Being stuck in the 80s, I have a lot of cassette tapes, which I've only just started to explore for my Year of Musical Thinking. Fortunately, my father's car (which I borrowed for a weekend trip to Wisconsin) is also stuck in time and has a tape cassette player, so I was able to relive some of my musical past on the way north. As I got onto I-94 toward Milwaukee, I popped Elaine Paige Stages into the dashboard player.
Ms. Paige is one of those quintessential musical theater performers of the 70s and 80s, having created the roles of Eva Peron in Evita and Grisabella in Cats. She, of course, has done many things since then, but as this recording was made in 1987, songs from shows of the 70s and 80s dominate here.
That actually may be one of my criticisms of this recital disc...um, tape. The range of music is not very broad. I believe the earliest show represented, I believe is Hair (1968). The latest is Cats (1982). I would love to hear some tracks from shows of the 40s and 50s--the so-called Golden Age of Broadway. Perhaps Ms. Paige has another recording that mines that era.
It is hard to argue with any of Ms. Paige's singing, which is strong up and down her "chest" register and reaches into the middle range without getting ugly. I have always liked her voice and find it less nasal than some of her belt singer comrades.
All of the tracks here seem over-produced to me, with large orchestrations and involved arrangements that sometimes get in the way. Well, it was the 80s and it wasn't only the hair that was big. I particularly wished that songs like "Send in the Clowns" and "Losing my Mind" could have provided a change of sonority to the big, bold offerings.
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