The tracks for the Restrospeculative were selected by a long, drawn out and overly complicated system of voting where songs were rated as in, out, or maybe by the core four of the band and Uwe from Firestation Records plus a few other folks whose opinions were combined into a single vote for comparison.
A wild card system saw Happily Mad make the cut despite a split vote and although it wasn’t popular with the record label Mother Knows How, being Jim’s choice, stayed in the game.
Similarly Jim wanted to leave off The Greatest Gift as he felt it wasn’t his best performance but as a Firestation favourite it was selected. Indeed at one point it was due to be the first track but given it’s history as invariably the second song in any live set that’s where it ended up on the CD.
Ben made the case for a much shorter compilation to maintain the quality but we’d probably still be arguing over what to include if that route had been pursued.