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. 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