Piano: The Collection (Spkg)

Tori Amos - Piano: The Collection (Spkg)

Piano: The Collection (Spkg)
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Music CD Cover

Artist: Tori Amos
Brand: AMOS,TORI
Edition: Music CD
Format: Box set
CD Release Date: 2006-09-26
Music Label: Atlantic / Wea
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. Leather (Alternate mix)
  2. Precious Things (Alternate mix)
  3. Silent All These Years
  4. Upside Down
  5. Crucify (Unedited Single Version)
  6. Happy Phantom
  7. Me And A Gun
  8. Flying Dutchman (Alternate mix)
  9. Girl
  10. Winter
  11. Take To The Sky (Russia)
  12. Tear In Your Hand
  13. China
  14. Sweet Dreams
  15. Mother (Alternate mix)
  16. LIttle Earthquakes
Music CD 2
  1. Cornflake Girl
  2. Honey
  3. Take Me With You
  4. Baker Baker (Alternate mix)
  5. The Waitress (Alternate mix)
  6. Pretty Good Year
  7. God
  8. Cloud On My Tongue
  9. Past The Mission (Alternate mix)
  10. Bells For Her
  11. Yes, Anastasia
  12. Blood Roses
  13. Mr. Zebra
  14. Caught A Lite Sneeze (Alternate mix)
  15. Professional Widow (Live, Merry Widow Version)
  16. Beauty Queen/Horses
  17. Father Lucifer
  18. Marianne
Music CD 3
  1. Walk To Dublin (Sucker Reprise)
  2. Hey Jupiter (Dakota Version)
  3. Professional Widow (Armand's Star Trunk Funkin' mix)
  4. Putting The Damage On
  5. Bliss
  6. Suede
  7. Glory Of The 80's
  8. 1000 Oceans
  9. Concertina (Alternate mix)
  10. Lust
  11. Datura
  12. Sugar (Live, Sound Check Version)
  13. The Waitress (Live)
  14. Snow Cherries From France
  15. Doughnut Song (Remix)
Music CD 4
  1. A Sorta Fairytale
  2. Not David Bowie
  3. Amber Waves
  4. IIEEE (Remix)
  5. Playboy Mommy (Remix)
  6. The Beekeeper
  7. Jackie's Strength (Remix)
  8. Zero Point
  9. Sweet The Sting
  10. Ode To My Clothes
  11. Spark
  12. Intro Jam And Marys Of The Sea
  13. Cruel (Remix)
  14. Dolphin Song
  15. Gold Dust
Music CD 5
  1. The Pool
  2. Never Seen Blue
  3. Daisy Dead Petals
  4. Beulah Land
  5. Sugar
  6. Cooling
  7. The Bachelorette
  8. Black Swan
  9. Mary (Tales Version)
  10. Peeping Tommi
  11. Toodles Mr. Jim
  12. Demo Medley: Fire Eater's Wife / Beauty Queen
  13. Playboy Mommy
  14. A Sorta Fairytale
  15. This Old Man
  16. Purple People
  17. Here In My Head
  18. Hungarian Wedding Song
  19. Merman
  20. Sister Janet
  21. Home On The Range (Cherokee Edition)
  22. Frog On My Toe

Free Music Notes for Piano: The Collection (Spkg)

Free Music Review: Tori Tori hallelujah
Hit: 5 Stars

Oh, boy.

What will I more likely than not spend the whole rest of this fall listening to with rapt attention? What is quite possibly the only thing that could ever assuage my grief for the horrid, woeful music year that has turned out to be 2006? Yes, indeed, it's A Piano, a stellar five-disc box set from the inimitable, indomitable Tori Amos. News of the forthcoming release of this brilliant collection broke back in June, and I spent the entire summer literally on pins and needles, counting every last microsecond.

So it finally, at long last, arrived yesterday. I couldn't find it at the record store first --- it wasn't with the box sets, and it wasn't with the new releases, and it wasn't in the A's, and you'd best believe I was gettin' mighty nervous at that point --- so I did something I never do: I asked the salesperson for help. (It's been my experience that more than a few record store employees have utterly no business being so, because they're complete morons who know nothing useful. A sample conversation with a typical such fop follows:

Moron: "Can I help you find something?"

Me: "Do you know a different alphabet than I do?"

Moron: "Umm, err, umm.... no?"

Me: "Then you're dismissed.")

