Piano & the Song [Import]

Piano & the Song (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 27, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: UNIVERSAL
• ASIN: B00011F14I
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,408,446 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Two disc compilation featuring 36 tracks from such artists as Bruce Hornsby & The Range, Andrew Gold, Christopher Cross, Billy Joel, Elton John, Rod Stewart, & Supertramp. Universal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Near-perfect selection of piano-based rock, June 24, 2004

By 

Gavin Wilson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Piano & the Song (Audio CD)

Just by looking at the album cover, you can tell there's some confusion as to the theme of this album. There's an abandoned piano in the foreground, but of the six photos on the wall, four depict performers playing guitars, not pianos. So it's not surprising that there should be a few unthematic oddities in the music selection. We get the standards: Hornsby's 'The Way It is', Cohn's 'Walking in Memphis', Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bridge over Troubled Water' etc. But then CD#2 is kicked off by 'Private Investigations', a surprise choice to the many who would not classify Dire Straits as a keyboard band. Just two artists get two tracks included: Elton John (fine) and Rod Stewart (??).

There are some tracks I hadn't heard for decades -- e.g. Roger Daltrey's 'Giving it all away' (nice to hear once more, but in comparison to the rest, it's one of the weakest tracks on the album). Colin Blunstone's 'I don't believe in Miracles' is also rarely heard these days.

The tracks selected take us from 1969 (Rod Stewart's theme for 'The Office'!) to 1991 (Mark Cohn), but it's probably the 1970s and early 1980s classics that are at the heart of this collection: e.g. Andrew Gold's outstanding composition 'Lonely Boy' and Christopher Cross's 'Ride Like the Wind'. On the latter track, you hear Michael Omartian's superb Bosendorfer piano, as used on several Steely Dan albums, along with Michael McDonald's backing vocals. McDonald is also the lead vocalist on the selected Doobie Brothers track, 'What a Fool Believes'.

The focus is on pop songs and ballads, and excludes soul and dance music. This is white man's music. (I wonder whether the selectors realised that of the 36 tracks they chose, none is sung by either a woman or a non-white.)

One side-effect of juxtaposing so many piano tracks together is that it reveals varying standards of piano-playing. At the top end we have Omartian, Hornsby and Rick Wakeman's intro to 'Morning has Broken'. Towards the bottom of the range, we have Daryl Hall's ham-fisted playing on 'Kiss on My List'. Hall has written many outstanding pop hits over the years, and has played some great piano e.g. 'Laughing Boy' on the Abandoned Luncheonette album, but the track selected here fails to show off his piano skills.

One could quibble about the choice of some tracks: if you want to show Paul Rodgers singing to a piano background, 'Bad Company' is a slightly better choice than 'My Brother Jake'. 'While You see a chance' shows Winwood singing against a synthesizer, whereas 'Vacant Chair' is a much better vehicle for Winwood singing to a great piano song. Including one of Winwood's songs from the extremely rare 'Go' by Stomu Yamashta would have been a fantastic choice.

The editors deserve strong praise for singling out Paul Weller's 'You do something to me' and Journey's 'Who's Crying Now'. The people at Universal had an unusually wide range of labels from which to choose their tracks, including Island, EMI, Warner, Sony and A&M. As usual, the Beatles are conspicuous by their absence. David Bowie is also a difficult artist to persuade to contribute to compilations, so there is no 'Changes' here. I'm faintly surprised that there is no Steely Dan here either, but maybe they take some persuading too.

In summary, four out of five for song selection, two out of five for the absence of any sleeve notes beyond the legal minimum, and five out of five for sound quality. (As far as I can tell, the editors have used the remastered versions wherever possible.)

5.0 out of 5 stars Piano Based Mostly 1970s And 1980s Rock/Pop., May 17, 2010

By 

J. Thompson (Essex UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Piano & the Song (Audio CD)

Compilations, some man's meat and another man's poison.
For me this is one to keep, the artists are drawn from quite a wide scope from both sides of the Atlantic and it works very well.
There are some songs you can easily find elsewhere, but not too many. The following are all superb.
From Disc 1:
Bruce Hornsby And The Range with driving The Way It Is.
Billy Joel provides an insight into loneliness in a bar in Piano Man.
Elton John describes life as an astronaut in Rocket Man, a low key and powerful song.
Rod Stewart makes a soulful success of Reason To Believe.
Marc Cohn gives it all in Walking In Memphis.
Cat Stevens' Morning Is Broken features Rick Wakeman on keyboards, has he ever bettered that offering?
From disc 2:
Elton John's Tiny Dancer is a heartfelt love song which is all too rarely heard.
Randy Edelman looks at the class devide with Uptown Uptempo Woman.
Warren Zevron sings Werewolves Of London and it's scary!
Nilsson exposes a raw, broken heart in Without You.
Simon And Garfunkel's signiture tune Bridge Over Troubled Water stands the test of time.
Finally John Miles' completes a very listernable collection with his best song, Music, which alternates from a slow to a fast tempo.
Try to get this album and you are likely to be more than pleased.