Customer Reviews

Toolbox Classics

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

 

 

This CD is a compilation of familiar classical pieces and is really fun to listen to! You will enjoy trying to identify the tools used. Both my dad and dad-in-law like classical music and are tool-types. This will be a great gift. (I already got one for my husband - that's how I've heard it.) I'm sure the inspiration was Home Improvement's theme song (or maybe this music inspired the show?). I'm not sure that the music is played note-by-note as it was composed and the pitch isn't perfect anyway, but you can recognize the pieces! It's a great gift!

Aside from a couple of Supreme Court decisions limiting capital punishment, this has been a dismal week, with our ill-eagle, incompetent government trashing the Constitution, as usual. So -- it was an immense relief that I received through the mail a package of CDs today, one of which is Woody Phillips' TOOLBOX CLASSICS. I'm a fan of classical music humor, especially parodists like "PDQ Bach," Anna Russell, and the British composers who contributed to the Hoffnung Interplanetary Music Festivals, and I enjoy wood-working, but I'd probably never have heard of this obscure CD if it hadn't been played on our local Public Radio station. They've played at least two selections from the album while I was driving to the train station. I nearly crashed my car, laughing at Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Flight of the Bumblebee."

There are a total of 14 lovingly parodied classical selections on the CD. Each is played with great expertise, both rhythmically and tunefully, by a trained composer who obviously knows these pieces. The difference is that the musical instruments are items found in a commercial machine shop, around a cabinetmaker's workspace, or in a better-than-average home workshop. They include a lowly broom, which, of course, enhances Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The liner notes furnish a handsome photograph of Paul Dukas wearing Mickey Mouse ears, and the explanatory text on each piece is almost as wildly funny as the music.

The tonal range of the music Woody Phillips can get from power tools, especially drills and dremels, is simply amazing. He uses several sizes of power drills in "Ride of the Valkyries," in the hysterically funny 1st movement of Beethoven's Fifth, and, to obtain that busy-bee sound, in "The Flight of the Bumblebee."

One of the cleverest of all the parodies is the first one, the dawn theme from "Thus Spake Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss, made famous in the movie 2001, which uses a large drill press motor, table saw, hand saw, 50 gallon drum, pipes, and vacuum cleaner. The results are not only amazingly musical, they hazarded my recent knee replacements when I came close to falling out of my chair, I was laughing so hard. (The large drill press motor provides a growling bass that Schnittke would have latched on to for his "Faust Cantata" tango.) Another 2001 theme, Johann Strauss' "Beautiful Blue Danube," brings the album to a rousing close with a workshop orchestra of truly Mahlerian proportions -- musical saw, small & large drill press motors, 2 by 4s, pipes, 50 gallon drum, jointer, vacuum cleaner, anvil, bottles (blown on), framing square, hammer, hand plane, file, table saw, ratchet, pneumatic nailer, power mitre box, antique hand drill and hand saw. A "power" mitre box? I have a mitre box, but how would you power one up?

Anyway, if you want a treat, I recommend TOOLBOX CLASSICS. While listening you might want to pop HARDWARE WARS into your home video with the sound turned off, but don't eat popcorn; you'll probably swallow it the wrong way!

As an afficianato of classics done with love and humour since Spike Jones Does the Classics on 78, this is clearly one of the best.
All Warhorses to be certain, and all bringing a smile or guffah to the worthy listener. It is very hard to pick the best of this 4.0 cortege, but the complexities of the Tocata in D ring my power driver.
The very best of this genre use very accomplished musicans to acomplish severe musical challenges, and this is no exception.
I also note that some of the instrumentation on this superb compilation seem therminen at its best.
Only reason to not buy this cd is a lack of a sense of humor, but then there are those from Cambridge dons [or is it dunces] whose nose's are out of shape at Wendy Carlos' Heaven & Hell.
Even the Habanera has a fresh and vigourous sound, and the Air on G String is worthy of committed mayhem to possess.

I usually don't like anyone "messing" with the classics; I've heard some popular renditions of well-known pieces that make my neck cringe. But I was taken with this album the first time I heard it, and it has become one of my favorites. The "orchestration" of these pieces using hand and power tools is nothing short of brilliant, and I like the fact that the liner notes tell the exact tools used for each piece.

I particular like the Sabre Dance and the rendition of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth (which, in spite of what is says on the liner, is the full movement and not just an "excerpt"). The same is true of the Blue Danube, which has a bit of a surprise ending. And what else to do a bumblebee but -- a moto-tool?

This would make a good fit for friends who are not big fans of classical music, and for music fans who also do a lot of work with tools! I rather wished for a sequel, but I don't think we're going to get one. (Phillips did do a similar collection of Christmas songs, which I believe came first.)

not really that great, sampling it here is good enough.