Customer Reviews

Pins And Needles (1962 Revival Cast)

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

 

 

This review album is recorded well and is very lively and entertaining. Barbra Streisand sings mainly on 4 songs: "Doin the Reactionary" is a jazzy little number... "Nobody Makes A Pass At Me" is in the style of Barbra's famous "Miss Marmelstein" or even "Adalaide's Lament". She is hilarious and the lyrics are very witty.... "Status Quo" is kind of a history-lesson song, but Barbra shines.... and "What Good Is Love" is a ballad in which Barbra hits some wonderful notes and sings with feeling. If you're a Streisand fan, this album is a must-have.

Tribute album to an old Broadway favorite managed to catch a young Barbra Streisand on her early rise to fame(what was she?...Nineteen?). She's delightful on "Doin' the Reactionary" and "Status Quo", but her big number "Nobody Makes a Pass at Me" sounds as if it were written especially for her. She makes these songs her own, even though they were not from her generation. Far removed from the current era, it's amazing that "Pins & Needles" still sounds fresh and lively.

Another one of Babra's early album if you are a great Streisand fan you have to have this album. Avery young Barbra but the voice is so pure it's wonderful her best song I think is DOING THE REACTIONARY.

Pins and Needles has a dozen songs that are smart, wise, funny, charming and eminently hummable and singable. Appreciating a few of the lyrics are helped knowing something about the domestic and international politics of the era (written and first performed in 1937). But it remains a delight. All of the voices are strong, including a great, and very young Barbara Streisand.

Though this score is quite tuneful the problem is the presentation can't even be close to the original. At the Labor Stage the ILGWU members and duo-pianists (one of whom for a time was the socialist firebrand Marc Blitzstein) surely imbued it with charm and innocent amateur enthusiasm; here a slick pop combo and chorus turn the thing into an early-sixties bank commercial. It's so slick it's hard to believe "One Big Union for Two" was once banned from the air for the word "scabbing". Ditto with Jack Carroll and Rose Marie Jun, veterans of Broadway demo recordings; they sound as if they stepped in from a jingle session, and stepped out to another. We'll say this for Harold Rome: he's amiable.

Then there's...Babs. It's obvious why she was destined to be a superstar -- and, alas, a pill. She does the Miss Marmelstein shtick and you can't help thinking she got her political education from these songs, but she hasn't yet learned how to sing with bared fangs; she has a youthful simplicity and a yearning understatedness she would soon enough abandon for the theatrics, a shame, because she is so damned good here. Perhaps she could only become worse as she became her ego, but we should never forget the great talent and appeal her discoverers Jack Paar and Mr. Rome saw in her, and we see it here in a mere six songs.

Strangely enough, this album spurred a kind of sequel: "Harold Rome's Gallery", an art-themed studio recording of some original tunes in a swing jacket, with most of the same crew minus Babs; it wasn't around long enough to become even a collector's item.

This review written by Harold Rome was a very disappointing recording. The satire of the songs did not have the punch they might have had. The music was forgettable and the performances were adequate.

Barbra Streisand has sung hundreds of Broadway and musical theatre songs, yet she has never issued an anthology of musical theatre songs.
It's not mere chance that she was given a special Tony Award
around 1970 for her contribution to the Broadway musical. Many
of the songs in Barbra Streisand's lp's and cd's come from the
musical theatre, but many times were not properly credited on the record label, just limiting the information to the name of the composers.
We, Barbra Streisand fans, demand now a MUSICAL THEATRE ANTHOLOGY that will include all recordings by Barbra Streisand
related to the musical stage.
This is Barbra Streisand's second released lp in May 1962.
PINS AND NEEDLES ( 25th anniversary).
The original show opened on broadway on November 27th, 1937.
Music and lyrics by Harold Rome.
Barbra sang 6 songs:
-Doing the reactionary.
-Nobody makes a pass at me.
-Not cricket to picket.
-Status Quo.
-Four little angels of peace.
-What good is love.
These 6 songs should be included in THE BARBRA STREISAND MUSICAL
THEATRE ANTHOLOGY under shows which opened in 1937.
All shows should be listed in chronologicaL order, that is,
the year in which the show first opened. This way we get a panoramic view of how songs from the musical theatre changed over the course of the 20th century.
Let's get SONY interested in releasing a BARBRA STREISAND MUSICAL THEATRE ANTHOLOGY.
This idea is my gift to Barbra, who has provided us with so much pleasure over many decades. Let's make this idea a reality.