CD Review: "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" Music from the Soundtrack
What a wonderful surprise — from out of the blue comes a CD with all the music from the classic animated TV special, without any dialogue and minus most of the sound effects. It’s a short recording, but so what? As Spencer Tracy said, “What there is, is cherce.”
Why would expect the soundtrack to a half hour special to be long? Take out the commercials, the dialogue sections without music and you are left with 21 minutes of classic compositions and irreplaceable performances.
This music is over 50 years old. No one expected -- or the special -- it to gain such iconic status. You would be surprised to find out how much material from years gone by has not been preserved properly. It's a miracle that so much music exists without the dialogue and sound effects -- only a few effects are still there, obviously because they were impossible to remove.
My only issue might be that the packaging and product information indicate exactly what these issues were. It should say "This is a mono recording," which is common on archival CD's. And more than that, it should have the disclaimer that, "due to the age of the recordings, some anomalies may exist that are unavoidable." Here's why: there are two obvious edits on the very first track. I had to return a copy to amazon because I thought the disc was defective. If there was a disclaimer, I would have understood and saved myself unnecessary trouble.
However, if Peanuts fans, or any fans, want to continue to focus on the negatives ONLY, and call things cash grabs, that will hurt all of us in the long run because companies will be convinced that no one wants these products. Here is what you do get to enjoy on this disc: one of Vince Guaraldi's finest, most evocative and eclectic scores. How many themes are nestled within those 21 minutes? How many lousy albums have longer running times and sell for double the price?
Sure, they could have included the soundtrack with the dialogue but that would have made it more expensive. Besides, Disney did that already on vinyl many years ago. And you have the dialogue on the actual special, if you have the DVD, you essentially have that soundtrack.
Enjoy life. A lot of it is made better by the existence of Peanuts.