Back from dinner. Had a good rehearsal for the most part. It should be a good show. Dinner was fun. And now I'm doing my best to get through the new Follies recording, but I doubt I will - the dialogue excerpts are ham-fisted - and this label seems to specialize in making large orchestras sound tiny - all thanks to providing no spatial ambience around them. A recording is a RECORDING - instruments need air - in the kinds of studios that these albums are done in, there is no air - it has to be added. Goddard new this, and so did all the others. Now, no one seems to know this - the vocals are so forward in the mix it's really uncomfortable listening to them, and they, too, are almost completely dry. If this is what it's come to, I don't really need to hear any more cast albums. I'll just replay all my classic show albums from a time when they knew how to do this. And since all I ever did was try to ape that great ambience, I can also listen to mine
Who's That Woman - well, where's the BAND? Funny, but I could have sworn Mr. Tunick wrote a drum part. And all that improvising and yakking during the great dance music - awful. I'll take the truncated original any day of the week. And the person who is served worse on this recording? Bernadette Peters - I liked her in the theater, but here she's so mannered and her voice needs space - she has zero.
