Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy Vs. Red Baron / Snoopy & His Friends
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Free Music Notes for Snoopy Vs. Red Baron / Snoopy & His Friends
Free Music Review: How Can You Be So Deft and Clumsy at the Same Time? Part 1
Hit: 4 Stars
My review title is a paraphrase of Charlie Brown's comment about Snoopy being so deft that he could catch a soap bubble in his mouth without popping it and so clumsy that he then tripped and fell on his face; however, I am asking this of those who produced this CD. How could you go to all the trouble to restore and re-release these long lost classics and then make so many stupid, annoying, incompetent mistakes in the process?
First, why did you put albums 1 and 3 on this CD and albums 2 and 4 on the other CD The Return of the Red Baron/Snoopy for President? It cannot be album length; each album is almost exactly 30 minutes long and a standard CD can hold about 80 minutes of audio. Besides the annoyance of having to switch CD's 3 times in order to listen to the albums chronologically, this also results in what is in fact a copy of the same recording of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" appearing twice on this CD. Simply putting albums 1 and 2 on this CD and 3 and 4 on the other CD would have prevented any duplicate tracks.
Second, why didn't you add the two singles not included on any of the 4 original albums, "Mother, Where's Your Daughter?" and especially the last Snoopy song, "Smallest Astronaut" while you had the chance? It's more than a little annoying to have to purchase a third CD, either the now OOP Anthology or the essentially identical The Best of the Royal Guardsmen in order to acquire these 2 songs along with 18 songs duplicated on the 2 album re-release CD's. With barely an hour's worth of music on each CD there was plenty of room even if you arranged the albums chronologically. Putting "Mother, Where's Your Daughter?" on this CD and "Smallest Astronaut" on the other CD along with arranging the albums chronologically would also have nicely placed a copy of all of the Snoopy pieces on the other CD so that Snoopy-only fans would need to buy only the other CD. Was it as simple as that? Was it pure greed on your part?
Finally and most unforgivably, how could you POSSIBLY put out a defective version of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" with the first 6 seconds missing? If the third album master was defective at this point, why couldn't you just replicate the undamaged first album master? Surely THIS cannot be the reason for the idiotic decision to put albums 1 and 3 on this CD so that angry customers could be told that the duplicate track is a good one? Worse, the fact that track 14 is the defective one makes listening to the entire Snoopy story a CD player programming task to play tracks 13, 1, and 15-18 in that order.
This SHOULD have been a 5-star review, but the collective stupidity displayed in assembling these two CD's cost a star, and I'm being fairly generous at that!
Free Music Review: Definitely better than the "Anthology".
Hit: 4 Stars
Those disappointed in the One Way "Anthology" on The Royal Guardsmen may want to pick up this disc. It contains the RG's first two LPs in their entirety and is a considerable improvement in sound quality. Actually, in some ways it makes a good companion to "Anthology" because while most of the tracks on that disc are mono, everything on this disc is true stereo. The RG's first album, "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" is presented first, opening with the classic title track. The rest of the album is okay being mostly filled out with cover versions of novelty hits of the day. These are performed well but not essential. The other two standout cuts on the "Vs." album are the RG's hit cover of The Young Rascals' "Baby Let's Wait" (and it's the first time I can recall hearing it in stereo on compact disc) and the Guardsmen original, "Sweetmeats Slide" which served as the b-side of the "Return of The Red Baron" 45. The next LP presented is the more interesting of the two. "Snoopy and His Friends" contains all three of the original "Snoopy" hits, each prefaced by a story presented as a radio broadcast, even though the stories are about World War I, "when radio didn't actually exist to tell the story" as the liner notes point out. The stereo mix of "Return of the Red Baron" is a little annoying, being instruments on one channel and vocals on the other. The second half of "Friends" is six excellent Guardsmen originals including "So Right" and "It Kinda Looks Like Christmas" both making their CD debut. The sound of the "Friends" LP is not quite as bright as the "Vs." LP but it's still good. The "story" portions of the "Snoopy" tracks have a few dropouts and the treble goes up and down a little during the dialogue but it sounds like the remastering engineers did the best they could with what I believe to be original master tapes. Overall the sound of the entire disc is very good. Original liner notes of both LPs are reproduced and there are some new notes as well. Overall, a good job from a label that's getting to be one you can always trust, Collectables Records. Shortly after writing the above review, claiming that Collectables was a label you can always trust, I discovered that the first several seconds of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" are missing the second time the track appears on this disc. I wrote Collectables about the error and was flat out told that the disc was correct, having been taken from the original masters! I don't know what irritates me more, the error on the disc, or Collectables customer service implying that I'm mistaken! I wrote another review and gave the disc 2 stars so that my two reviews would give it an average of 3.Free Music Review: Why Can't 'pop' music be like this again? Good stuff!