This was monumentally important though, and I had already made up my mind that I wasn't leaving the store without this box set, even if it meant flipping out and causing a scene. (My devotion to Tori knows no bounds, alas.) So I asked the guy behind the counter, and a smile washed over his face, as if to say subliminally, ahh, yes, I knew you'd be here at some point. Consequently, a smile washed over my face, as if to say you magnificent, charming man, I love you already. Our eyes locked and we shared a million lifetimes in that one half-second. Then he turned, reached up his hand, and pulled the piano-shaped box from the shelf behind him. I honestly had to brace myself against the counter when I realized it was finally happening; the tips of my fingers were white as hospital sheets from gripping the faux wood surface. I was dizzy, I was giddy, I was humbled, I was electrified. The whole damn world had come close, and me, Tori, and our middleman were the only three people left standing. A Piano was moments away from being mine, all mine!! The mere thought of it devoured my feeble mind as insistently as a hungry, churning typhoon, and overtaken, I literally began to weep.

Uncontrollably.

When I got out to my truck brandishing this stunning gift, I was so bowled over by its fierce, uncompromising beauty that I couldn't even bring myself to open it. All I could do was stare wide-eyed and drool in quantity. For over three hours I was hypnotized, I was conquered by its cellophane-enshrined powers and charms.

Finally, when I could no longer stand not to rip it open and bathe in its promised bliss, I tore into the plastic packaging and began to carefully examine its contents. Sweet holy rollin' Jesus, people, this thing is pretty, and it's clear at once that major thought was put into this. This wasn't slapped together by selfish record execs out to make a quick buck, but by a genuine and thrilling artist who gives a flying flip what her fans both respect and expect. The box itself is in the shape of a piano --- a Bosendorfer, natch! --- right down to the protruding ebonies and recessed ivories. You lift up the keys to reveal a glossy, full-length book embossed with Tori's name across the bottom. The book alone is worth the purchase price: loaded with pictures from all the stops along Tori's fifteen-year musical journey (including the now-infamous 1996 shot of her breast-feeding a baby pig, from the Boys for Pele liner notes), a very nicely-written, concise bio written by Lorraine Ali, and extensive commentary and song analysis from Tori herself, explaining how certain songs came to exist and how it all fits together in her incomparable mind.

You lift the book from the box, and that's when you hit paydirt, baby: five discs, each in specially marked gatefold cases (also stamped with period-specific photos that, before you've even heard a note of music, succeed triumphantly in taking you back to wherever you were in your life when you first heard a new Tori tune), full of sensational art and wisdom. And grace. Always grace. When you see the songs all pulled together like this, compiled into one singular event, you truly do get overwhelmed by the immensity of Amos' obvious talent. It's easy enough to be knocked out by any one of her terrific albums --- believe me, I've been there and got the T-shirt and the sunburn --- but seeing the (mostly) best of each of them out on a playdate of this magnitude, you can only sit in meek, meandering awe of what --- in fifteen years that have passed in a fingersnap --- Amos has accomplished with just a pen and an iron will. There just aren't words to express the gratitude you feel for simply being alive to bear it witness.

Now me being me, I have a few quibbles with a some of the song choices (which I'll discuss momentarily), but none of that diminishes the elegant enormity contained in the thunderous triumph that is A Piano. Let's break it down disc by disc and take a closer look.


DISC A: Little Earthquakes extended

The 1991 album that started it all. Because we live in a time and atop a musical landscape in which Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, and twenty other females are consistent hitmakers, it's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that, when Tori stepped up at the turn of the decade to take her shot at success, she was pretty much all alone. Nirvana and Pearl Jam were exploding, Madonna was in a weird state of flux and searching for her next rabbit, and Garth Brooks and Mariah Carey --- stylish poseurs, both --- were on their way to becoming the decade's defining superstars, and here comes this flame-haired, classically trained pianist looking to become a pop star with a batch of songs about rape and religious rebellion? Listening anew, it's neither difficult to imagine why she was laughed out of every record company's main offices nor how her limitless tenacity made them all look like fools after Earthquakes went platinum. Plus, it's great to hear this album the way it was originally intended, with "Take to the Sky" and "Flying Dutchman" returned to their rightful place, and the single mix of "Crucify" replacing the horrid album version.


