Customer Reviews

The King's Singers: Good Vibrations

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would like to say, that first off, i'm a 17 year old choirboy. I listen to rock and usually shy away from anything lacking guitar. I saw The King's Singers last year in concert, walking in not even knowing who they were, and walking out not only Empowered but almost in tears. I recently purhased this CD, and it is such a great mixture of pop, folk and harmonic. The harmonies on this cd are so tight, the only thing I have ever heard that rivals it is the actual performance by them. SO if you have any doubts about this CD THOW THEM OUT AND BUY IT! Its well worth the 15 dollars and will get you hooked from track 1. Oh Yeah my fav track is MLK, written by U2, because its so beautiful. I now have 7 of their cd's and am gonna keep on buying them.

~One Devoted Fan~

This has got to be my #1 favorite KS CD. Madrigal History Tour & Believe in Music would have to come in second & third. You should buy the CD just for their arrangement of The Boxer & American Pie! And So It Goes is so beautiful sounds like a hymn. Their diction, phrasing & intonation are once again nothing short of impeccable. Thumbs up from this Tenacious Tenor. :o)

I was recently introduced to the King's Singers and thought that my friend had flipped when I heard it playing on his cd player. But when I borrowed the cd and listened for myself...I was so impressed that I couldn't stop playing it over and again! The recordings one hears here online are good...but don't hold a candle to the REAL thing. My personal favorites of the album include #1 And So It Goes and #2 Seaside Rendevous. American Pie is wonderfully done as is The Boxer. In fact, there aren't any songs on here that I "skip!" I recommend this one HIGHLY!!

Some of the tracks were, not badly done, but so well-trodden that another cover of them just isn't exciting. Notably:

* Good Vibrations
* Cecilia (Paul Simon)
* American Pie

I was disappointed by And So It Goes. It's not bad, but there is a much better King's Singers performance out there. I had expected that performance to be on this CD and it wasn't.

For some of the tracks, there's fun in seeing the King's Singers ham it up. In particular, Freddie Feel-Good.

Good tracks:
* Father to Son
* The Boxer
* Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy
* Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover

Pretty Good:
* That Lonesome Road
* Freddie Feel-Good

(This is largely pasted from my review on my blog, [...])

I love the King's Singers...this CD may not be their best, but it's certainly Classic with an interesting mix of covers including Paul Simon and the Beach Boys.

Almost every song is so good I find myself repeating to listen to another part of the harmonies. I love the selections from James Taylor, Paul Simon, Randy Newman and other greats. This one is always in my car.The

This recording shows off the King Singers in a wonderful light. I keep on listening over and over to the whole cd. I really like the Billy Joel and U2 songs. The tight harmonies and overall great a ccapella sound is wonderful.

From 'Cecilia' to 'Seaside Rendzevous', these guys rule! I love it

This King's Singers' take on various hits of pop or country music, recorded in 1991, is fun and enjoyable. Even if you are, as I am, an almost exclusive listener of classical music, and unless you have been locked up for the last 30 or 40 years in an isolation chamber, you are likely to be familiar with at least some of these songs, and even if you aren't, they have, at their best, verve, energy and excitement (I'm not so fond of the crooning ballads). Now, coming to think about it, I must have been confined in my classical music isolation chamber for about that long, because the only one I was familiar with was the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations. OK then. What I can hear of the originals, either from the 30-second excerpts offered on this website or from the various You Tube postings, make me think that I made the right choice: I usually prefer the King's Singers arrangements and realizations. They may not elicit as much excitement as the most exciting among the originals, nor showcase the unique vocal timbres of the original singers, but they have amply more sophistication (which is the main reason of my preference) and elegance. The arrangements are purely vocal including the percussion (or rather: produced with some part of the body, and there is some hand clapping as well in Paul Simon's Cecilia), which is an advantage over what the Swingle Singers did in the 1970s (see my review of "Swing Sing", which also offers Ward Swingle's arrangement of Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover"; somewhere in the 1980s the Swingles also went purely vocal). The kazoos in Freddie Mercury/The Queen's "Seaside Rendezvous", track 7, are lots of fun, and what is the most hilarious in Ray Stevens' "Freddie Feel-Good" (track 12, the original relying already very much on vocalisations of instrumental music) is the imitation of the Stevens' cracker accent: the King's Singers are obviously enjoying themselves tremendously, and letting us take part in the enjoyment. By the way that occasioned my discovery of Ray Stevens. There are hilarious clips on You Tube. If all the American populist reactionaries were as funny, I'd be growing tea myself by now. Thank God they're not and I can stick to coffee and to my belief that there are no simple solutions to complex problems. The recording offers great vividness and clarity to the King's Singers vocals. This CD sits well with the Swingle Singers more recent, and hugely exciting "Beauty and the Beatbox". Only one regret: the scanty TT of 44:44. This is so entertaining, you want a CD filled to the brim with it. But at the time of writing the price is right.

This is a great CD.
Own it. Along with the New Day record is my favourite Singers' CD.