Customer Reviews

Return of the Red Baron / Snoopy for President

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

 

 

My review title is a paraphrase of Charlie Brown's comment about Snoopy being so deft that he could catch a soap bubble in his mouth without popping it and so clumsy that he then tripped and fell on his face; however, I am asking this of those who produced this CD. How could you go to all the trouble to restore and re-release these long lost classics and then make so many stupid, annoying, incompetent mistakes in the process?

First, why did you put albums 2 and 4 on this CD and albums 1 and 3 on the other CD Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron/Snoopy & His Friends? It cannot be album length; each album is almost exactly 30 minutes long and a standard CD can hold about 80 minutes of audio. Besides the annoyance of having to switch CD's 3 times in order to listen to the albums chronologically, this also results in what is in fact a copy of the same recording of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" appearing twice on the other CD Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron/Snoopy & His Friends. Simply putting albums 3 and 4 on this CD and 1 and 2 on the other CD would have prevented any duplicate tracks.

Second, why didn't you add the two singles not included on any of the 4 original albums, "Mother, Where's Your Daughter?" and especially the last Snoopy song, "Smallest Astronaut" while you had the chance? It's more than a little annoying to have to purchase a third CD, either the now OOP Anthology or the essentially identical The Best of the Royal Guardsmen in order to acquire these 2 songs along with 18 songs duplicated on the 2 album re-release CD's. With barely an hour's worth of music on each CD there was plenty of room even if you arranged the albums chronologically. Putting "Mother, Where's Your Daughter?" on the other CD and "Smallest Astronaut" on this CD along with arranging the albums chronologically would also have nicely placed a copy of all of the Snoopy pieces on this CD so that Snoopy-only fans would need to buy only this CD. Was it as simple as that? Was it pure greed on your part?

However, I DO have to give you credit for putting out an unmangled track of "Snoopy for President". All other CD releases have the edited version, which cuts out the words "in '68", destroying the meter of the first line in a pathetic attempt to make the song appear less dated. Thank you for THAT at least.

This SHOULD have been a 5-star review, but the collective stupidity displayed in assembling these two CD's cost a star, and I'm being fairly generous at that!

I'm only 26 in years, but I grew up with music like this thanks to the family collection of LPs and 45s. Most of today's 'pop' is just plain awful (my opinion of course). Back in this era, even during such turbulant times that the late 1960s are known for, the Royal Guardsmen made their music FUN!

On this disc, you get their second and fourth LP's ("Snoopy Vs The Red Baron, and "Snoopy & His Friends", LPs 1 and 3 respectively, are on another CD sold here...with more good stuff). There is no 'remastering' done here...these will sound like they were ripped straight from the masters with no EQing done to them, just as you remember them on LP. This doesn't matter though...at least not to me. Not when the music is enjoyable and puts you in a good mood.

I noticed no edits or omissions on this CD. The only thing that is missing from the Guardsmen catalog after buying this and the aformentioned first 'twofer' CD, are a couple of tracks that were only released as singles. Those can be found on the "Best of" compilation, if you must have every single last track the Guardsmen committed to tape.

These two albums are more mature, more varied in their music styles. There's a couple ballads, the obligatory cover tunes, and a few pop numbers, but otherwise, these two LPs find the boys branching out into rock, R&B, psychadelic, and other formats.

"Return of the Red Baron" is clearly a stronger set of tracks, with a scorching take on Steve Winwood's "Gimme Some Lovin'" among the set.

"Snoopy for President", unfortunately, shows the Guardsmen starting to weaken stylistically. Half of the songs here are a bit 'too' sweet, succumbing to what the guys in the black suits wanted. (pop hits = money..you know how it goes).

This is not to say "Snoopy for President" is not enjoyable. It is, and it boasts some of the best production out of the four albums in terms of sound quality. Most of the songs may be sappy, but these are well-produced and well sung tunes, good for those times when one wants something relaxing on their CD or MP3 player.

After one more Snoopy single "The Smallest Astronaut", and the 1968 single re-release "Baby Let's Wait" from their first LP (their only non-Snoopy hit in the top 40 charts), the Guardsmen called it a day.

Kudos to Collectibles for even bothering to put out old (but good) stuff like this. The dogfight between Snoopy and the Red Baron will continue for generations to come thanks to their catalog being reissued.

Noteable cuts:
- The Return of the Red Baron
(That blasted Baron strikes again! Sounds better with the story that links this song. "Snoopy Vs the Red Baron" and "Snoopy's Christmas" on the Guardsmen's third LP, "Snoopy & His Friends")
- Airplane Song (My Airplane) (This was one of Michael Martin Murphy's (who would hit it big with "Wildfire" in 1975) earliest writings, given to the Guardsmen to perform. Although the second LP is where this song originally was released, to me it sounds better grouped with the other pop/rock tracks (I Say Love, So Right (To Be In Love), et al) on 'Snoopy & His Friends")
- Gimme Some Lovin' (The Guardsmen's take on this classic Steve Winwood song. They let it all go on this one, and sound like they're having a good time.).
- Cry Like a Baby / The Letter (A Box Tops medley. It's good, but I like the Box Tops takes of these songs seperately over this medley.)

If you loved these songs as a child this is the album for you. Snoopy and the Red Baron was really a great one, but the return of the Red Baron and Snoopy for President are really rare hard to find titles.

Whereas the first pair of Royal Guardsmen albums ("Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron / Snoopy & His Friends") had mostly cute singalong songs for preteens, this second pair of albums was much more focused on bubblegum cover tunes from the 1967-1968 era. Their albums became a bit more serious at this point: along with remakes of cheerful bubblegum hits like "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy," there was an original song with distorted guitars ("Leaving Me"), a sad ballad ("Honey"), and intense dance music more appropriate for adults ("Gimme Some Lovin'"). The band seemed to be going through an identity crisis here. Until now they had been the de facto official Snoopy songs band, but the Snoopy theme must have been starting to get old. "Snoopy For President" here was a (very) minor hit in 1968, and every album still had a Snoopy song and Snoopy reference in the title, but the references seem more like an acknowledgement of their roots rather than a primary theme. It looks as if the band never found its niche after the Snoopy theme wore out; the band broke up not long after releasing these two albums. From listening to these songs, one can see why: there was too much emphasis on copying other bands' hits *exactly*, right down to the exact guitar riffs of the Yardbirds' "I'm A Man" and the riff and dubbed fanfare of the Byrds' "So You Want To Be A Rock 'N Roll Star." Such lack of creativity doesn't go over well in the competetive pop/rock world. Despite this lack of originality, these songs still sound quite good: "Come On Down To My Boat" (originally by Every Mothers Son, 1967) is a great song that sounds good no matter who does it, "Airplane Song" was a minor hit for the Royal Guardsmen in 1967 (though it sounds suspiciously like the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" to me), "Biplane 'Evermore'" is a cute original song, "Gimme Some Lovin'" adds a cowbell and sounds great, and so on. Note that "Airplane Song" and "The Return Of The Red Baron" on this album also appeared on their previous album, totally unchanged. I suppose this was done to perpetuate the Snoopy theme and to give each album a guaranteed hit, but it's an odd practice that reminds me of the earliest Donovan albums. In summary: It's a decent CD, just different in style than from their Snoopy era.

I grew up having this exact CD as a record. I remembered 90% of the words too! Wow, memories!