DISC B: Under the Pink / Boys for Pele

Except for a seven-song stretch on the final disc, welcome to the most consistently riveting chunk of this box set, the portion where Tori turns her focus to her best-ever record, the still-thrilling Under the Pink. She offers a never-heard song called "Take Me With You" that she began writing in the Earthquakes era, intended for Pink, and finished earlier this year; she also includes "Honey" --- perhaps the most well-known of all her b-sides --- which got kicked off the album at the last minute in favor of "The Wrong Band," a decision she says she's always regretted. (I'm in the minority on this one, but it was absolutely the right decision, and this disc misses "Band's" presence almost as terribly as it misses "Space Dog.") Cleaner alternate mixes of "Baker, Baker" and "The Waitress" appear, as well as a sparkling take on "Past the Mission" that is pure dynamite. (Less, umm, intense Tori followers often ask me what is my favorite of her songs, which is like asking which finger on my right hand I'm most partial to; I love them each in profoundly unique ways. I could probably narrow it down to twelve or fifteen tunes if I had a few hours to fret the task, but let it suffice to say that "Mission" --- highlighted by Trent Reznor's chilling, haunted reading of the chorus just behind Tori's vocal --- would easily make my top five.) The back third of this disc is devoted to Boys for Pele, with its classics "Caught a Lite Sneeze" and "Marianne," as well as that time-stopping live reading of "Professional Widow" that was included on the Hey Jupiter EP.


DISC C: Pele / To Venus and Back

Inexplicably, the Pele celebration continues on this disc (to the detriment of the set as a whole), with Armand Van Helden's bizarre and needless remix of "Widow" and a strange song called "Walk to Dublin" taking up valuable real estate. (Personally, I would've jettisoned "Blood Roses" and "Beauty Queen" from disc b and replaced them with this disc's "Hey Jupiter" and "Putting the Damage On" to free up space, which is exactly what I'll do when I create iTunes playlists based on these templates.) The big surprises here are the Venus tracks, which --- "Glory of the '80s" excepted; what a great song that was! --- I've never really been fond of. Listening today to "1000 Oceans" and (especially) "Lust," I realized what I fool I was dismissing them so quickly. And isn't it ironic that my favorite song from Venus --- the stark, stunning "Josephine" --- didn't make the cut, but the bloated, overlong "Datura" did? Vraiment!


DISC D: Scarlet's Walk / The Beekeeper / From the Choirgirl Hotel

Here's where the box set gets unnecessarily messy. This disc is just a bizarrely unfocused hodgepodge, which is a giant shame because the three albums it covers are each seminal, distinctly pivotal records in the Tori canon, and you'd never know it if you only had this unsteady grouping to go by. Avoid at all costs the irrelevant remix of "Jackie's Strength," which comes nowhere close to Choirgirl's original by any measure. Can you believe all the omissions from Scarlet's Walk?! Where the hell is "Taxi Ride"? "Mrs. Jesus"? "I Can't See New York"? Meanwhile, kudos to Tori for including The Beekeeper's title track. And I can live with "Cars and Guitars" and "Ireland" not making the cut. But, baby doll, my forever queen: "Martha's Foolish Ginger" and "Jamaica Inn" were the best combined nine minutes of music that inn-nee-bud-dee put their name on last year, and passing them over in favor of "Marys of the Sea" and a couple of inferior studio outtakes --- "Ode to My Clothes"?! Seriously?! --- is just NOT acceptable.


DISC E: The B-sides

Here's where she almost completely makes up for any shortcomings this smash collection may or may not have. Isn't it just beyond to finally have all the classic B-sides in one place? You'd have to buy over fifteen individual singles to get all these songs (the reason I know that is, I did just that!) and now they're all assembled, all together as a cohesive unit. I've been kvetching since I first saw the track listing, earlier in the summer, about the fact that she left out her burning, transcendent cover of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You," but I understand now that the whole point of this collection is to shine a light on Amos' songwriting, not other people's (which explains why her landmark covers of Cobain's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Tom Waits' "Time" also failed to make appearances), and so, by that token, the only major omission here is the astonishing "Alamo" (which appeared on 1996's German single for "Talula"), which --- using Bowie and the boys as a metaphor --- seems to be about daring to stare futility in the face and take a swing anyway. As motifs go, that one recurs in the best of Tori's work as often as any other (we'll see how brave you are, indeed), and that's the key observation you take away from this staggering achievement. At the outset of her brilliant career, Tori Amos got told by those in power that this "girl and her piano thing" would never, ever work, and it pissed her off just enough to stand up and prove 'em all wrong. And with A Piano, she shows us --- in a paralyzing, take-no-prizzners style that's all her own --- how she pulled it off. She's a sizzling, flaws-and-all rock in a sea of perfectly shiny zirconium: now and ever, the best there is.
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Piano: The Collection (Spkg) Poster

Intimate, confessional, poetic, and defiantly independent, Amos' songs touch on self, family, religion, femininity, pain, and love with a searching spirit that translates powerfully into songcraft. This momentous box spans the depth and breadth of her extraordinary repertoire, spotlighting both album versions and a sprawling tapestry of rarities. Disc A - Little Earthquakes extended Disc B - Pink And Pele Disc C - Pele/Venus/Tales Disc D - Scarlet/Beekeeper/Choirgirl Disc E - Bonus B-sides.

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