April 17, 2010

Ray Stevens: The We The People Album, Part 2...

Hello one and all...the music journey today takes us to the current Ray Stevens album titled We The People. For those, like myself, patiently awaiting our copy of the album to arrive in the mail, we of course haven't heard any of the new political songs that are featured outside of the ones that have been made into music videos on You Tube...well, I can only speak for myself though. I plan on holding off listening to the songs until the CD arrives in the mail. I say this because there are a couple of places on-line where people can purchase an MP3 copy of the album. As is the custom, digital albums/MP3's, have snippets of the songs off to the side for potential customers to click and listen to song samples. As I mentioned, I'm holding off and won't give in and listen. I purchased my copy from Ray's official web-site store and I'm awaiting it's arrival in the mail. To refresh the memory of some of you, here are just some of the songs on this collection: "Caribou Barbie", "Throw the Bums Out!", "The Global Warming Song", "We The People", "Midnight in Baghdad", "Three Fractured Factions", "Dear Andy Griffith...", and "We Are the Government".

One of the things you'll notice between the collection offered at Ray's site and the collection offered at Amazon is the DVD addition. The collection at Ray's site offers customers a DVD of four music videos in addition to the CD of music. The Amazon offering eliminates the DVD extra and just offers the CD. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, there are 22 songs on the collection. In earlier times this would be a double album: 2 LP's worth of music.

This particular release features two CD's of Ray Stevens material. The songs come mostly from the 1970's. There are 26 songs...13 songs on two CD's. A good number of songs on this collection are album tracks that weren't commercially released as singles. This collection will give those who just bought singles a chance to hear several album songs from Ray Stevens that they were missing. The image of Ray on the CD's cover comes from 1975. One of the rare moments during this time period where Ray had a beard. The collection was released on the Madacy label in 2003. Since that time the full-length vinyl albums that Ray recorded for Barnaby Records throughout the 1970's have been released digitally at various on-line stores, most notably Amazon. Now, of course, you can perhaps still come across the vinyl albums on eBay. I have a nice collection of Ray Stevens on vinyl...both the LP and 45 RPM variation. This CD features material recorded between 1968 and 1975. Now, because of this, any song from the early '60s in Ray's career is instead represented via a re-recording. "Ahab the Arab", "Funny Man", "Harry the Hairy Ape", and "Just One of Life's Little Tragedies", all songs from 1962/1963 are provided on this collection by way of 1968, 1969, and 1973 re-recordings of those songs. A small list of the songs contained on the CD are as follows: "Sunset Strip", "Bridget the Midget", "A Time for Us", "Deep Purple", "All My Trials", "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", and others.

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