| Product Summary | | Label: Rhino Records | | UPC: 00081227777524 | | Release Date: 9/26/2006 | | Buy.com Sku: 202907486 | | Item#: M34KPX | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 25050 | Format:  CD |
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| Song Listing |  |
Disc 1
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Leather - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos |  | | 2. Precious Things - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 3. Silent All These Years ~ Tori Amos | | | 4. Upside Down ~ Tori Amos | | | 5. Crucify - (Unedited Single Version) ~ Tori Amos | | | 6. Happy Phantom ~ Tori Amos | | | 7. Me And A Gun ~ Tori Amos | | | 8. Flying Dutchman - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 9. Girl ~ Tori Amos | | | 10. Winter ~ Tori Amos | | | 11. Take To The Sky (Russia) ~ Tori Amos | | | 12. Tear In Your Hand ~ Tori Amos | | | 13. China ~ Tori Amos | | | 14. Sweet Dreams ~ Tori Amos | | | 15. Mother - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 16. LIttle Earthquakes ~ Tori Amos | | Disc 2
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Cornflake Girl ~ Tori Amos | | | 2. Honey ~ Tori Amos | | | 3. Take Me With You ~ Tori Amos | | | 4. Baker Baker - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 5. Waitress, The - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 6. Pretty Good Year ~ Tori Amos | | | 7. God ~ Tori Amos | | | 8. Cloud On My Tongue ~ Tori Amos | | | 9. Past The Mission - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 10. Bells For Her ~ Tori Amos | | | 11. Yes, Anastasia ~ Tori Amos | | | 12. Blood Roses ~ Tori Amos | | | 13. Mr. Zebra ~ Tori Amos | | | 14. Caught A Lite Sneeze - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 15. Professional Widow - (Merry Widow Version) ~ Tori Amos | | | 16. Beauty Queen/Horses ~ Tori Amos | | | 17. Father Lucifer ~ Tori Amos | | | 18. Marianne ~ Tori Amos | | Disc 3
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Walk To Dublin - (Sucker Reprise) ~ Tori Amos | | | 2. Hey Jupiter - (Dakota Version) ~ Tori Amos | | | 3. Professional Widow - (Armand's Star Trunk Funkin' mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 4. Putting The Damage On ~ Tori Amos | | | 5. Bliss ~ Tori Amos | | | 6. Suede ~ Tori Amos | | | 7. Glory Of The 80's ~ Tori Amos | | | 8. 1000 Oceans ~ Tori Amos | | | 9. Concertina - (Alternate mix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 10. Lust ~ Tori Amos | | | 11. Datura ~ Tori Amos | | | 12. Sugar - (Sound Check Version) ~ Tori Amos | | | 13. Waitress, The ~ Tori Amos | | | 14. Snow Cherries From France ~ Tori Amos | | | 15. Doughnut Song - (remix) ~ Tori Amos | | Disc 4
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Sorta Fairytale, A ~ Tori Amos | | | 2. Not David Bowie ~ Tori Amos | | | 3. Amber Waves ~ Tori Amos | | | 4. IIEEE - (remix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 5. Playboy Mommy - (remix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 6. Beekeeper, The ~ Tori Amos | | | 7. Jackie's Strength - (remix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 8. Zero Point ~ Tori Amos | | | 9. Sweet The Sting ~ Tori Amos | | | 10. Ode To My Clothes ~ Tori Amos | | | 11. Spark ~ Tori Amos | | | 12. Intro Jam And Marys Of The Sea ~ Tori Amos | | | 13. Cruel - (remix) ~ Tori Amos | | | 14. Dolphin Song ~ Tori Amos | | | 15. Gold Dust ~ Tori Amos | | Disc 5
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Pool, The ~ Tori Amos | | | 2. Never Seen Blue ~ Tori Amos | | | 3. Daisy Dead Petals ~ Tori Amos | | | 4. Beulah Land ~ Tori Amos | | | 5. Sugar ~ Tori Amos | | | 6. Cooling ~ Tori Amos | | | 7. Bachelorette, The ~ Tori Amos | | | 8. Black Swan ~ Tori Amos | | | 9. Mary - (Tales Version) ~ Tori Amos | | | 10. Peeping Tommi ~ Tori Amos | | | 11. Toodles Mr. Jim ~ Tori Amos | | | 12. Demo Medley: Fire Eater's Wife / Beauty Queen ~ Tori Amos | | | 13. Playboy Mommy ~ Tori Amos | | | 14. Sorta Fairytale, A ~ Tori Amos | | | 15. This Old Man ~ Tori Amos | | | 16. Purple People ~ Tori Amos | | | 17. Here In My Head ~ Tori Amos | | | 18. Hungarian Wedding Song ~ Tori Amos | | | 19. Merman ~ Tori Amos | | | 20. Sister Janet ~ Tori Amos | | | 21. Home On The Range - (Cherokee Edition) ~ Tori Amos | | | 22. Frog On My Toe ~ Tori Amos | |
| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info |  | Very early on in her solo career, Tori Amos was routinely dismissed as a Kate Bush wannabe, and much fun was had at the expense of her underwhelming 1988 album as the leader of the misbegotten hair metal act Y Kant Tori Read. Quickly, however, the quirky redhead became one of the most popular female singer-songwriters of her generation. Although it was Sarah McLachlan who organized the Lilith Fair roadshow and so codified a whole generation of female musicians (for better or worse), Tori Amos's early albums defined the style. Intensely personal, flighty in both lyrics and performance, and oddly relatable, Amos's first four albums are touchstones of 1990s alt-rock. A PIANO: THE COLLECTION is an expanded and reworked re-envisioning of Amos's early solo career, with alternate mixes, rarities, and other surprises wound throughout the four-disc set. Essential for fans, A PIANO: THE COLLECTION is also a handy introduction for those who have come to Tori Amos only through her later albums. | | A Piano: The Collection is a mammoth undertaking by Tori Amos and Rhino Records. This box set collects album cuts, B-sides, unedited and alternate versions, demos, and seven previously unissued cuts. Making one's way through it is to enter a labyrinth, a parallel but alternate universe that traces the development of the artist from her earliest recordings (with the