Customer Reviews

The Alarma Chronicles

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This is a just a brief correction to the long review given on the Alarma book set.

The previous reviewer seemed to have mixed things up a bit about the nature of these recordings. The album mentioned in the previous review [where there was any dispute to ownership] was not the Alarma Chronicles, but rather the album Horrendous Disc, which was finally released just a couple months prior to !Alarma!, which was the first of the 4 albums in these Alarma Chronicles. This is a well documented case of everything going wrong that could go wrong, but it really had zero effect on these albums. In fact, I'm a firm believer that things would be radically different today if that album [Horrendous Disc] had been pressed when it was supposed to. Robert Tilton might have, in fact, become President and would have made onto PrimeTime television!

Also, the Alarma Chronicles book set is not re-recorded from scratch. It may have been remastered, perhaps, but they are not re-recordings of the originals. Terry is good, but not THAT good! Remastering may add intros or outros originally removed from the originals, but no new licks were recorded and inserted to the originals that were not there in the first place and maybe left out for the sake of time or whimsy of the editor on duty.

Although I agree with the previous reviewer about the 3 discs versus 4 albums (scratched my head on that one too), I think it was intended to make the album one cohesive unit, which in fact it really was in Terry's mind when they were released. In reality, you can listen to all 4 of the original albums/CD's in one sitting as one big album. They were the chronicles after all.

You must keep in mind there was a limit to how much information you could fit onto vinyl in the early 80's, where this [same] limit was not there on CD. The initial re-release of the individual albums of the Alarma Chronicles on CD (long prior to this book set) took advantage of this space and added a few previously unreleased and live tracks. Of course, I am thankful they were not previously unreleased covers of these songs by (the now late, great) Larry Norman. Ooh! - That boy's a radish.

I must confess it has been a while since I listened to this box set. I played it once when I first received it years ago and decided to leave it in as "pristene condition" as possible. As such, it is probably worth a quarter million dollars today!

In all it is a very nice set and a "must-have" for any collector of Daniel Amos/Terry Scott Taylor music. The book alone is worth the asking price. If you ever find a copy -- buy it, bid on it, steal it if you have to (OK, maybe you shouldn't steal it) -- anyway -- just get it.

These are the original recordings of the four Alarma Chronicle albums as they were originally released on vinyl. In the 1990s the albums were individually released on CD with a couple bonus cuts each, for this release the bonus cuts were dropped and the four albums were printed on three discs. As others have mentioned, we were told at the time by the then manager that Frontline didn't want the albums released on individual discs so Fearful Symmetry was split in half and put on disc two and three. Its possible Frontline never said this though. :/

The song order is the same as the original albums as well. The songs on Vox Humana have also had the CD IDs corrected, which were goofed up on the original single CD issue. Also, the Vox Humana cassette typo "It's Slick" was corrected to the songs actual title, "It's Sick." Some inbetween album narration was added by Terry Taylor himself. The book is a collection of lyrics, album information, transcripts of radio shows, photos and other cool stuff. Unfortunately after completion of the text and submission, someone ran the text through some kind of goofed up spell checker which added errors to some of the text. Originally it was all correct, I know because I typed it.

Larry Norman had nothing to do with these four albums, and frankly little to do with Horrendous Disc other than delaying it and eventually releasing different versions of the album in different countries. That album was recorded before his involvement with the band.

What can be said of the chronicles? A masterpiece that contains one of the best albums from DA, Fearful Symmetry.

Why 3 cds and not 4 as everybody would have want it to be?

there is a reason for this and the problem was that Frontline Label, wouldn't permit Fearful Symmetry to be alone in one cd so basically we all know what happen that fearful symmetry shares the same cd with part of Vox Humana

This is THE quintessential Daniel Amos anthology. Volume 4 (on Disc 3) "Fearful Symmetry" is my absolute favorite of all Terry's projects, ever.

I originally bought what I was led to believe was this complete set by a "home-operated" Christian music retailer who had a booth at a Worship convention many years ago. The book was legit, as was the top CD, so I had no reason not to pay the stiff fee for this amazing set. Today I finally convince myself to open the sealed CD pouch, only to find Disc 2 is a copy, and will not read on my PC. Now I will have to find another copy of this project to complete my collection. It will go well with my original vinyl/cassette/CD collections of Mark Heard's "iDEoLA" project and "Ten Songs" by Adam Again. If anyone has a complete copy of this book set for sale, please email me. Thanks!

