Customer Reviews

Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There's a lot more in the music of Disney films than one--than _I_--thought, and the musicians here do a fine job of making it clear, giving you a different point of view but always with respect for the music. You can tell that in Tom Waits's vision, the dwarfs sweat, belong to the UMW, and head out for a beer after a day at the mines. Buster Poindexter's utterly over-the-top "Castles in Spain" is as much fun to listen to as it clearly was for him to sing. "Feed the Birds" is heartbreakingly beautiful, as is Bonnie Raitt's "Baby Mine." Ken Nordine's soundscapes set the mood at the beginning and especially near the end. Disney film music is not just for kids, and this CD proves it.

Disney Music can sometimes seem a little too ... well ... Disney. Neat, catchy little tunes sung by voices that you just KNOW have never seen a zit in their lives. Subject matter that is trite at best, portraying characters so cute that they're almost embarrassing.

Embarrassing, because even at thirty years old, you still whistle Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah from "Song of the South" when you're happy.

Don't you?

Fear not, closet Disney-phile. This album takes all those songs from your favorite movies, and gives them an adult twist. This album will serve a two-fold purpose. First, you can get your fix of Disney anytime your middleaged-child heart desires. But most importantly, if you get "caught" by your friends, you can pass it off as serious music.

Whether a mere fresh coat of paint (as with "I Wanna Be Like You" from Jungle Book) to a slight sarcastic tone on old favorites (Sinead O'Conner singing "Someday My Prince Will Come" -- 'nuff said there!), to downright spooky versions of bettime songs (Suzanne Vega's acapella version of "Stay Awake"), to absolutely twisted rehashes of formerly tired standby's (Tom Waite rebuilds "Heigh Ho" in his own graven image), this album is a fantastic work. It not only transforms these scores into wonderful new pieces of art, but it also remains true to the basic spirit of Disney. Perhaps it is irreverent in places. Yes, it may even poke a little fun at our favorite childhood icon. But it is still a respectful tribute to the original artists who put these tunes in our heads in the first place.

I found that listening to this work end to end is going to put you in some peculiar moods. The overall feeling is definitely downbeat, even the up-tempo songs have a decidedly ironic and dark bent. My favorite song in this album has to be the exceptionally soulful rendering of "Baby Mine" by Bonnie Raitt; it turns the sentimental mother-child ballad into something more on the romantic side. I have often slow-danced this one with the wife, and you can really feel a hot intensity under the surface of this number. James Taylor's "Second Star To The Right" is exceptionally wistful in his trademark style. Sun Ra's cover of "Pink Elephants" remains true to the original while retaining the peculiar spacy Sun-Ra vibe. One of the more "accessible" Sun-Ra performances I've ever heard.

Tom Waits and Ken Nordine are commanding presences as well. The Tom Waits version of "Hi-Ho" made my wife's imagination conjure nightmare images of murderous doings in Gacy's basement; it creeps her out so badly, she refuses to hear one note of it. I prefer to imagine the dwarves in manic, Fred C. Dobbs-like pursuit of their underground treasure, working too fast in a mine full of hazards and fearsome environments... with a workplace like that, it's no wonder they'd really appreciate a Snow White coming into their lives. Perfect music if you are on your way to a job you hate...

I agree the Sinead O'Connor piece (Someday My Prince Will Come) and Suzanne Vega "Stay Awake" tracks are here mostly for their postmodern ironic effect, and I find them hard to listen to with patience. In Sinead's case, the shock value of her performance of this particular song choice gets dulled over time as people forget who she is and why her singing this is supposed to be funny.

The Nordine pieces, which bookend the album, really demand good headphones for best appreciation, and reward repeated listening. Cruising thru quotes of ee cummings, with puzzling snatches of what seems to be an audio montage of soundtrack clips from old Disney park attractions, and other spooky imagery, he conjures up a tour thru a darkened, haunted vault of musty film cans and ragged posters, the perfect place for an adult to look back on childhood perceptions and potentials and compare his youthful fantasies with the cold realities and incomplete goals and disappointments of old age. Pretty heavy stuff. Yet it manages to finish, if not upbeat, still, with a sense that we still have time left to wring meaning from our pasts, and to put ourselves on a path to personal redemption.

The whole album leaves me with this kind of feeling, as if I have passed unscathed thru something more dark and dangerous than I really understood, and survived to come out into sunlight on the other side. Like the old "dark ride" rollercoaster attractions of Disney's park, you will want to experience the ordeal of getting scared and surviving it again and again.

