I bought the physical CD of the OLC recording of Bye Bye Birdie years ago but only listened to it a couple of times. Chita, of course, is fine and Peter Marshall does a nice rendition of "Baby, Talk to Me". Marty Wilde is actually pretty good as Birdie However, Robert Nichols as Mr. MacAfee is humorless and Sylvia Tysick as Kim is very annoying. In addition, the tempi are too slow, which undermines the piece's humor. I don't recommend the recording.
I hate the fact that in cases where a digital release was the only option to obtain incredible music like Copland's complete reconstructed film scores of Our Town and Of Mice and Men, those releases were only available for purchase for a very short period of time, then withdrawn (lack of sales, I assume), and now are gone perhaps forever. It's really a sad situation. At least with a physical CD, once you bought it, you would always have it even when a label inevitably discontinued its manufacture. |
