Frankie Valli & Four Seasons - In Season: The Frankie Valli & 4 Seasons Anthology
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Free Music Notes for In Season: The Frankie Valli & 4 Seasons Anthology
Free Music Review: a REALLY GREAT set of tunes!
Hit: 5 Stars
This IS really a great and comprehensive double c.d. set! I think the best collection so far. To attempt to list the highlights would be to list over half of these 51 tracks. Since the Four Seasons music is so well known I will just give a quick breakdown. From 1962 to 1994 the Four Seasons had 48 charted songs, 34 are here. Also 3 of their b-sides: "Connie-o" > "Silence is golden" > "Betrayed", and 3 that never charted, but many of us know them any way. They are: "Peanuts" > "The sun ain't gonna shine anymore" > "You're ready now". A real plus on this c.d. is to have the Frankie Valli tracks also! From 1966 to 1980 Valli had 14 charted songs, 11 are here, missing only 3 that did not do well.
This double c.d. set is very nicely presented. Included is a 31 page booklet with many details of their career, the track listing includeing the chart #, and some great pictures of The Four Seasons over the years. I highly recommend this set.
By Rhino in 2001, so of course this is all original recordings.
Extra information: If your interested in looking for the rest of the Four Seasons single releases they are:
1. "You're the apple of my eye" 1956.
2. "Santa claus is coming to town" 1962.
3. "Soon (I'll be home again)" 1963
4. "New mexican rose" 1963.
5. "That's the only way" 1963.
6. "Sincerely" 1964.
7. "I saw mommy kissing Sants Claus" 1964.
8. "On the good ship Lollipop" 1966.(from movie "Bright Eyes" starring Shirley Temple.
9. "You're nobody till somebody loves you" 1966
10. "Electric stories" 1968.
11. "Something's one her mind" 1969.
12. "Down the hall" 1977.
13. "Spend the night in love" 1980.
14. The dance remix of, "December 1963, oh what a night" 1994.
The 3 Frankie Valli songs NOT here are:
1. "We're all alone" 1976.
2. "Fancy dancer" 1979.
3. "Where did we go wrong" 1980.
This anthology is pretty comprehensive, but if your a Four Seasons fan and your looking for all of their single releases you'll know the 17 songs to look for.
Free Music Review: Oh, What a Collection!
Hit: 5 Stars
I picked this CD up after watching "Jersey Boys" in Manhattan, bringing back childhood memories of the best known of the Four Seasons songs. However, the Disc 2 Frankie Valli solo material was interesting too, and I must confess that I was not aware of what a prolific songwriter Bob Gaudio was, having co-authored such numbers as "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and "Who Loves You (Pretty Baby) ." Put another way, I was surprised a Four Season had authored these songs. I am glad I saw a number of the songs on Disc 2 performed by Frankie on a tour recently, including "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)," another Gaudio-authored number.
Still, the real party is with the Four Seasons. (I say the same thing with The Supremes vs. Diana Ross solo.) For some reason, I did not really know the No. #1 hit "Walk Like A Man" when I was younger, but now I back this spirited, masculine number as the best candidate to outdo The Beatles' best in that well-known double album of 1964, "The Beatles vs. The Four Seasons" ("You be the judge and jury," it said). Of course, in Frankie Valli's day, his falsetto voice made kids say he sang like a girl. There are moments of excess like "Peanuts" (I cannot stand that song), but how great his falsetto works through and through!
After they came out, I played my brother's 45s "Let's Hang On" and the driving "Working My Way Back to You," their biggest latter-day hit, over and over again. They had enough songs that made them sound distinctive from the 50s carryover popular groups that preceded the electric-guitar hard-rock era ushered in by the Beatles and faded soon afterward. Who doesn't love the precious "Rag Doll" with those heart-throbbing vibraphones? That harmony in "Dawn" and "Ronnie"? I am happy that Frankie entertains us with a number of the Four Seasons' greatest in his tours of the 2000s, but all of their greatest of the 1960s, from "Sherry" onward, can be found on this CD.
