Had some lunch (my meal o' the day). Am listening to my recording of Merrily. I do remember, amusingly, that there were a group of agenda-laden folks who posted about this CD vociferously in the negative when it came out. ONLY the OCR was the one to listen to - ours was thin because of the tiny orchestra, and it wasn't a patch on the buttcheeks of the original album. Well, guess who time has caught up. Orchestras on B'way are now routinely smaller than our Merrily orchestra. And our recording sounds splendid - with a clarity and crispness that the original lacks (and not because of its bigger orchestral forces). And most of the orchestra that's missing from ours are the strings. Mr. Tunick's reduction is scored for four reeds, three trumpets, one trombone, two keyboards, bass, drums, percussion. There are things I'm not fond of in his orchestration - most egregiously, for me, in Not A Day Goes By, which I just don't like at all, especially the ending. But most of it sounds really good, full, and full of pep and life.
And the agenda-laden? They've crawled into their holes and haven't been heard from for years, because people have been attempting to copy Vinnie and my recording techniques for the last seven years - prior to us, cast albums were always recorded in the same way. We changed more than we will ever be given credit for, because I think we all know that no one in show business likes to give credit where it's due.
