The Andrini Brothers were mentioned elsewhere at the Cafe a few weeks ago, when Jim posted some photos of them. I bought one of their records on eBay that very day, and today it arrived in the mail. What a disappointment! I had higher expectations for students of Bernardo de Pace, who I like a great deal, but I could only listen to a few tracks before I had to take it off. The opening track was played on tenor banjos, accompanied by piano, accordion and drum set, and the accompaniment stayed the same, when they switched to ELECTRIC mandolin for the other tracks. It was pretty commercial sounding, and the playing was not that good, with a number of missed notes. The difficult parts of Czardas were faked, the way that most mandolinists (Dave Apollon, Howard Frye, et al) faked it.
Has any mandolinist ever recorded Czardas straight and actually played all the notes? I would love to hear it some time.
Here is most of the LP back, showing their photo, bio and program.
Perhaps they were better in their younger days... (Hmmm, when they made the record, they weren't THAT much older than I am, so maybe I should take that back...)
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