Free Music Review: Simply Awesome
Hit: 5 Stars
All the fabulous hits and many should-have-been hits ("Betrayed", "Patch of Blue", etc.) are here in the best remastered sound possible. Another great value (both CDs contain over 70 minutes of music) and listening experience from the wonderful folks at Rhino. This compilation will hopefully remind people that the Four Seasons, along with the Beach Boys, were the toughest commercial and artistic competition for the British Invasion groups of the Sixties, which was the most competitive and outstanding period of pop/rock music. Only problem here which is purely technical and unavoidable: the simplistic 1960's stereo mixes are sometimes lackluster-sounding (all the instrumentation is crammed into one speaker channel at the far end of the sound spectrum) and the songs cannot be remixed because the tracking tapes are lost. Also, for various reasons, some of the early hits (Ain't That A Shame, Little Boy, Dawn, Ronnie, Rag Doll, Girl Come Running, Let's Hang On) are presented in their original 45 rpm single mixes (in mono). Some people will have a cow over this, but this is the way most of these songs have usually been issued on CD.
It doesn't really matter much, though, because the Seasons had such a huge and powerful sound that it usually bowls one over no matter in which audio format it is presented. The melodies are some of the best ever composed in the pop/rock medium. Bob Crewe was a genius producer and Charles Calello was a wonderful arranger. Add that to Bob Gaudio's innovative Classical Music-inspired songwriting, Frankie Valli's stratospheric voice and inspired harmony background vocal arrangements, and you have a very special and unique pop/rock sound which is timeless, unlike that of some other famous Sixties/Seventies performers.
Free Music Review: This collection made me a fan!
Hit: 5 Stars
I've known of Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons for many years. They're typically that really screeching band you hear a few bars from the chorus of one or two of their hits on one of those late night commercials for the "fab fifties hit collection" CD.
Anyway, that's what I thought until out of a desperate attempt to wean my young children off the Beach Boys that they seem to need to listen to every evening and have been for the last two years or so, I went ahead and ordered this anthology.
Well, a whole new world of pop music opened up to me. Guess what, when you play a beatifully remastered CD on a high-end stereo system (one of those systems where the transformers are in separate boxes), they actually sound rather good! I was totally amazed at this band that I had pre-judged as being a bunch of 50's throwbacks that are only good for a screech or two during a CD commercial on late-night TV.
And, the stuff between the hits sounds good too. Sure, not all the tunes on this collection have the hooks of the great hits, but to me it's more interesting to hear a full range of what a band is/was capable of, not just the absolutely greatest hits.
One of my kids liked it too. So, if you're already a fan of this band I don't see how you could go wrong, unless you own all these tunes already, but if you're not a fan this CD set just might make you one.
And once you've digested this anthology, go get the "Let's Hang On and 11 Other Hits". It's got a different version of "Workin' my Way Back to You" and the brilliant "Beggars Parade" and a lot of other great tunes that didn't make it to their greatest hits albums.
Free Music Review: In Season Any Season--This Gets aTriple 5 Star Rating!
Hit: 5 Stars
....and not just 'cause I'm a card carrying member of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons fan club.This is the stuff, baby. Over two hours of the best from the Jersey Boys, including the pseudo-Vietnam War protest song, "Toy Soldier", jams with Wagnerian flavor ("Tell It To the Rain", "Beggin'", "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"), novelty tunes from the Wonder Who? with Frankie's Rose Murphey imitations and those awesome Frankie Valli solo projects.
This set features a 30 page booklet of pictorial history and a fine essay by Pat Sierchio of the ups, ups, downs and ups of Frankie, Gaudio, Crewe, Callelo, Devito, Long, Massi and mention of pop tunesmiths like Randell/Linzer, Russell Brown/Bloodworth, Judy Parker, Jake Holmes....and Crewe/Gaudio--who don't nearly get enuff props as those Madmen Across the Water Lennon/McCartney, but they oughtta!
I can see Justin Timberlake singing "The Girl I'll Never Know" or he and his buds do "Patch of Blue"--that's how strong these jams are. They say more in 3 1/2 to 4 minutes than some artists' entire CD. That's because these dudes put so much more in 3 1/2 to 4 minutes of recording...
I am always awed when, in these tunes, Gaudio's Shy Boy from the Wrong Side of the Tracks runs right into Crewe's New Yawk Wise Bombastic Rebel and Frankie's vocal procedes to capture that je ne sais qua perfectly. Not necessarily the soaring falsetto he does but...well, just listen to the tunes, "I Make A Fool of Myself" or "Save it For Me" or "Big Man in Town"....
In a word, it is fastastic. Get it now, and enjoy the heck outta it.