Babes In Arms (1999 City Center Encores! Cast)

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Free Music Notes for Babes In Arms (1999 City Center Encores! Cast)

Free Music Review: A breath of fresh air
Hit: 5 Stars

Part of the fun is in the casting: while it's hard not to love the cast of the other album (most of whom are members of the Varese Sarabande/Fynsworth Alley stable of performers), this cast is made up of young people that someday you'll be proud to have known about before they were big. David Campbell appears likely to become one of the stage's preeminent leading men (assuming he doesn't abandon theatre for TV, movies or pop music) -- his singing is gorgeous, his acting confident. Erin Dilly is every bit as good, and registers more strongly because she has better songs (including "The Lady is a Tramp" and "My Funny Valentine"). Everyone else sounds fine and appears to be having fun; supporting leads Christopher Fitzgerald and Jessica Stone stand out. Everyone sounds *young*, a trait appropriate to the characters but not present on the last album.

An additional treat is the inclusion of scraps of dialogue to set up the tracks. We've all heard many of these standards many times before, but it's much more interesting to have them set up by lines from the book -- the fight that precipitates "I Wish I Were in Love Again", the story that provokes "Johnny One Note", et cetera. It makes the album sound like a show and not a collection of randomly assembled pop standards.

And standards they are. That's the main reason one should want to own either album -- the songs are without exception so delicious that I often finish playing it and want to put it back on immediately. The DRG album gets the edge over the New World album here, too, as it preserves the music and the more innocuous lyrics of the lovely but no-longer-PC "Light On Our Feet".

All that remains to be said -- all that needs to be said -- is that the album is pure magic. If you haven't gotten around to buying it, give it a chance.

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