John Lithgow - Farkle & Friends
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CD Details
Artist: John LithgowEdition: Music CD
Published: 2002
CD Release Date: 2002-06-18
Music Label: Kid Rhino
Soundtracks:
- Animal Crackers In My Soup
- Marsupial Sue
- The Bandshell Right Next To The Zoo
- I'd Rather Lead A Band
- I Got Two Dogs
- Carmencita
- The Hippopotamus Song
- The Remarkable Farkle McBride
- The Wrong Note Rag (with Bebe Neuwirth)
Music reviews of Farkle & Friends
Music Review: Suffers by comparison
Rating: 3 Stars
John Lithgow had a tall order. After recording one of the best children's albums of all time, he had to meet his audience's feverish demands for a follow-up. Unfortunately, Farkle and Friends falls short. On the first listen, this cd sounds similar to Singing in the Bathtub. But it lacks the previous album's energy, and after hearing it a few more times, I think that there are two problems. The first is that this album relies too heavily on the orchestra, lacking some of the lightness of the banjo or piano arrangements that characterized SITB. The more profound problem, though, is in the composition. Five out of the Nine tracks on Farkle are written by Lithgow, and although they echo the style of the classics he covers, they just don't get us singing along. His real genius is in the interpretation of the older tunes, and I would like to hear another album of those. Oddly, of the four covers on this album, one is a second take on a song performed more elegantly on SITB. All this aside, if you don't have Singing in the Bathtub, you need to purchase it. IMMEDIATELY. If you do have it, how about skipping this in favor of Trout Fishing in America's "Family Music Party?" Your kids will thank you.
Description of Farkle & Friends
The exuberant new album FARKLE & FRIENDS is a child's guide to the orchestra with a difference. In this self-produced CD, John Lithgow performs with a full-scale symphony orchestra. Several of the songs are originals that he co-wrote with conductor Bill Elliott. Among them is "The Remarkable Farkle McBride", the acclaimed symphonic version of the Simon & Schuster best-selling children's book of the same name. Narrated and sung by John, the colorful piece illustrates the individual instruments of the orchestra and then brings them all together for a rousing finish. Elsewhere the orchestra backs John with lively waltzes,'30s Hollywood swing, thumping marches, and sizzling salsa. Also featured are old favorites such as "Animal Crackers In My Soup", Irving Berlin's "I'd Rather Lead A Band", and Leonard Bernstein's "Wrong Note Rag", a duet that John sings with guest Bebe Neuwirth.One listen to Farkle & Friends confirms what anyone who caught an episode of TV's 3rd Rock from the Sun might've suspected: Not only is John Lithgow a born entertainer, the kind who gives off a great big whiff of Broadway no matter what stage he's tripping across, he's also curiously more kid than grown-up. Farkle, named for Lithgow's bestselling 2000 book about a musical child prodigy who tosses aside one instrument after another, whirls kids 2 and up (plus their parents) around a nine-song playground of Danny Kaye-inspired kookiness. "Marsupial Sue"'s rhyming-couplet lyrics hop alongside the titular kangaroo on her quest to escape a bouncy existence that "rattles her brain and gave her migraine"; "I Got Two Dogs" trails Fanny and Blue ("Betcha wish you had two dogs, too") and begets some of the most uproarious human barking and baying since Scooby-Doo; and "Carmencita" surveys the skies for a legendary damsel who twirled and tangoed till the dance floor launched her heavenward. Lithgow's five originals pack a delightful wallop weird enough to render the other tunes--such as a perfectly fun duet of Leonard Bernstein's "The Wrong Note Rag" with Bebe Neuwirth --playful piffle, but even the piffliest track, opener "Animal Crackers in My Soup," benefits from the full-orchestra treatment. Swing revival superstar Bill Elliott ("Independence Day," "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge") brings it on with gusto to match the singer-actor-author's guffaw-generating delivery. That Lithgow has barnstormed the kids' corner of the entertainment field should surprise no one and, in a perfect world, would send parents stampeding to his concert performances. More than anything, Farkle fuels a sense that Lithgow for little people should've happened a lot sooner. --Tammy La Gorce
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