I had this record when I was young and searched the world for the replacement. I love it just as much today as I did way back when. Terry Taylor is an amazingly talented artist. His lyrics are so right on and the music is amazing. I can't believe there are even people from my generation who have not yet heard this album. My kids are now hearing it and loving it. This is a classic.

the first reviewer was confused on some of the negatives as the second reviewer said,

these are original recordings just remastered.

also, the book that comes with this is awesome! a ton of content from pictures, ALL the lyrics, interviews with band members, articles by leading musical journalists, etc.

this is an amazing set, and definitive Daniel Amos. almost impossible to find now because of the limited number made. i originally bought two copies (one for a gift that i never gave away) which is why i have on for sale here on Amazon now. but i would never sell my own copy!

I can't believe that no one has yet reviewed this "collection" of the four Alarma Chronicles albums, which just goes to show how incredibly underrated these albums are / were - they just didn't sell very well. I own the individual albums, some in multiple formats, but NOT this particular set, so a bit of the review is guesswork.

First, the bad things about this set:

*I find it very sad that when the four albums were collected into a "boxed set," they only put them onto three CD's!! Wouldn't it have been nice to have them on four CD's, so it was almost like owning the originals? Also, since each of the four albums was a "concept" album, with the four together having an overriding theme, the concept of the individual albums certainly gets lost when you start moving the songs around to make them fit onto three CD's. When the collection costs $100, wouldn't you think the buyer deserves four CD's instead of just three?!? How much extra would this have cost them?

*These are NOT the original songs from the four albums. From what I understand, there was apparently some kind of legal dispute between Daniel Amos and Larry Norman (who basically owns / owned the rights to the original recordings), and Daniel Amos wanted to turn the original albums (which were offered only on vinyl and tape) into CD's. Daniel Amos has claimed that Larry and his company wouldn't allow them to do this, and kept the original masters of the recordings under lock and key. So, DA decided they would re-record the four albums for CD, which were released several years before the boxed set, but quickly went back out of print, which has sadly been the case for MOST of their music. They really did a pretty good job on the re-recordings sticking to the original performances, but I have heard both, and can hear a bit of a difference - I doubt that either one is better or worse, but for those purists who want to own the originals, they ARE different. The most glaring difference is that Terry Taylor (or the whole band) decided somewhere along the way that the song "It's Slick" (about media advertising) ought to be retitled "It's Sick," along with changing the lyrics to reflect this also (I liked the original title better, as the satire came through much more clearly).

*It's so darned expensive. Yes, I know I referred to that fact earlier, but with a retail price of $100, it deserves repeating with its own individual asterisk.

*It was a very limited set. I believe there were only 1,000 of the set made - I'm not sure whether they were numbered, autographed, etc., but they were kind of advertised as being a limited edition printing, probably in part so that people would buy them up quicker, looking at them as a collector's item or knowing that the time to buy them would be quite limited before they were back out of print. I have seen quite a few of them for sale secondhand, so I'm guessing that maybe "scalpers" bought a good share of them, and then tried to sell them - what's sad is that market demand has not raised the price, though that's good news for the consumer.

The Good News:

*The best news is the music. Written descriptions just can't to true justice to it. At first the music may seem a bit "weird," but it will grow on you very quickly upon repeated listenings. The set contains The Alarma Chronicles Volume I / Alarma! (1981), The Alarma Chronicles Volume II / Doppelganger (1983), The Alarma Chronicles Volume III / Vox Humana (1984), and The Alarma Chronicles Volume IV / Fearful Symmetry (1986). Most of the music is new wave, often with an ethereal quality mixed in - sometimes punk / grunge / rock, sometimes beautiful ballads, always original. I think this band was WAY ahead of its time with much of this music. Fearful Symmetry is less new wave, more alternative. I'm assuming that most people reading this review are already somewhat familiar with Daniel Amos, and can testify to the quality of their music, and can testify to the originality and quality, and this one certainly does NOT disappoint.

