It’s impossible to imagine the Seventies without War. The band was one of the decade’s best selling groups, and “The Cisco Kid,” “Low Rider,” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends” have since become the musical equivalent of the era’s iconic yellow smiley face. War’s greatest asset, commercially and artistically, was their ability to cross genre lines and unite fans of different musical styles. A War concert in 1975 would bring together flower power hippies, Chicano lowriders, Afro soul brothers, and a fair number of radio listeners who had fallen in love with one of the band’s many catchy hits. The Very Best of War is a tour through the band’s catalogue, from their earliest days with Eric Burdon to their 1982 disco triumph “You Got the Power.” While purists might complain that several tracks appear here in edited single versions, War benefits from the trimming. Always a jam band at heart, the band’s epic workouts “City, Country, City” and “Four Cornered Room” are very powerful in the more digestible forms offered here. The passion the band’s eight core musicians showed for playing with each other is the thread that ties these 34 tracks together.