CD Update

So you all know about my travails getting the Rebecca CD. It was worth all the trouble, but it's not the only CD I've gotten lately. A couple weeks ago I got Tarzan from the library and copied that. It looks like I saw the complete original cast, so I'm thrilled to have a record of all their performances, particularly Josh. I also bought the new revivial cast recording of A Chorus Line and the recording of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party (which, as much as I love Mandy Patinikin and Toni Collette, is far superior to LaChiusa's Wild Party). Then this morning I got an email from BMG informing me that Angela Lansbury's Legends of Broadway CD is now available, so I ordered that (for free using my music points). I checked for the rest of the series, and they do have Chita Rivera (which I'll be ordering soon, I still have a lot of music points) and Barbara Cook (I've never been a big fan of her's, but I'll probably pick hers up as a free or discounted CD as part of a larger order), but oddly, not Bernadette's, which is probably the one I want second most after Angela's. The CD's are a great concept and the four ladies are a great way to kick off what will hopefully be an ongoing series. I'd like to suggest some more Broadway legends for the producers of the series to consider:

Patti LuPone
Carol Channing
Ethel Merman
Mary Martin
Betty Buckley
Kaye Ballard
Gwen Verdon
Jerry Orbach
Robert Goulet
Raul Julia
Robert Preston

They all have such a massive body of work that it's so cost prohibitive to try to track everything down. It would be great to have compilation CD's with the highlights of their careers as well as some more obscure tracks for the hardcore fans (like some tracks from Carrie for Betty's CD, I understand she did a live performance of one of the songs a few weeks ago at a benefit, surely that had to have been recorded).

Speaking of obscure tracks and hardcore fans, I'm excited about Sony's upcoming release of the Broadway Scene Stealers CD's. They come out a week from tomorrow, I'll be rushing to Borders at lunch to pick them up. Sony's been on quite a role lately with Broadway related CD's, it certainly makes up for their Connect music store debacle, which crashed my computer 3 times before I finally let go of the songs I purchased from them and just removed the software from my computer. They never did respond to my email to their help department, it's going on almost a year now.

The Curtains CD should be in stores June 5, as I predicted just in time for the Tony Awards.

Lastly, after several announced release dates have come and gone, it appears that Barbra's concert CD will finally be released on May 8th (I believe this is the 4th release date). I'll be very excited to have a souvenier of that heavenly night as well. It looks like she's including only the songs that she sang in every city. The night I saw her, the Bush impersonator was not available, so she performed Stony End for us instead, which she said she hadn't done in any other city and that does not appear to be on the track listing. I've also heard that she performed Woman in the Moon at her final LA concert and added a one-night-only song or two in each city, to kind of customize each concert. While the track listing indicates that Happy Days Are Here Again is on the CD, it doesn't indicate whether or not the Bush segment is. It would be great, if, a few months from now, she'd release a companion CD that has the Bush segment (if it's not on this CD), selections from her question and answer sessions (which really allowed her to shine, her answer to a fan who asked her what Oprah was like was priceless), as well as recordings of all the one-night-only songs from the tour. This is probably her last tour, it would be great to have a permanent record of every moment.