I suppose I might be a bit biased, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how well the CD holds up to repeated play. As any of you who have put together a CD know, you listen to each track a LOT while you're fine-tuning and balancing the songs. You record them in several different ways, and play them back to back for what seems like hours trying to decide if (for instance) this one is working better with concertina or acapella or if we should redo that one with the banjo a little louder or softer. And as we had some trouble burning the CDs, I also listened to at least part of a cut or two on each one to make sure it was static-free (note to self - next time, don't try to pack quite so much material on each CD) (note to anyone else with that problem - it may be a function of my computer, but Maxell discs worked better than Memorex for me).

In spite of all that, I've had a copy of the CD since mid-December, and it's still in the changer in my car (there's always heavy competition for those 6 prime slots!) and I still enjoy listening to it. There are some songs I like better than others ("Flying Fish Sailor" is one Charlie's sung for a long time that's really grown on me since I've been listening to the CD - there's a lot going on there that I didn't really catch until I had the CD in the car and was listening to it regularly) but even the ones that aren't my style are sounding good enough to my ear that I don't skip over them. I suppose that shouldn't be surprising - but my taste in music is not identical to Charlie's, and I have a lot of albums that were interesting for a couple of plays, then sort of drifted off into the big heap of "stuff I might want to listen to again some day" while I'm still discovering new little images or phrasings when I listen to Uncommon Sailor Songs.

However, I am a bit worried about what Charlie may decide to do for an encore....

JudyB
(the other half of Ipbar Productions)