0
168 -The Michigan Daily Weeketi Magazine - Thursday, December 5, 1996
The Michigan Daily Weekei M
Prog rock, cult heroes, country
stars round out boxed set crop
DOMINO'S
Continued from Page 3B
Advised by a local family friend to
check out the attractions on the north
side of town, Dr. Marc Baker, a tourist.
from Sydney, Australia, recently
brought his family to the Farms. "It's
just awesome, really fantastic. My
daughter who's 3 years old thinks it's
really fantastic, too. We were really
excited when it snowed in Michigan, so
coming here was a real Christmas treat.
The lights here are gorgeous. It was def-
initely worth the trip. We love it. We
think Ann Arbor is heaven on a stick,"
Baker said with giddy enthusiasm.
With preparation for the display
beginning in August, Domino's Farms
has become a sort of whimsical
Emerald City transformed into a neon
lights Bethlehem - with the occasion-
al Oldsmobile or Jeep Cherokee pass-
ing through.
The outdoor displays include a colos-
sal kneeling Santa, which is 38 feet tall
and 35 feet wide, a mammoth scenic set
depicting "The Annunciation," and a
few 30-foot-tall wise men on camels.
Since the drive-through display may
take only 15 minutes view, families are
encouraged to enter Domino's Farms
after their drive and warm up with a
steamy drink, cinnamon bread or.plenty
of hot Domino's pizza. With a
Christmas gift shop containing a
plethora of seasonal items for sale -
including ornaments and religious
Christmas cards - the trip indoors can
easily turn into an hour or more of
enjoyment.
Another indoor attraction is the
Celebration of Trees hallway - a
breathtaking panorama of 35 individu-
ally adorned holiday trees. Each profes-
sionally decorated tree has a separate
theme, and each tree is sponsored by an
institution or business from southeast
Michigan. Some of this year's sponsors
include Kroger, Parke Davis, Arbor
Radio, Forest Health Services and
United Airlines. Meijer sponsors one
holiday tree which is called "A Winter's
Wedding." It is beautifully enveloped in
shimmery silver ornaments and dreamy
veils. A Domino's pizza tree, in the man
eating hall, is decked out in none other
than miniature Domino's pizza box
ornaments.
Matt Jaeger, an SNRE junior, said he
was clearly impressed with the
Celebration of Trees hallway. "If I could
take one of these (trees) home with me,
The Hartford Courant
Maybe everybody was trying to
make way for the Beatles, whose best-
selling "Anthology" series was original-
ly planned to be boxed this season.
Or maybe everybody in rock has
already been honored with a handsome,
multidisc boxed set.
For whatever reason,
there seem to be far
fewer new boxed sets
in rock, country, and
R&B this season. In
fact, the biggest trend
in '96 may be that the
most obscure, cultish
bands are now afforded
their own boxed sets,
from the Misfits
(whose gloomy work is
presented in a tiny, cof-
fin-shaped $69 box), to Sarcastic rocke
Galaxie 500 and Pere
Ubu -- bands whose popular output has
never warranted a greatest-hits collec-
tion, let alone a lavish color booklet, an
exactingly designed package and a $50
price tag.
The future may have been foretold
when the side group Golden Smog
released a promotional boxed set that
pretended to collect a long and wholly
fictional history.
Still, there are a few big new entries
in the record industry's version of the
coffee-table book.
Neil Diamond's long career, all on
one label, gets its hearing on the triple
disc "In My Lifetime" (Columbia,
$45.99) with 16 of the 71 tracks previ-
ously unreleased, including a half-
dozen demos from a time when he was
primarily known as a songwriter. It
comes with its own cinematic, newly
recorded title track, -with samples of
voices from Barbara Walters to David
Letterman introducing him. It stops
short of his recent country "Tennessee
Moon" album, however.
Rhino Records has been a steady
sr I
source of worthy boxed sets. This year's
highlight is a sequel. "The Doo Wop
Box II: 101 More Vocal Group Gems"
($69.98) begs the question of how could
there be this many leftover songs after
Rhino's first, superb doo wop collection.
