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Recording Reviews: 10/29/00
Sunday, October 29, 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Records are rated on a scale of one (poor) to four (excellent) stars:
Confederate Railroad is the connection between "Mayberry RFD" and the Hells Angels.
Charlie Daniels initiated Southern rock, but Confederate Railroad made it lots of fun.
These six guys went from Miss Kitty's nightclub in Atlanta to the national hit charts in 1992 with "She Took It Like a Man." The song about a lovers' breakup deals with a woman who got rowdy and profane when her lover left.
The group went on to stay on the charts with "Trashy Women," a fun song about a young man who likes his women older and heavily made up.
At the time, Nashville music veterans warned the band that its name was corny and inflammatory and that "Trashy Women" would be the end of the act. Instead, the band's name caught on, and the controversial song soared up the charts. At the time, lead singer Danny Shirley was asked how the band got on top. He grinned and replied, "By doin' everything wrong."
Not content to let well enough alone, the rowdy Southern rockers this time spoof rap on one cut:
"I don't turn my cap/'Cause I look like a sap/I Hate Rap/I'd rather hear a Chihuahua yap."
In addition to Shirley, the band includes Wayne Secrest on bass; Cody McCarver, keyboards; Mark Dufresne, drums; Gates Nichols, steel guitar; and Jimmy Dormire, lead guitar.
But there's a serious side, too, to this raucous group. Gripping stories unfold in the songs "Daddy Never Was the Cadillac Kind," "Mama and Jesus" and "When You Leave That Way, You Can Never Go Back."
All their hits and a few new songs are on this excellent 15-song album. Confederate Railroad is still touring, playing Southern rock the way it was meant to be played.
-- Jerry Sharpe
It is all too rare nowadays for a French opera to be performed or recorded with a French-speaking cast. If a cast is assembled in which even one or two leads have French as their native tongue, it's an accomplishment.
So it is with special pleasure that we may welcome the return of this magnificent 1946 recording of Saint-Saens' ever-popular biblical saga -- which happens to be enjoying a revival at the Metropolitan Opera this season -- once more with non-French performers in the leading roles.
The language matters more in French opera than others, because the way the vowels are formed is so distinctive and determinate to the coloration of the phrases. This was the first complete performance of the work, and the recorded sound was not optimum even in its day, but engineer Ward Marston has done yeoman's work for Naxos. This pressing turns out to be eminently listenable on today's state-of-the-art equipment.
In any case, the performances of Corsican Jose Luccioni and Parisian Helene Bouvier in the title roles are exemplary -- he a Samson of both strength and subtlety, she a luscious-voiced seductress whom no audiophile, at least, should be able to resist. And conductor Louis Forestier is authoritative to the nth degree.
As a bonus, there are arias from other French opera's brilliantly vocalized by the stentorian Luccioni.
-- Robert Croan
Bedrich Smetana is best known for his comic masterpiece "The Bartered Bride," generally considered the linchpin of Czech national music. In point of fact, Smetana composed seven other operas, of which the one most widely recognized -- though hardly a repertory piece anywhere except for Slovakia and the Czech Republic -- is "Dalibor," which had its premiere in Prague in 1868.
Surely, there could hardly be two theater pieces more different. "Dalibor" is a tragedy based on an incident in Czech history, requiring singers with big dramatic voices and staging in the grand manner.
The knight Dalibor has killed the brother of a noblewoman, Milada, who wants him punished. When she finds it was in revenge for the killing of a friend, however, Milada relents, falls in love with Dalibor and dies in a failed attempt to rescue him. It happens that Dalibor and the murdered man both played the violin, allowing the hero to use music as a secret signal and also demonstrate the musicality of the Czech people.
The present performance, conducted by Yoram David, is excellent right down the line, with special praise going to the stentorian -- yet also sensitive -- vocalism of tenor Valerij Popov in the title role and Eva Urbanova as Milada.
-- Robert Croan
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"Rockin' Country Party Pack,"