The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards - Spirit Of The Glen
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The Royal Scots Dragoon GuardsEdition: Music CD
Published: 2008-05-01
CD Release Date: 2008-02-12
Music Label: Fontana International
Soundtracks:
- Amazing Grace
- Sailing
- Highland Cathedral
- Last Of The Mohicans
- Hector The Hero
- Mull Of Kintyre
- Dances With Wolves
- Scottish Medley
- Canon
- The Day Thou Gavest
- Caledonia
- Over The Hills And Far Away
- Your Love Echoes Around The World
- The Green Hills Of Tyrol
Free Music Notes for Spirit Of The Glen
Free Music Review: Put Away Your Guns, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Are Back
Hit: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards is Scotland's only remaining tank regiment. The 24 pipers and drummers featured on the CD are part-time musicians and full-time soldiers with the Dragoon Guard. For over 200 years they have played in all the major theatres of war, including Iraq, where they suffered two fatalities. Currently based in Northern Germany, they recorded this album this past August in between tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For those of you who, like myself are either old, or have good memories, you may remember that in 1972 the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards recorded "Amazing Grace," and it went to # 1 in Britain and many other countries of the world. As Pipe Major Potter explained, "It's 35 years since Amazing Grace got to number one and so we were in talks about doing Amazing Grace again, and it came about that a person who'd come and seen the Regiment asked us if we would want to record it again.
"And from there, he then suggested that possibly not just do Amazing Grace, but actually do a full album. So we then went and recorded a full album with Universal, and we did that in August, while we were on the Edinburgh Tattoo for a two-week period, so it was quite a busy summer schedule, trying to record an album and perform in the Edinburgh Tattoo in the evenings."
Universal Music liked the idea so much that they signed them for £1 million pounds (which goes to charity) to record the album.
But, what about the music?
The music is outstanding. I have five or six CD's of bagpipe music, and there is sort of a predictability with them. Usually, there's some classic Scot and Irish tunes leading-up to "Amazing Grace." With "Spirit of the Glen," the Guards show their ambitiousness by beginning with "Amazing Grace 2007," which I predict will be the new standard by which Sir Robert Newton's most famous song will be judged. And, while there is some familiarity in the piece with some of the countless versions I have heard over the years, their 2007 version takes one through a gambol of emotions from tears, remembering all the times "Amazing Grace" has been played at the funeral of a friend or relative, to stirring elation, as one can sense the courage the troops had as they charged off to battle with it being played.
What separates "Spirit of the Glen" off from other bagpipe albums is the eclectic mix of music. From Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre" to "John Dunbar's Theme" from "Dances with Wolves.
In addition to "Mull of Kintyre," there are two other songs sung in the collection: "Caledonia" and "Your Love Echos Around the World," the latter being sung to "Amazing Grace," which to some may seem sort of sacrilege. To those that do not like "Your Love Echos Around the World" being sung to "Amazing Grace," I need to only point-out that "Amazing Grace" was once sung to the same music as "The House of the Rising Sun."
Other tunes on the CD are: "Last of the Mohicans," "Hector the Hero," Pachelbel's Canon," and "The Green Hills of Tryol," which are wonderful, too.
"The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards" has done me a great favor: I can keep their CD and throw out, or perhaps donate to the library, the other five or six bagpipe CDs that I have because none of them come close to giving me the listening pleasure I received from listening to "Spirit of the Glen."
Oh, as for "put away your guns" in the title of this review, I once attended the Gathering of the Clans at Grandfather Mountain (NC) in 1974. The first night, there was an older, true Scot, sitting on a rock, drinking a bit, listening to the pipes being played all around him. I joined him for a drink, and after a while he asked me in a heavy Scottish brogue accent, "Son, do you know how you get three bagpipers to play in the same key?" "No, Sir," I answered. He replied, "You shoot two of them."
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