially been pursuing his own path, and it’s this solo activity that forms the basis of The Best. It’s almost two hours’ worth of career-spanning music, re-mastered by Svante Forsback and sequenced by the great man himself.

As well as key, high-profile numbers such as “Dead, Jail Or Rock ‘N’ Roll” (from second solo album, 1989’s Not Fakin’ It, the promo clip for which features an onstage cameo from Axl Rose) and “’78” (from 2011’s Sensory Overdrive), this two-CD set also showcases some “from the vaults” moments for collectors and completists, with bonus tracks and previously unreleased songs strategically placed to make the journey both scenic and surprising.

“There’s a couple of extra special tracks like ‘It’s A Lie,’ sung as a duet with Stiv Bators (Dead Boys, Lords Of The New Church) back in 1985, and a never-before-released second version of the Steppenwolf cover ‘Magic Carpet Ride,’ featuring Slash, left over from the Coneheads soundtrack project that Slash did with me in 1993. And since Slash has the biggest heart of gold in rock ‘n’ roll, he was kind enough to allow me to use it on this album. God bless him!,” said Monroe.

Two other previously unreleased songs are “Fist Fulla Dynamite” and “Simpletown,” outtakes from the Blackout States album (2015); plus there’s the new single “One Foot Outta The Grave” – an anthem of pure defiance – to bring things nicely up to date, showing the artist’s continued commitment to a genre.