*Lots of music. I don't know whether this set included the bonus tracks included on the '91-'92 CD releases, but on those, Alarma had 16 songs + 3 bonus tracks, Doppelganger had 16 + 2, Vox Humana had 12, and Fearful Symmetry had 10.

*Critical appeal. You might look at the website and say, "Well of course they only included the positive reviews on their own website," but I have a hard time believing that DA ever HAD a negative review from anyone other than a one-time, casual listener, unless it was from someone who just didn't like one of the musical genres they explored at some point (country, new wave, punk, grunge, rock, easy listening). Among critics who have followed Daniel Amos, they are consistently reviewed as one of THEE best bands around, always with intelligent lyrics and musically great too.

*I don't know whether the set contains lyrics sheets, but if you go the band's website (sorry, I can't write the name here, as it will get censored, but the website address is just their 10-letter name followed by the usual ending for web addresses), all the lyrics (also credits and reviews) are available there, among tons of other information. It seems like I saw comments by Terry Scott Taylor (generally the lead singer and lyricist) about many of the songs and their meanings / message there also, which is valuable, as Taylor often has "coded" lyrics that I've never been able to figure out the true meaning of, though some are quite apparent. Just keep in mind that many of the songs are pure satire, which seems to offend some Christians, but often drives the point home much better than it could be done otherwise, pointing out the absurdity of what their taking satirical swipes at.

*The fact that the set is / was available at all is great. I'm guessing there are awesome liner notes, etc. in this boxed set. And with the rarity of the individual albums / CD's (the CD's usually going for $25 to $50 each on that famous online auction site (I'm sure that name would get censored too), it's nice to have all four albums available in one package, and when you look at the individual prices, the price on a boxed set is likely to be somewhat less than buying them piecemeal. I will probably end up buying this set at some point myself, as I only have two of the albums on CD at this point.

*With DA's previous history of reissues, there's every chance in the world that at least some of these four albums will be available again. After their original release on vinyl and tape, I believe they were all reissued as both CD and tape around 1992, maybe '91-'92. Then this CD set was released in 2000. So, who knows? Reissues are usually available first via the band's website. And with downloading / iPods / MP3's (I don't understand any of it yet) becoming more and more prevalent, I can foresee DA likely offering their music via their website in the near future. We can only hope!

Favorites:

It's very, very difficult to narrow down favorites on these four incredible albums, as almost all the music is amazing, but here goes:

Alarma! -

Central Theme

Alarma!

Faces to the Window

Through the Speakers

Doppelganger -

Hollow Man

Mall (All Over the World)

Real Girls

New Car

Youth With a Machine

I Didn't Build It For Me

Vox Humana -

It's Sick

William Blake

Dance Stop

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Sanctuary

Fearful Symmetry -

The whole thing is great, though Instruction Thru Film may be the weak moment musically (though it's still one of those you can't get out of your head) because of the narration about Tom, which may seem quite hokey / novelty song to some.

Incarnations of Terry Taylor / Daniel Amos:

Terry Taylor, lead singer of Daniel Amos, is incredibly prolific, recording solo and with a few bands. Besides being leader / lead singer of Daniel Amos, DA also performs under the band name Swirling Eddies (same line-up I'm quite certain), though the Eddies music tends to often be a bit goofier. And Taylor is a member of a "super group" called The Lost Dogs, with Mike Roe of the 77s, and Derri Daugherty (and maybe another member) of The Choir. I believe Taylor writes or co-writes pretty much everything from all these acts, and all are very critically acclaimed. I don't own anything from the Lost Dogs (that will soon change), but own most of the other.

Stylistically:

Daniel Amos's earlier albums (before the Alarma Chronicles) were country oriented, moving slowly toward rock / new wave as they went. The first 3/4 of Alarma Chronicles were strongly new wave, with the last being more experimental alternative. Their next album, Darn Floor, Big Bite (my personal favorite - WOW! See my review.), is also experimental. Then DA started moving more and more toward a rock / grunge sound with much of their work, though even on individual albums they may do plenty of genre jumping. By the mid-90's, they were leaning more toward an alternative sound, and their latest, Mr. Buechner's Dream, is more easy listening / folksy in nature. However, they REALLY CAN'T be pigeon-holed into easy categories much of the time - just lots of great, amazing music!