Hit: 4 Stars
I'm only 26 in years, but I grew up with music like this thanks to the family collection of LPs and 45s. Most of today's 'pop' is just plain awful (my opinion of course). Back in this era, even during such turbulant times that the late 1960s are known for, the Royal Guardsmen made their music FUN!
On this disc, you get their first and third LP's ("Return of the Red Baron" and "Snoopy for President", LPs 2 and 4 respectively, are on another CD sold here...with more good stuff). There is no 'remastering' done here...these will sound like they were ripped straight from the masters with no EQing done to them, just as you remember them on LP. This doesn't matter though...at least not to me. Not when the music is enjoyable and puts you in a good mood.
Of note, the third LP "Snoopy and His Friends" has been reissued countless times on LP, 8-track, and cassette through the 70s, 80s and 90s, under the title "Merry Snoopy's Christmas", which I once had. That was one other reason I picked this disc up. I wanted that album on a digital medium.
Collectibles (an 'oldies' reissue inprint of EMI / Capitol) made one minor error that has already been noted by other folks who bought this. Track 14 "Snoopy vs the Red Baron" is flawed, cutting out the bit of dialog before the song starts. Do NOT let this turn you away from buying this CD. Track 1 has this particular song unscathed. If this error were not present, this would be a perfect replication of the LP. I had to knock one star off for a 4 out of 5 though.
The error nonwithstanding, this is a 5 out of 5 disc of good pop and rock tunes. One should just be thankful that stuff like this even gets reissued at all. Alot of 'oldies' LPs never got their proper release on CD format in the U.S., and probably never will. Especially ones from acts like The Royal Guardsmen.
Noteable cuts:
- Snoopy vs. The Red Baron
- The Return of the Red Baron
- Snoopy's Christmas
(Probably the reasons this CD is bought, but why not? Really nostalgic. I still hear these on the radio during the holiday season. These songs sound more concise with the radio play that was done for them on the "Snoopy & His Friends" section of the CD)
- Airplane Song (My Airplane) (For those who didn't know, this song was co-written by Michael Martin Murphy, of 'Wildfire' fame. My favorite here. It's originally from LP 2 "Return of the Red Baron", but it sounds better here, among the other 'pop / rock' tracks, than on the "Return of" album, which featured more rock / R&B tunes than pop. See my seperate review of that CD.)
- Down Behind the Lines (Rather heavy rock outing for the Guardsmen.
- Baby Let's Wait (Perhaps their best known non-'Snoopy' outing. A top 40 hit in 1968, and still played on occasion).
Free Music Review: Hi, this is John Brumage
Hit: 4 Stars
I was the co producer (with Phil Grenhard) of the original Roayal Guardsman singles, and the first album.
I wanted to point out that the original recordings were layered by dubbing between two 2-track reel to reel machines. The "ping pong" stereo in not a stupid remix, it is the way the original masters sounded when thety were sent to new york for mastering.
Our little studio, Charles Fuller Productions, in tampa, florida, did not have any High-End audio stuff, so we sent everything "dry" to the label. The music track was created first, overdubbed a few times, then the vocals were layered on the second track. I seem to recall there are eight layers of overdubbing on SVRB.
I built most of the equipment from scratch, and created some of the sound effects, one of my favorites being the "bone biting" sounds in BEARS, which was a mouthful of potato chips!
Those were exciting days, i was 26 years old at the time, and travelled with the RG and another band "NOAH'S ARK" to engagements in central florida. If you have seen the movie "almost famious" you have an idea what it was like.
This was Vietnam Draft days, and the guys in the band were on all on college deferrment, so they didn't dare miss classes, so they were severely limited in the anount of travel.
One interesting side note, Most of the original songs by the RG were written by Richard Holler, who also write "Abraham, Martin, and John" he had a discipline for writing: Buy a newspaper every Day, write a song about SOMETHING in the newspaper. I recommend this to every songwriter i know.
Ok, enough blathering, i do not make a penny of royalties from sale of these records but i wanted to share a tiny bit of the history of these songs.
Free Music Review: A Very Good CD
Hit: 4 Stars
Having read the other reviews of this cd, particularly the ones denigrating its sound quality, I was a little reluctant to buy it. However, I wasn't disappointed.I found the sound quality to be very good. Not great, but very good. I know that some people don't care for that "ping-pong" stereo of that era (the vocals in one channel and the instruments in the other), but it is in stereo. And it's very difficult to find "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" and "Snoopy's Christmas" in stereo. Some reviewers have commented that the beginning of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" is clipped. However, bear in mind that the song appears twice on this cd. It's the opening track, which sounds great and is not clipped at all. And it's also track 14, which is supposed to be a segue from track 13. I can't vouch for what the segue sounded like on the original 1967 album, but I'll admit it's not a very smooth transition here.
Six out of eight of the Royal Guardsmen's Hot 100 hits are on this disc. The only hits missing are "Wednesday" and "Snoopy For President", so you could consider this a greatest hits cd. Recommended.