The Greatest Musical Hits

Ever been faced with the choice of impaling your hand to the keyboard of your PC with a letter knife or buying a CD such as this. It's a hard choice...

~ Buy with 4barsrest shopping

Featuring: Desford Colliery, Leyland, Tredegar, Fodens (Courtois), Black Dyke, Brighouse & Rastrick, Cory
Conductors: Stephen Roberts, Manfred Obrecht, Russell Gray, Nicholas Childs, Robert Childs, Alan Fernie, Gavin Lindsay, David Hirst
Soloists: Andrew Lord, Brendan Wheeler, John Ingman, Armin Bachmann.
Obrasso Recordings: CD933
Total Playing Time: 71.59 

The are a million and one things you can do with your cash other than buy this CD.

If this isn’t money for old rope, then I’m sure 4BR will be sued by bespoke heritage inspired twisted hemp dealers all around the world. The rope on show here is so old it was showing signs of fraying around the edges when Tuthankhamun was a lad. 

Do yourself a favour.

North Korean holiday

Invest your hard earned credit crunched cash in something that may give you a sense of not being totally and utterly taken for a complete idiot: The friends of Saddam Hussein campaign, a holiday to North Korea or putting money in a collection tin for hard up Lehmann Brothers Chief Executives to name but three.

Bottom of a very deep barrel

The sound you will hear when you place this on the CD player is not of tracks taken from various recordings of some of the world’s most famous brass bands (by the way, there is no such thing as a world famous brass band – just go down the pub and ask five blokes if they have ever heard of Tredegar Town Band, let alone doing a straw poll in the Central Democratic Republic of Congo, wondering of any fleeing refugee may know who Fodens (Courtois) is), but of the very bottom of a very deep barrel being scrapped until the musical fingernails bleed.

At least the recent ‘Greatest Hits’ inspired ‘Now that’s what I call brass!’ made the effort of making their release chronological, and having tracks of worth on it, even if that particular franchise is showing signs of reaching its sell by date pretty rapidly too.

Decade old

Here we get snippets from recordings, some over a decade old, cut and pasted together (with no effort to say which one comes from which band or previous recording), slipped into a CD case, with no insert notes and a cover that looks like its has been put together by a 13 year old on ‘Photoshop’ for a GCSE exam. 

Obrasso produce a great deal that is well worth the money, but this certainly isn’t one of them (Obrasso does have form with these type of 'Greatest' releases).

You really wonder how much this release cost to put together, and how much profit is in it on each CD sold. I bet the bands that are used so brazenly to promote it, do too.

Hard choice?

If you are tempted to buy, then before you do, just take a step back from your PC keyboard, take a letter opener and think whether or not it would give you more lasting pleasure to impale your hand on the desk in front of you, or spend £12.95 of your money on a CD that’s only real use would be as a drinks mat.

Or why not buy a John McCain/Sarah Palin ‘Presidential Victory ‘08’ sweatshirt on E Bay for $2.00? At least you can say it was an ironic purchase.

Hard choice eh?

Iwan Fox

~ Buy with 4barsrest shopping

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