geenius's Full Review: Aerial Pandemonium Ballet [Remaster] by Harry Nils...
Warning: I added this album to the system and immediately wrote the review. Now that the picture has been posted, I suspect that this item is actually a rerelease of the stand-alone album, not the two-disc set that I describe below. My review refers to a two-disc import that includes both Aerial Pandemonium Ballet and its predecessor albums. Be warned that these two different editions exist.
First off, a clarification: This album is not just Aerial Pandemonium Ballet. It's actually a two-disc set containing both Aerial Pandemonium Ballet and the two earlier albums from which its material was drawn, Aerial Ballet and Pandemonium Shadow Show.
I grew up listening to Aerial Pandemonium Ballet -- my dad had it on vinyl. I loved it. Up until I was about 10 or so, I probably played it more than any other record in the whole house, including my own (with the possible exceptions of Nilsson Schmilsson -- I thought "Coconut" was hilarious -- and Cat Stevens' Teaser and the Firecat). But there was a mystery! After each song on the album, there was a little note: "Re-eq'd original tracks." "Slowed down and remixed." "Extra vocal track." It was obvious what had happened, since there were thumbnail pictures of the original two albums on the cover of Aerial Pandemonium Ballet. But I could only wonder what the original tracks sounded like.
In college I got my hands on a vinyl copy of Pandemonium Shadow Show and heard about half of the original tracks, but the other half eluded me until recently, when I discovered this two-disc set. NAB!
It's hard for me to express how amazing a work this album is. The liner notes explain it all: Nilsson, a very young L.A. songwriter who still had a full-time job as a bank teller (!), recorded Pandemonium and Aerial. A few years later, he was earning enough money from songwriting and recording that he was able to quit his day job. He listened to his earlier work and said (I'm paraphrasing here), "You know, these songs are pretty good, but I could have done better with them." And so he rerecorded them. Thus, Aerial Pandemonium Ballet.
Even Nilsson recognized that not all his "improvements" were improvements. Some definitely were -- for instance, removing most of the extremely obtrusive horn section from "Bath" and altering the melodies of "Daddy's Song" and "Without Her." But personally, I kinda like the drastically different rhythm of the original "Together" -- in fact, even before hearing it, I'd imagined that exact rhythm as a better fit for the song. (The original also has a bridge that was edited out for Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, producing a jarring jump cut.) And then there are all the extra songs you get, the ones that vanished along with the original albums -- "There Will Never Be," "Mr. Tinker" (awesome song, that one), a cracking good cover of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home." (There's also some self-indulgent silliness: the otherwise amazing "I Said Goodbye to Me" is completely ruined by an imitation Maurice Chevalier voiceover, and what's up with "Little Cowboy"?)
How much would you pay for all this? Don't answer yet! Because you also get four previously unreleased tracks tacked onto the end of Aerial Pandemonium Ballet! Two are forgettable, but two -- "Miss Butter's Lament" and "Sister Marie" -- are unforgettable. And as if everything I've mentioned weren't enough, the engineers of this album went back to the original tapes and cleaned up the sound. Suddenly I can make out lyrics that I'd always wondered about.
I showed the album to my dad. He said, "I want that for Christmas."
P.S. Recipe for melted girlfriend: One (1) play of the original "Sleep Late, My Lady Friend."
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
![Aerial Pandemonium Ballet [Remaster] by Harry Nilsson](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/dc/f8/d1/2002177427-177x150-0-0.jpg)
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.