Ultimate L.A. Guns is essentially a re-re-hash of the songs that made the band briefly famous in the days of Aqua Net and leather. In 1999, Cleopatra issued
Greatest Hits & Black Beauties, which featured re-recordings of the band's songs by a latter-day incarnation of the group. While the collection included a few remixes and rarities to entice the collector, nowhere did the packaging let on that the set was actually made up of re-recordings. This 2003 release from Cleopatra attempts to pull the same trick. While it does include seven live tracks with decent sound, the majority of
Ultimate L.A. Guns is made up of the same re-recordings that appeared on the 1999 release. Again, there's no mention of this on the exterior packaging. For the consumer or completist, the only real
L.A. Guns best-of out there is the 1998 import The Best of L.A. Guns: Hollywood a Go Go. ~ Johnny Loftus