exception of Y Kant Tori Read, of course) through her transformation as a conceptual songwriter, musician, and artisan who has moved tumultuously through the pop world without, it appears, ever losing her vision or sense of herself. Amos produced this set, and Rhino cross-licensed material from Epic as well. Amos annotates each track here in the handsome hardbound book that accompanies it, which also contains a boatload of photos and an essay by Lorraine Ali. The set comes packaged under a large plastic piano keyboard -- this aspect of it is simply irritating. The "piano as part of the package" has been done before -- and done better -- in other artists' retrospectives. It's cheesy. | | The five discs here, however, cover virtually every part of Amos' iconic, often iconoclastic career. Virtually every part of Little Earthquakes is explored, which is why disc one is titled "Little Earthquakes Extended" (since basically three versions of the album were completed). These include the singles, such as the unedited 45 version of "Crucify," the alternate mix of "Flying Dutchman," and an alternate mix of "Mother." Even the unissued "Take Me With You" from the Little Earthquakes session is here, but it appears on disc two. With all the B-sides and alternates issued, Little Earthquakes is , in retrospect, a far more prophetic and ever wider ranging offering than the officially released original version. Much of Amos' restlessness as an artist is revealed even at this early stage. Beginning with disc two, the remainder of her recordings are picked from, rather than presented in their complete versions. From disc two on, Amos picks and chooses from her catalog, providing many alternate mixes -- perhaps she liked them better than the original versions. For instance, the presented mixes of "The Waitress" and "Baker Baker" are revelatory in their sense of drama and dynamic. A different version of "Caught a Sneeze" from Boys for Pele offers a sense of just how strange and beguiling this cut is. The B-sides include "Honey," which was the flip of "Pretty Good Year," and a live version of "Professional Widow," which came on the backside of "Hey Jupiter." Disc three is compiled from the rest of Pele, To Venus and Back, and Tales of a Librarian, and is simply loaded with remixes, including Armand Van Helden's badass take on "Professional Widow," the single remix of "Concertina," and "Sugar" from the soundcheck on the To Venus and Back tour. It's a dizzying and sometimes off-kilter and troubling disc, especially coming as it does smack in the middle of the package. However there is the "Walk to Dublin (Sucker Remix)" that has never been officially released. | | Cutting through the fourth disc, you can't help but notice that it does feel rushed as it covers material from the Epic period, including selections from Scarlet's Walk, Beekeeper, and From the Choirgirl Hotel -- it's wildly arrayed in textures and colors that don't seem to fit together. Add into the mix four tracks that have never been released, from who knows what sessions, and you have a serious car crash. But then again, there's beauty in this kind of mashup, too, in that the sonic chaos is even violent at times as you juxtapose cuts such as a remix of "Jackie's Strength" with the unreleased "Zero Point" and then jump to "Sweet the Sting" from Beekeeper; this mishmash, though creates and contains a new symmetry and a new series of angles with no center except for the artist herself. Discs three and four are real challenges, but also far more rewarding given all the cracks in the sidewalk that Amos chose to step on rather than jump across. Here is where the tale of the artist is told, actually, in the continuing conflicts of style and how to weave substance that was ever more abstract into these new soundworlds she'd chosen. The last disc contains 11 B-sides that were featured as additional tracks on singles and EPs, and there is one more unreleased cut in "Peeping Tommi." The final 11 cuts contain more flipsides and a medley of demos, which make for another kind of insanity. These contain three unreleased demos of "Fire Eater's Wife/Beauty Queen," "Playboy Mommy," and "A Sorta Fairytale" before folding back into the otherwise issued recordings. It's as if they're folded in to the mix in order (so to speak) to sort something out -- to break up the disparate tracks but in the end only making them more so. It's not only curious but infuriating, seductive, engaging, and sometimes utterly puzzling. | | After all is said and done, however, there is silence, and with that comes the sense and enormity of the sheer wonder of it all. Amos has pissed off everybody at one time or another, even her hardest core of fans who've stuck with her through thick and thin. Given that she's only been out there in the public ears and eyes for 16 years, she has gone through numerous phases and stages, and it reminds one of Bob Dylan, the true iconoclast who seems to be enjoying a resurgence in popularity in 2006. Amos' reach is long, and for all its beauty, there are knots, warts, cuts, and bruises. And that's what A Piano is, ultimately: an embarkation through a provocative and sometimes grotesque journey, through bruises and kisses which offer a new look through the past as it points toward the future -- which is exactly what a box set is supposed to do, ~ Thom Jurek |
| | Compilation Appearances |
| | Associated Artists and Works |
| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 09/26/2006 | | Original Release Date : 2006 | | Catalog ID : 77775 | | Label : Rhino Records (USA) | | Number of Discs : 5 | | Studio/Live : Mixed | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00081227777524 |
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