But it may have been the success of the
first that shook loose
the rights for some
gems that easily could
have made the first cut,
such as the Teen
Queens' "Eddie My
Love" the Cadillacs'
"Zoom," the Chips'
"Rubber Biscuit" and
Don and Juan's
"What's Your Name."
The four-disc collec-
tion shifts its focus
from the New York
Warren Zevon base to include groups
from the rest of the
country, as well as more female groups
and duets. As on the first, the classics
are cleaned up and presented as
pristinely as they must have sounded on
the street corners in the still of the night.
Another big Rhino
box that can't decide if
it's praising or ridicul-
ing an era (even the
written appreciation
seems slightly embar-
rassed) is
"Supernatural Fairy
Tales: The Progressive
Era" ($59.98), which
studies the overblown,
pretentious and inter-
esting era of prog rock,
complete with a new
Roger Dean cover. Glen Danzig, ex
Although hampered
by the lack of such key groups as King
Crimson and Pink Floyd, the box
includes the work of ELO to ELP, Yes to
Can, Focus to Faust. You can tell what
you're in for when there's only room for
10 cuts on most the five discs.
Rhino also presented the year's most
solid R&B project, the exhaustive and
quite listenable three-disc "People Get
Ready: The Curtis Mayfield Story"
($48.99) which stretches from
Mayfield's work with the Impressions
and "Superfly" to just before his fine
new album, "New World Order."
On a more modest project, Rhino
shows how well it can concentrate on a
single figure with a fine Warren Zevon
collection "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
(An Anthology)" ($27.95), that goes
beyond a double-disc greatest-hits retro-
spective with handsome packaging and
amusing notes by the artist about every
cut, from his golden early days in
Southern California and "Poor Poor
Pitiful Me" to last year's "Mutineer" and
such lost songs as "If You Won't Leave
Me, I'll Find Somebody Who Will.".
Cheap Trick, frequently mentioned as
an influence on bands like Smashing
Pumpkins, gets its due on the four-disc
"Sex, America,- Cheap Trick" (Epic /
Legacy, $45.99), a 20-year retrospective
that has the hits as well as a motherlode
of rare and rockin' material. About half
of the 64 tracks are
previously unreleased.
S m a s h i n g
Pumpkins, by the way,
entered the boxed-set
bonanza early in its
career with the release
last week of "The
Aeroplane Flies High"
(Virgin), a five-disc
box of singles and
dozens of unreleased
tracks from its "Mellon
Collie and the Infinite
Mism Sadness" sessions -
and a few New Wave
cover songs recorded in the summer.
A similar five-disc singles box is due
from Elvis Costello, whose live perfor-
mances with Steve Nieve, recorded in a
series of shows last spring (including
one in Boston), will be issued in a pack-
Elvis Costello recently release
age called "Costello & Nieve'
Bros., $26.99).
Country music got an eye-o
year when George Strait's I
went gold. So it's no surprise t
few sets prepared for this ye
overdue for such an appreciati
Haggard's rich career is cc
"Down Every Road 19
(Capitol, $55.99). Heavy on
fresh-sounding material fromf
his career, and including his
several other labels, it's a rich
tion of a pioneer who seems
by country radio.
"Portraits" (Reprise
$44.99), a lovely three-disc
Emmylou Harris demonstrate,
MARGARET MYERS/Daily
A brilliantly lit tree flanks the edge of the Domino's Farms lights display at 24
Frank Uoyd Wright Dr.
it'd save me a lot of time from hanging
up all those candy canes decorating my
tree," he joked.
On Dec. 31 when the Christmas
lights display is scheduled to be taken
down, all the trees will be donated to
charitable organizations throughout
southeastern Michigan. And after
expenses are met, all the proceeds from
the Celebration of Lights will also be
allocated to charitable organizations.
These groups benefit from a holiday
festival that is undoubtedly filled with
See DOMINO'S, Page 17B
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