Someone gave me an amazing early birthday present on Sunday: two CD-Rs, onto which he’d burned a total of 23 cast albums from his collection that he thought I’d like or in which I’d expressed interest. They are:
The Baker’s Wife
Bat Boy
Candide
Carrie (a bootleg)
Chess
Do I Hear a Waltz?
Dreamgirls
Floyd Collins
The Golden Apple
Grand Hotel
The Grass Harp
Hello Again
In Trousers
The Last Five Years
Merrily We Roll Along
The Most Happy Fella (1992)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Nick & Nora
Pacific Overtures
Passion
She Loves Me
Violet
The Wild Party (Lippa version)
Plus three miscellaneous songs.
I’m in clover. Not only does this almost double the number of cast albums I have, but now I’ve got hours and hours of listening pleasure ahead of me. Part of me just wants to listen to everything as soon as I can; the other part of me wants to take my sweet time and listen to the albums little by little over the next couple of months.
At any rate, it’s one of the best presents an aspiring theater queen could ask for. Thank you again, Matt!
I wonder if there’s a group noun for cast albums. A chorus of cast albums? A gershwin of cast albums? A garland of cast albums? A cacophony of cast albums? A blare of cast albums? A sibilance of cast albums?
Any other ideas?
It is properly referred to as “a gaiety of cast albums”.
You picked up on THE WILD PARTY being the Lippa version and THE MOST HAPPY FELLA being the 1992 two-piano version, but here is some additional info about the others:
CANDIDE: the 1999 Royal National Theatre version. Features the best blend of the theatre and opera house versions of the score.
DO I HEAR A WALTZ?: The Pasadena Playhouse version (because I don’t have the OBC on CD), which features the original superior lyrics to WE’RE GONNA BE ALRIGHT.
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD: combines the tracks from the Polydor and Varese Sarabande releases (incl. all recorded endings). If I had thought of it, I would have included A BRITISH SUBJECT from the Australian Cast Recording, which is what we heard when we saw DROOD in Brooklyn a few months ago.
Otherwise, all other recordings are the Original Broadway or Off-Broadway Cast recordings.
Speaking of cast recordings, I went to go pick up WICKED which was released today, and J&R was completely sold out.
Well, when the collection hits the thousands, it obviously becomes a “cast” of cast albums.
Ohmigod, the wicked cast album is FANTASTIQUE!!!
I’m in the UK and I got it today, thanks to some super-speedy amazon.com delivery fluke. It’s on right now.
Go see my site for more writings about it.
As for the soundtracks gift, it’s truly a fantastic gift. Unfortuantely, none of my friends are as into Musical Theatre as me so I’d never get a gift like that. Poo.
We have done 5 of the musicals on your list up here( The Shaw Festival) in the past few years. This year we are doing 2 musicals, Floyd Collins and Pal Joey.I am predicting Floyd will sell well and tickets will be hard to come by as were doing it on the smallest of our 3 stages and it has a short run Aug.3 to Oct.9….Bill