THE MUSIC BOX

Music should be appreciated in context. For this reviewer, the context for the Band's Ivy League Album has annually been about three Manhattans and the square foot of rug reserved for cocktail party goers. The music sounded fine.

The band has new put this Album on one LP record, and it sounds better then ever. The original 1946 version was on Shellac, it was re-pressed two years later on Vinylite; the new LP combines the performance of the former with the sparkle of the latter, all on one nice big convenient disk.

One side of the new recording groups the Band's new standard repertoire of Ivy League marches, the other has four medleys. For some reason John Finnegan's recent Princeton arrangement has replaced the first two albums' Leroy Anderson Medley; I prefer the elder one, but that is probably nostalgia for the square foot of rug. Finnegan or Anderson, drunk or sober, the re-issued album is precisely what you'd expect--a good job.