A&M Gold Series - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

Advantages: A couple of excellent songs
Disadvantages: The rest of the album is dispensable and on the slushy side

.... Of course, she started out as a drummer, and by all accounts would rather have continued drumming than become a lead vocalist, great though she was. Onto the less good tracks: “Let me the one” and “Sometimes” are both OK ballads. Only OK. You also have “One love”, and “For all we know”, both verging on the sickly sweet but pleasant enough. And then we have the awful tracks (in my opinion, that is): “Saturday” has Richard on lead vocals, (well, let’s face it, Karen was the only choice for vocalist in the Carpenters) and sounds like it would fit in well on a cheesy 70s TV show, although it would sound dated even then, and it would be filler. The brass sound always reminded me of Herb Alpert – which I later realised makes perfect sense – Alpert was the man who signed them up (their label, A&M, is his label, named after Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss... Read review

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Advantages: Beautiful music, exquisite arrangements, sweet memories
Disadvantages: none (except having to wait ages for the 'Rainbow Connection') album!

...; Richard played piano, Karen (after some time) hit it off with the drums. In 1966, Karen and Richard entered and won their first big-time competition: the Hollywood Battle of the Bands. They were offered a recording contract, cut a few tracks, and were unceremoniously dumped. They were, it seemed, too ‘square’ for the simmering sixties and an age dominated by Dylan, Marley and the Rolling Stones. ‘He’s got a ticket to ride..’ 2 But in 1969, the Carpenters were invited to join A & M, a prestigious record company part owned by bestselling musician Herb Alpert. Alpert loved Karen’s voice and Richard’s arrangements and asked the duo to start recording for a first album: ‘TICKET TO RIDE’ Released: 1969 (*** out of 5) Highlights: Ticket to Ride (their first single, reached no.54... Read review

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Advantages: Wonderful transcriptions of JS Bach's majestic music; sensitive, tender, vivacious, effortless and fluid playing.
Disadvantages: Nil.

...Her latest CD from EMI Classics, ‘Bach/Works for Trumpet’, already tops zerbine28's list for Classical CD of the Year. (I know, I know, it's only April as I post this, but that's how strongly I feel about this recording.) Readers, if you please, do welcome young British trumpet player Alison Balsom, who now joins the ranks of Mssrs Miles Davis and Herb Alpert in my teeny-tiny list of favourite trumpeters. No, I never heard of her, either, before yesterday, when I first sampled her CD at the local Borders book and music shop. Released just this past January, the CD is an absolute stunner. The title is a little misleading, because Johann Sebastian Bach never wrote pieces specifically for the instrument (discounting the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, of course). Besides which, the ‘trumpet’ in Bach’s time... Read review

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