For fun last night, I took out the JAY release of their "complete" Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. I bought it when it first came out and my memory back then was that it was one of the worst recordings I'd ever heard - in every way, but especially technically. I've amended that opinion to say it is THE worst recording I've ever heard of theater music. It is, in a word, appalling. The band sounds like it's in another stage - let me tell you that the job of a record producer isn't to show up and sit in the booth and listen to sound like that and say, "Good show." You don't just set up a few mics and call that a recording. The singers are blah, and the conducting is so perverse in terms of tempos and emphasis - all you have to do is listen to the original Broadway cast album - it, too, is not very well recorded, but the conducting is as it should be and at least when the singers aren't singing you can actually hear the band and the orchestrations. Whoever produced the B'way version didn't baffle the singers, so when you bring them front and center the band just goes away. Makes one appreciate all the more the pioneering work done by Goddard Lieberson back then.
