I promise there will be more than one today...

so I didn't get any more records done last night. i conked out. i think my allergies are beating me down the last few days. yeah, that's it. anyhoo here goes.

An Evening at the Cafe Feenjon - The Feenjon Group: I'll just quote from the record jacket:

The Feenjon Group can be heard nightly at the Cafe Feenjon, located on Macdougal Street in New York's Greenwich Village. From the very beginning, the Feenjon has been a mecca for lovers of Israeli, Greek, Arabic, Turkis and Armenian song and dance.

doing some poking around online I found out that the cafe eventually became a comedy club. and you can hear some clips of this album here.

A Night with Jerome Kern - Earl Wrightson, Lois Hunt with Percy Faith and his orchestra: just an album of nice "legit" musical theater. ;D apparently Wrightson and Hunt performed together for years doing similar programs of musical theater. I found this nice article about Ms. Hunt. I suspected she had a classical background and I was right, she performed with the Met for several years. anyway, I'm always a bit amused by a white guy singing Ol' Man River.


Let It Be - The Beatles: The anthology version of I dig a Pony comes up on the shuffle all the time. I never knew that's what they were saying till now. huh.

Backbeat Symphony - 101 Strings: ah, the more things change....

This is the majesty of the symphony - with a beat. The melodies are among the greatest ever written. the tempos, the beat - pure rock and roll in a setting of the most beautiful tunes ever written and played by one of the world's leading orchestras - "101 Strings."

Perhaps this program will raise eyebrows and be declared as the wrong treatment ot these immortal classics. However, for the older listener who does not approve and considers this a desecration of classical works, we offer the following reasoning that lead to the production of this album:

As a group, the teen-ager has the highest musical appetite in the world today. And too often this appetite for music (predominated by rhythmic, danceable tunes) must be satisfied with badly written songs with borderline obscene lyrics. For teen-age audiences the beat is here. The longhair and parent alike should accept this fact. It is not wrong. It is wrong only when satisfied by material of inferior content. If the teen-ager is to develop musical tastes along with other maturities it can be readily appreciated that an exposure to good music in some form is a prerequisite to this development. It is the opinion of musically honest people that anything done well for what it is, is good providing it fills the need of natural expression. An after all, the majority of our greatest composers were considered very "far out" in their day, when they conceived the lovely melodies in this album.

yes, nothing like Caro Nome given a triplet beat and retitled as Rigoletto Rock. oh, I have to give you the rest of the titles, they're just too precious: Swingin at Igors, Choppin' Chopin, Rigoletto Rock, Swingin' Little Martha, Twangy Serenade, Back Beat Symphony, New World Rock, Rome and Juliet, Sherabop and Strings at the Hop.

Diamonds are Forever - Soundtrack: um, is it just me or did they just recycle a lot of stuff from other movies for this one? they gave them different titles, but I recognized them. and the "James Bond Theme" isn't on here. leave it to reveiwers on Amazon to explain a few things... the fact that the cd has twice as many tracks as the LP kinda explains it.

Bing Crosby - A Legendary Performer: kinda interesting the first side kicks off with a jaunty rendition of Ol' Man River from 1928 and has some other recordings through 1931 and then the second side recordings are from 1957 so we hear a much richer sounding Bing. so can anyone explain to me the, um, attraction of Just a Gigolo? I don't get that song.