Most Disappointing Cast Recordings — Page 3

I think the Rent cast recording is brilliant. It has such a raw energy to it and its capture of pretty mucg the full show is fantastic.

The Xanadu cast recording is terrible, its flat and has no energy at all

---

Clearly Follies is the obvious choice for my most disappointing cast recording ever.

I also agree with Xanadu, the recording wasnt able to come close to capturing the energy of the stage show. They only used about 40 minutes of the disc and yet couldn't have given us more of the dialogue that would have really helped paint the picture of what the show was.

Marianne2, the CD at the flea market was actually a few tracks from one of the demos, where Annie Golden sings Tracy most of the tracks...Marissa Jaret Winokur is Tracy in the uber-fast You Can't Stop the Beat, though.

I agree with the comments made about Grand Hotel. I long for more David Carroll.

At least Dreamgirls is exquisitely recorded--I know that's not much of an excuse, but... I dunno about Geffen in the early days and their cast albums--I guess Cats is everything any Cats fan could want, but like I said I hate all the added reverb given to Little Shop (I assume to make it sound like an older 60s pop recording? Wall of sound etc? Still it's a bit much) and Dreamgirls--couldn't they have released the poppier one disc edition and then a two disc for fans? It was obviously a big enough hit. (Geffen has a lot to explain to me--he also hired my fave disco diva, Donna Summer, for a then retro amount to his brand new label and then insisted she not do ANYMore dance music which basically started her career on its downhill slide--I think hsi musical instincts when his label started were a mess--by the mid 80s he found success with hard rock acts).

Matt I'm not quite sure what you mean about the Chess OBC sounding like Disney--I don't midn the recording (certainly it sounds like it's the best aspect of the OBC production). Also, because the show was redone with so much dialogue, is there a lot of missing music to it? I do wish we'd gotten a proper london cast album though i suppose I get why they felt there was no point--still people seem to forget nowadays that the London score as played was actually fairly different than the concept recording.

Agreed on Xanadu too--there's so little point to the cast album because they basically recorded it as pop songs and really the original Xanadu soundtrack is the best part of that awful movie--so if you jsut wanna hear the songs sung as pop songs it's better to listen to the soundtrack. If that makes sense.

That, and the robotic line reading. I'll never understand why anyone thought that was a good idea.

The Sweeney Todd revival recording stands out in recent memory. Two discs (divided weirdly) and they didn't even bother putting on "The Wigmaker Sequence/The Letter," "Parlour Songs," or "City on Fire," the latter of which was absolutely intense in the theater. Incredibly disappointing.

---

"HAHA don't expect too much... The remaster is from Angel Braodway around 1992 and they apparently worked hard at trying to fix the mix (it's ADD not AAD like most reissues, if that means anything to you) but there's only so much you can do. At least the CD includes One Last Kiss (but the CD you have might already) which was dropped from the LP but Sondheim practically forced them to record it (it wasn't a fave of album producer Dick Jones)"

Actually, all CDs of Follies were mastered from the album masters - none were remixed, so all they can do is play with the EQ. How they play with the EQ can help, but it takes really good ears, and I'm afraid really good ears weren't around for any of the Follies remasterings. What one doesn't know is if Capitol even has the original session tapes - if they did someone could conceivably go back in and remix and try to help the balance problems (a lot of that, however, depends on how it was miked). For example, for anyone who happened to buy our Illya Darling CD - the two tracks I found that hadn't been on the LP were from the original three-track session tapes - that's three tracks total - luckily it was well-miked and those tracks sound really excellent, as opposed to the rest of the tracks, which were from the album master and were loaded with Mitch Miller's beloved insane reverb. Reverb is our friend as long as it's used correctly and well, but Mitch ladled it on by the pound. But it was not possible to remix the entire album because there were no editing notes about which partial takes went with which pickups and it would have been madness to try and do it. I also don't particularly like messing with the original producer's mix, but in the case of Follies I must admit it sure would be fun to try. But if it was recorded, say, on three or four tracks, there's really not much you could do other than try to smooth it out a little.

Although I really like both the recordings of CAROUSEL that John raitt did, it annyoys me that they didnt put in the reprise of "if i loved you" on either of them, because i always cry in the reprise and feel better when they do "Youll never walk alone" in either the movie or stage.

I was disappointed with the cast recording of The Color Purple. The passion and energy that was in the theater was lost in the recording.

---

Matt I'm not quite sure what you mean about the Chess OBC sounding like Disney

I don't know if it's the mixing or the arrangements or what, but to me, the OBC sounds like Diet Chess. A sort of chemically-sweetened, zero-calorie, reduced fat highlights recording. The sort of recording you'd expect to see as a bargain bin studio recording by the "Broadway Lights Singers and Chorus" for $4.99. Though much music was cut and more dialogue added, it still only represents about two-thirds of the score. I am grateful for Kuhn, Carrol and Someone Else's Story, though.

---

"The Sweeney Todd revival recording stands out in recent memory. Two discs (divided weirdly) and they didn't even bother putting on "The Wigmaker Sequence/The Letter," "Parlour Songs," or "City on Fire," the latter of which was absolutely intense in the theater. Incredibly disappointing."

Although I am disappointed in the recording's incompleteness (and you're right, the lack of the very intense "City on Fire" is a major loss), I find that what is ON the recording to be excellent. And from what I understand, the recording was initially intended to be a highlights CD, but for some reason was expanded but not all the way.

The loss of some numbers from the revival recording is evened out by the fact that SWEENEY has two other major, and very complete recordings (the OBC and the concert), in my opinion. It's not like some other shows, that are incompletely or inadequately represented by only one recording.

---

That London Sunset Blvd is a bit lifeless in general IMHO. Patti isn't as good as I wanted her to be (and apparantly she was live) the other leads come off oddly on CD I think. I don't liek Close's vocals on the American cast album but the CD is in every other way (including score revisions and recording levels) that it's hands down the choice as much as I prefer Patti's Norma,

Actually my fave is the now out of print Canadian cast album with Rex Smith and Diahann Carroll and not just becuase they were in the cast I saw in Van. It's beautifully produced and sung (Diahann is a good mix between the two other ladies), for some reason the orchestra is more than doubled for the recording (i know this is common to cast albums but it wasn't for the previous SB recordings) which doesn't always work but really does here--it's a massive gorgeous sound, and while it's only one disc I think they did a very smart job of leaving in everything you'd really wanna hear when listening to SB most of the time). But I know this isn't a thread for underated cast albums.