Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com
Charles Mackerras is one of the most purely musical and versatile conductors around. In fact, he's never made a bad record, and this Nutcracker is outstanding… He brings superb drama to the action sequences: the battle with the Mouse King, bustling Christmas scenes at the opening, and the "transformation" of the Christmas tree. In the second act (which is where most of the famous Suite comes from), each of the dances is sharply characterized. In short, a great performance. –David Hurwitz
It took Columbia Records two years after signing Paul Revere & the Raiders to release this label-debut LP. In the interim, the group had released a string of singles that were only regional successes in the Northwest. Producer Bob Johnston had taken them into the studio to try to recreate their dynamic live show before an invited audience, but Columbia sat on the results until the group's coming residency on ABC-TV's Where the Action Is prompted this release. The first side of the album displays the Raiders as the raucous club band they were, grinding through R&B dance tunes like "You Can't Sit Down" and "Oo Poo Pah Doo." The second side previews their evolution into more of a pop group in the mid-'60s, although with songs like "Fever," it still retains something of their early R&B flavor.
Since (at least) the Greeks, humorists, moralists and satirists have been fascinated by the artistic game of inversion, of “the world turned upside down”, which is how one might translate the title of this largely forgotten opera by Salieri. It here gets its first ever recording. Present an image of society turned on its head and you enable your audience/reader/viewer to see the actual way of things in a whole new light. Your aims may be to expose the follies and errors of the actual, to propose a better way of doing things, or simply to get some laughs from the resulting improbabilities and surprises - or, of course, a mixture of all these motives and more.
The Babys generated extensive hype upon formation in 1976 as one of mainstream pop/rock's brightest hopes for the future. While competent, their music never broke away from its Raspberries-meets-AOR style and developed its own distinctive sound…