Cheap Pandemonium Shadow Show/Aerial Ballet/Aerial Pandemonium Ballet (Music) (Harry Nilsson) Price

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Customer Reviews of Pandemonium Shadow Show/Aerial Ballet/Aerial Pandemonium Ballet

The "Pandemonium Shadow Show" album is a 1967 charmer, introducing Nilsson's unique and brilliant singing/songwriting talents. It features classics like "1941" and "Without Her". It could be accused of being overly in the thrall of the Beatles, but that would be to deny the charm of "You Can't Do That", which manages to cram much of the Beatles stylistic repertoire into one arrangement. At least he's wearing it on his sleeve. This playfulness remained one of Nilsson's many endearing characteristics.

The "Aerial Ballet" album is a real revelation; an achievement on equal terms with the Beatles, rather than standing in their shadow. With only one non-original song on the album ("Everybody's Talkin'", the one Nilsson song I guess everyone's familiar with), the strength of the songwriting ("Good Old Desk", "I Said Goodbye To Me", "One", etc) would stand alone even without the often breathtaking vocal performances. Most of the songs dissolve into Nilsson's inimitable "scat" vocalising in the final verse, which adds a level of poignancy and poetry beyond language. Running out of lyrics was an opportunity for such a talent! The vocal multilayering is very effective, and, I guess, technically advanced for its time.

The "Aerial Pandemonium Ballet" remix album is an interesting addition for the sake of completion. It was more successful saleswise than the original two albums, but I find myself sticking more with the original versions of the songs.
The bonus tracks are all very worthwhile, particularly the spine-tingling "Wasting My Time".

The sound quality appears to be fine, although I have my doubts about the "remastering" on these BMG reissues. I have nothing to compare "PSS" and "AB" to, but the reissue of "The Point" (double with "Skidoo") sounds markedly inferior to my original CD of that album.
Now, speaking of reissues, what about the post "Pussycats" albums?

Everybody should be talking about it...
The original mastertapes were in shambles. When BMG went back to Harry's original masters for his first two albums for the Personal Best Anthology they found that the tapes needed tender loving care to bring out the best sound. Like lots of recordings from the same time frame, the tapes hadn't aged well.

This 2 disc set gets things right. Yes, there is still a significant amount of hiss but, trust me on this, it's better than having BMG reissue these classics using sonic solutions no noise (which was used on the Badfinger reissues from Apple--it's one of the reasons they sound so bad).

Of the three albums included here APB sounds the best. Harry went back and remixed many of these tracks reducing many of the overdubs and, hence, improving the sound quality in many cases. Fans should note, however, that the bonus tracks on APB here are different from those found on the US edition.

Good, but not great
After a long wait and a teaser re-issue of Pandemonium Shadow show and Aerial ballet, BMG has released harry nilsson's best two albums on 1 cd along with another cd containing his remix album. Though the jewel case advertises a "digital remastering," I have not found this to be true. Along with the fact that the albums contain a large amount of underlying tape hiss, there is no credit to the production team that has supposedly remasterd the discs. Don't get me wrong, the albums do sound great but I do not see any difference between these and the cd issues that came out last year and promptly went out of print. So if you are looking for a vast improvement over the vinyl issues, these re-issues are great, but if you are content with last year's cd issues, stick to those.