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The Reissues of 2002The year 2002 has turned out to have seen a surprising number of old Peter
Schickele-related recordings and movies be reissued on CD and DVD.
This is surprising because 2002 is many years past the age when record
companies were rushing to reissue every record in their catalogue but instead is
right during the time when record companies are complaining that nobody buys
CD’s anymore because they’ve become about as valuable as bubble-gum cards.
“Collect the whole set; trade
’em with your friends!” But
seriously, does anybody who uses Grokster even know what a bubble-gum card is?
But even more seriously, Peter Schickele recordings have often bucked the
trends of the rest of the recording establishment, and the 2002 reissues are no
exception, or at least no more of an exception than usual.
So here’s a list of several 2002-reissued or, in some cases where they
missed the deadline, 2003-reissued CD’s
and DVD’s that may be of interest to visitors to The Peter Schickele/P.D.Q.
Bach Web Site. The most impressive of these reissues is the Joan Baez Original Master
Series. Vanguard Records is
reissuing all 14 of their Joan Baez albums with digitally-remastered sound and
bonus tracks containing never-before-released material from the same recording
sessions. This includes all three
of Ms. Baez’s recordings which were arranged and conducted by Peter Schickele.
Vanguard has been releasing these CD reissues a few at a time, in the same
order that the original recordings were originally released, with the exception
of the first one, Noël, which was originally the seventh one released.
This much loved collection of Christmas carols, arranged in the styles of
the time periods in which the songs were written, was released out of sequence
so that it would be available for the 2001 Christmas season.
If you missed out on buying it in 2001 or 2002, now you can buy it in time for
the 2003 Christmas season, right here at Ye Old
Schickele Shoppe. The reissue
includes, in addition to the digitally-remastered sound, new liner notes written
by Peter Schickele and six tracks that were not included on the original album. The next Joan Baez album was a collection of popular songs called, like the
singer herself, Joan. It
includes renditions of songs written by Lennon & McCartney, Paul Simon, Tim
Hardin and others, including the first recorded songs written by Ms. Baez
herself, with the arrangements written by and the orchestra conducted by Peter
Schickele. The reissue, which was released
on June 10, 2003, and showed up in Ye Old
Schickele Shoppe a little while later, contains two new tracks, including a
Schickele arrangement of Jacques Prčvert’s
Autumn Leaves, sung in the original French. The third in this set of Joan Baez/Peter Schickele albums is Baptism, a
journey through our time, a unique album which consists of poetry, both sung and spoken to original music.
This reissue is expected to be released later in 2003. More details
will be posted as soon as they are available. In honor of these new reissues, the original versions of these three albums, without
the digital re-mastering, new liner notes or additional tracks, are available at
specially reduced prices.
These prices, and indeed the original albums themselves, are only
available while supplies last. Yet another time that Peter Schickele and Joan Baez worked together was on
his soundtrack to the motion picture Silent Running, the 1971 Science
Fiction epic with Bruce Dern commandeering a space ship holding the last of
Earth’s forests. Unfortunately,
the highly-regarded original soundtrack album from this film remains as
out-of-print as ever, but this year the movie itself was reissued on a new and
improved DVD. This new version of
the DVD contains several additional
features, the one of most interest to visitors to this web site being Chuck
Barbee’s documentary “The Making of Silent Running.”
As part of giving a unique insightful examination of how the movie was
put together, it includes rare behind-the-scenes footage of Mr. Schickele
conducting the orchestra and Ms. Baez singing part of the score. This DVD is not available through Ye Olde Schickele Shoppe,
but is available from major DVD retailers everywhere. (Make sure to get the new version because the
original DVD of this movie has no extras whatsoever.) Another motion picture with a Peter Schickele score that is making a
transition to DVD is Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, but
this time the transition is much more confusing. This short but faithful animated adaptation of Sendak’s
classic children’s book, with a score and narration by Mr. Schickele, was
originally included on the videotape The Maurice Sendak Library, which
also included an animated version of In The Night Kitchen (also narrated
by Mr. Schickele), The Nutshell Kids (with four Carole King songs), and a
short documentary about Mr. Sendak. This
video has been out-of-print for a while, even while a few
remaining copies of the video were still available at Ye
Olde Schickele Shoppe. Recently
this out-of-print video was reissued on DVD, but here’s the confusing part: you can’t buy that DVD!
It seems that the DVD reissue is only available for classroom use.
Meanwhile, everything on The Maurice Sendak Library is now
available on a different video and DVD called Where The Wild Things Are and
Other Maurice Sendak Stories.
This item, although containing the same contents as the classroom-only
DVD, is available for use outside the classroom, maybe even in your own
home. Fortunately, Ye Olde Schickele
Shoppe was able to sort out this confusion, and six months later, the WTWTA&OMSS
DVD is now available for purchase, along with the
last copies of The Maurice
Sendak Library videotape, now being sold at a
reduced price. In complete contrast to the above motion pictures for children (and indeed everything else in this news item), Mr. Schickele long ago also wrote music for a Broadway show for adults. Along with other members of the chamber rock group The Open Window, Mr. Schickele contributed music and lyrics to the long-running controversial show Oh! Calcutta! The original cast album for this show has been out-of-print even longer than the Silent Running soundtrack, but it is just now being reissued on CD. People who have been trying to track down rare copies of this dusty old record can now easily obtain new pristine copies of the CD. Note that even though this album was recorded 25 years before rap music and parental advisory labels, it contains words that are not usually heard on CD’s, or Broadway stages for that matter, but instead only on HBO. But if you’re mature enough to not be offended, and immature enough to appreciate it, this CD is now available at Ye Olde Schickele Shoppe.
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