Your own Tijuana Brass compilations

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Mike Blakesley

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So, do most of you listen to the actual TJB albums, or are you (like me) an avid compiler, making your own "dream" albums from the various releases?

Here's a list of the compilations I've made.

HERB ALPERT & THE TIJUANA BRASS BOX SET
3 CDs, featuring about 85 songs from "The Lonely Bull" all the way through to tracks from the T.J.B. era, plus a few rarities

WRITTEN IN BRASS
A one-disk collection of tunes written by the TJB's stable of writers - mainly Sol Lake, Julius Wechter, John Pisano, Bud Coleman and Herb Alpert. 31 tracks in all. (Had to leave out about 15 songs due to space, but maybe a Part 2 will follow.)

THE BEST OF THE BRASS
My collection of all my absolute favorite TJB songs. These are the absolute cream of the crop as far as I'm concerned. The songs that never inspire me to hit the fast-forward button. (30 songs on this one.) I was determined to keep this to one disk, so I had to make several very painful eliminations. Again, Part II may be in the future.

COMPLETE GREATEST HITS
A collection of all the TJB's chart singles, from a list compiled on the Corner by Harry Neyhart.

MAKE A WISH
Collection of my favorites among Herb's solo material.

WORDS AND MUSIC
A collection of Herb's vocal efforts both with the Brass and after the Brass. This is a mellow, but surprisingly listenable collection. I elected not to put any of his pre-TJB material on here because it's so different from his later work. I put a couple of the Herb/Lani duets on for variety though, and also included "All In All" from the Michel Colombier WINGS album.

FOR OPENERS
A collection of the opening tune from each of the TJB albums. (I haven't actually made this one yet but it's in the works as soon as CHRISTMAS ALBUM shows up....Winter Wonderland will be a hidden bonus track.)

Other possibilities I haven't quite fleshed out yet:
TJB Show Tunes (Broadway and movie themes)
TJB Plays the Hits (collection of TJB versions of songs that were hits for other people)
TJB Rocks (songs like Love Potion #9, Wade in the Water, Walk Don't Run, Monday Monday and other rockers)

Anybody else have any great compilation ideas? Or do you stick by the tried and true original running order of the albums?
 
I've only done one compilation so far: I combined most of the two Greatest Hits albums, plus a few stray tracks from Foursider, onto one CD.

I could probably expand on the "Written In Brass" idea and create a "composer series". Have a collection of Lennon/McCartney, another of Bacharach, etc.
 
My "Written in Brass" actually started out as a 2-disk set consisting of not only the TJB-composed tunes, but tunes written by other A&M artists like Bacharach, Roger Nichols, etc. But for some reason it didn't sound as good that way. I could make one dynamite disk and one so-so disk, so I scaled'er back to one disk.
 
I've done two - the one mentioned by Mike in the starter post of thisd thread, and one other, a combining of the two A&M GOLD SERIES albums that were released in Japan/Europe. Those two combined, plus one other track (I added "Lollipops And Roses"), filled up one 80 minute CD-R. Since they're all hit material, I leave that one in the car for whenever I need that "Alpert fix".

Back in the cassette days, I did a Herb/Lani compilation that I've always meant to update for CD-R, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Harry
 
I'd never thought of doing a "vocals" disc, but it's an interesting idea that I might take care of soon. I don't know if I'd include songs like "Hello Dolly" or "Mame" (since these just feature vocals on one verse), but the others are fair game IMHO.

I really need to get my TJB songs into a database--it would be easier to retrieve a list sorted by composer, for instance.
 
For my Vocals disk, I started with a list of everything that Herb sings on -- even a couple of lines, like "Martha My Dear." Had to leave a fe out, and there are a few "near instrumentals" in there, which makes for a nice listening compilation and you don't get tired of hearing the same singer throughout.

Database sounds like a good idea....wouldn't take to long to throw together, really.
 
I have a database in Lotus 1..2..3 format, easily converted to Excel. Let me know if you guys want it. I believe it to be complete at least through COLORS - probably need to have the LOST TREASURES stuff added.

It's got Title, Album, Composers, Catalog numbers (CD and LP), sequencing, and year, so it's sortable on all of those fields.

Harry
 
I've thought of creating compilations with basically the same themes as described. I'd like to do a disc of vocals, as well as movie/Broadway showtunes. How many Bacharach songs in all were recorded? I was thinking maybe a CD-R with the name ALPERT PLAYS BACHARACH, or something. I've made two collections so far, with tracks mostly taken from DEFINITIVE HITS, CLASSICS VOLUME 20, and GREATEST HITS, as these were the only discs around at the time (as well as copies of CHRISTMAS ALBUM and KEEP YOUR EYE ON ME, acquired through CD Universe). I didn't combine everything on those CDs, just some tunes that I personally enjoy.

The first disc, which I call SOLO RARITIES, features 10 tracks from Mr. A's solo period. I decided to put each song in the order in which it was recorded (in another words, by year). The tracks are:

1. Rotation
2. Street Life
3. Beyond
4. Magic Man
5. Fandango
6. Route 101
7. Red Hot (1983 Remix)
8. You Are The One
9. Rocket To The Moon
10. Pillow

I did another one of TJB tracks I just called, RARITIES. For that disc, I chose:

1. The Work Song
2. Getting Sentimental Over You
3. What Now My Love?
4. Love Potion #9
5. South Of The Border
6. Lollipops and Roses
7. Never On Sunday
8. Casino Royale
9. America
10. So, What's New?
11. This Guy's In Love With You
12. Las Mananitas
13. My Favorite Things
14. Bullish

Our computer has IBM RecordNow, a program that lets you make compilations from discs you have.
 
I've not done a compilation as such, but I've remastered all of the albums (except Coney Island, I don't have it) on the PC using Sound Forge. A lot of them of course were from LP's, so I did the best I could and they sound fine (to my ears). I put the best songs of each album (Herb's solo works included) in chronological order on a CD-RW as MP3's for playback on my car stereo, and thats it!
 
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