Well... it's not that easy to add something significant to the other reviews as I share very similar feelings with all people loving this album. I found this vinyl, earmarked as "second choice", in a clearance shop in the periphery of Rome, Italy in spring 1990, paying some $3 for it (!!!), and since then it became one of my favourite albums. Were it not worth listening for the superb renditions of Susanne Vega or Sinéad O'Connor, it is just amazing to hear Michael Stipe doing backing vocals in "Little April Shower" or discover Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz performing in the opening medley and two more tracks. Were it only one reason to own this album, it would be the Tom Waits track, that with the parallel Brecht version in "Lost in the stars" (the 1985 album dedicated to Kurt Weill) are absolutely necessary to be able to own the complete Tom Waits hell collection. Last but not least, it's the eclectic producer Hal Willner that has to be credited for this incredible, everlasting music that unveils the very nature of disney world. It's very good news that this album is available in cd, I would have never believed. Quality wins at the end.

I picked this up on CD when it was first released and I was in college, it was always one of my dirty pleasures packed next to harder, grungier, and/or funkier stuff. Well, most of the other stuff has not stood the test of time too well, but Stay Awake still comes out every once in a while. Like the earlier reviewer, I frequently sing my daughters to sleep with Blue Shadows on the Trail ala Syd Straw, and my 2 year old has taken to singing along with me. My one complaint is the medley style of the tracks... some tunes rate an individual track, while other tracks might have three or four tunes faded together. Plenty of different styles on here to satisfy a wide variety of tastes, but it's the purer and more sentimental ones that have always stuck with me. I strongly disagree with the reviewer who thinks Aaron Neville was trying to sex up the Mickey Mouse Club march, I've always felt that his version is laced more with plaintive nostalgia than anything prurient. I've always wished that somebody would put together a Stay Awake 2, but if that means Jessica Simpson gets called in to remake Hakuna Matata, I'll pass.

It will probably not surprise Walt Disney, in whatever forever he has found, to discover that filmmakers have surpassed his achievements in animation. He helped establish a school (Cal Arts) to insure exactly this. What must surprise and dismay him is how far backwards the art of original song has fallen from the level his films had taken it to. The mining of old, semi-obscure, and unhearalded album cuts for pre-fabricated musical snippets to push along vacuous vignettes--Hollywood's recent trend the past few years--must someday cease as all trends do. When it does, perhaps the original song, written specifically to be a role player in a film will have another chance to soar as it did for Disney.

With this album the extraordinary producer, Hal Wilner, former music director of Saturday Night Live, took his best shot at tearing these songs apart and failed purposely, magically and fantastically well. Mixing, mismatching, falling for puns, smashing musicians and musical styles against themselves, nearly begging the songs to give in, he brings together music written across a span of at least 30 years as if it all belongs here right now, as it clearly does. What is achieved is a restless, optimistic, timeless, wildly diverse beauty.

Ken Nordine's "damn everything, everything but the circus" starts the listener off with an unshakeable sense that the album will not turn out to be anything you'd expect. "Ah, exactly." one imagines Walt would say.

What an eclectic grouping of artists that came together to make this work. The absolute best Disney tribute CD that adults will probably enjoy more than the children. Sinead deliberatly sings an entire song off key until the last note and it's perfect. There are wonderfull songs that you would expect, but with Tom Waits in the mix you must expect some "oddness". Overall a great CD. 5 Stars easy.

I taped this album off of vinyl from the college radio station where I spun tunes in 1988, and while I preferred much more rough-around-the-edges grunge music at the time, I had a soft spot for the whole album.

My tastes mellowed out in the following 15 years (just a bit) but still this cassette keeps coming out of the drawer year. The subtle, talented and completely original takes on the Disney movie songs manage to imprint the artists' vision while still retaining the original magic of the movies (you can picture in your mind a group of seven dwarves who all look like Tom Waits chanting Heigh-Ho). Then last year, I found myself singing "Blue Shadows" in the manner of Syd Straw and "Stay Awake" in the manner of Suzanne Vega as lullabies to my daughter at bedtime. This album stands the test of time, so of course I finally have to have it on CD.

If the idea of a cover album of Disney songs sung by classic 70s acts and hipster musos of the late 80s sounds like your thing, this is definitely worth checking out.
It's lovely to discover this on your own.
Some songs will thrill you. Some will surprise you. Yes, some will make you swoon.
You'll feel better for owning this one. It's the sort of record that'll impress your friends.
I bought it on vinyl at the time of it's original release and, thanks to Amazon, have now traded up to CD.

The big but: if you don't dig this type of avant garde novelty project and you could care less about Disney tunes - stay away.
This isn't for you.
The preciousness and willful obscurity of this album will make you crazy.
You're better off buying something else.

I've loved this album for years, but the best thing you can do is to program out the songs that really irritate you (and there will almost certainly be a few). Or make a car-tape that eliminates the duds. After you do, you'll find yourself listening more often. Personal favorites are title song and "Baby mine" (I've never liked Bonnie Raitt but this is lovely)--both are used as lullabies in my house. Replacements, NRBQ, and Tom Waits also make me happy. The Ken Nordine bits are terrific in context, and make this as entertaining for adults as for kids. This is MUCH better than many such efforts--but grownups will also enjoy Willner's Lost in the Stars.