Savatage reunion

Around this past Christmas, I borrowed a ton of TSO from the library as I'm always listening to music at my desk and wanted to get "into the spirit." While I dig their instrumental stuff, I can't stomach their vocal material for more than about 20 seconds and I'm wondering if that's where things fall flat for most people.

I mean, Savatage wrote dumb songs (Hard for Love?) but it was always tongue in cheek and they were also capable - with the O'Neill/Oliva writing team that's also at work in TSO - of turning out some pretty poignant stuff. When I listen to TSO try for it, it just comes off pretentious and overblown. Yeah, we get it - you want big and meaningful. Go back to the drawing board.

Oh, and when they TRY to cover Savatage songs... Don't get me started on their version of Believe. These are the same people who not only DID it right, but who recorded it right so they had a permanent record of how it SHOULD be done and they managed to muck it up on revisiting the thing. And Jon still has it both from having seen him live AND the rather righteous acoustic versions that accompanied the last wave of Sava reissues, so I'm kind of at a loss there.

Anybody else feel this way about TSO? I really tried, but I'll need to excise the vocal tracks before I can really dig their stuff.

Nope I love TSO vocals and all. The stories they tell are great and capable of bringing me to tears with the emotion the songs convey. They do nothing for you but for me they do real well with big and meaningful.

I only own the first two TSO Christmas discs and like'em just fine, they get their fair share of spins during the holiday season.

Their Christmas stuff seems to work better for me than their non-holiday offerings. (I'm just an old softie when it comes to the Christmas season.) I bought their first non-Xmas album (Beethoven's Last Night) some years back, and though I really wanted to dig it and tried to get into it, in the end it came off pretty silly, so eventually I traded it.

I like going to see TSO live, but I cant sit and listen to their music. If you spent ten plus years working in retail and was force fed Christmas music from thanksgiving till Christmas eve for twelve hours a day seven days a week like I did, the last thing you ever want to intentionaly do is sit down on your free time and listen to more Christmas music!

Wrecked Neck wrote:

I like going to see TSO live, but I cant sit and listen to their music.

That's me, too...

Wrecked Neck wrote:

I like going to see TSO live, but I cant sit and listen to their music. If you spent ten plus years working in retail and was force fed Christmas music from thanksgiving till Christmas eve for twelve hours a day seven days a week like I did, the last thing you ever want to intentionaly do is sit down on your free time and listen to more Christmas music!

I understand completely. I hated the Christmas season when I worked in retail (12 years in total experience) because the music sucked. However, TSO doesn't play any music like the crap they force feed you in retail (traditional Christmas music) so I have no problem sitting and listening to it (and singing along because my voice is suited for a lot of their music).

Wrecked Neck wrote:

I like going to see TSO live, but I cant sit and listen to their music. If you spent ten plus years working in retail and was force fed Christmas music from thanksgiving till Christmas eve for twelve hours a day seven days a week like I did, the last thing you ever want to intentionaly do is sit down on your free time and listen to more Christmas music!

TSO actually gave me the opposite reaction. Working in retail, having all the "traditional" holiday music shoved down my throat soured me for years on Christmas music. A few years later, the first time I heard TSO made me seek out cooler, non-traditional types of Christmas music.

While they might be over saturated now, back in '97 or '98 (?), it was a breath of fresh air to me. I like both of their Christmas albums. The non-Christmas TSO stuff isn't for me.

Well this coming Christmas will be the first one in ten years I wont be in retail, so maybe in another year or two I will be able to tolerate it again. This year I'll take a pass lol

I can relate to the "working in retail" thing as well... I worked at a KMart for a couple of years in the early 90s - in the seasonal department, no less - so I was constantly around Christmas music from the time we started putting that stuff on the shelves in early September right thru to the end of the year. It didn't just ruin Christmas musicfor me, it damn near ruined Christmas for me, period. By the time the actual holiday finally rolled around I'd already spent so many weeks marinating in jingle bells and fa-la-la's that I was totally sick of the whole thing and couldn't even enjoy the day itself.

My first Christmas after I quit that job was the most enjoyable one I'd had in years.

I will say my old boss did try to change it up a bit and not force the traditional stuff down our throats all day long. Hell, he even bought a TSO Cd, but thought it was to heavy for the customers. But even changing it up, Christmas music is still Christmas music and got really really old.

I feel the same about TSO. I think I have pretty much all their albums. Got them pretty cheap. I only started buying them after I saw them about a year or two ago. To be honest. I really didn't care for seeing them live. Hearing them redo old Savatage songs too doesn't sit well with me. The vocals are just way too Broadway for me and the whole thing just comes off really cheesy to me. I bought a shirt at the show cause it had Criss' guitar on it with a dragon. I always get comments on the shirt too with people saying how they like them. If it didn't have Savatage attached to it I wouldn't even care.

The ONLY TSO song they play on local radio here, or even in dept stores, is Carol of the Bells. That's it. Nothing else. In fact, if I had never bothered to borrow my buddy's copy of one of their albums, I could've said I've never heard TSO save for freaking Carol of the Bells. And I'm not particularly a fan of their version.

Carol of the Bells?

You mean Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 24/12?

Lari wrote:

Carol of the Bells?

You mean Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 24/12?

Yes, the TSO version is based off a classical piece called 'Carol of the Bells'

Yeah that's the one. I had no idea it went by a different name.

Then you're not too familiar with Savatage, since that song predates TSO.

corplhicks wrote:

Yeah that's the one. I had no idea it went by a different name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Winter_Dead

Exactly. And that song was not re-recorded or anything. It was only re-released as is, under the TSO moniker.

That means whenever you hear it, you can go "Hey they're playing Savatage!"

Lari wrote:

Exactly. And that song was not re-recorded or anything. It was only re-released as is, under the TSO moniker.

That means whenever you hear it, you can go "Hey they're playing Savatage!"

That song will always be a Savatage tune to me. When that first made prominent waves on the radio and they were crediting TSO, I was like, "no way, that's totally Savatage". I didn't know the backstory to TSO at that point.

I'm only familiar with Savatage up to Handful of Rain.

I should also throw in there that the radio always announces the song as a TSO number, another reason why I never knew its origins. I'm also guessing it didn't gain commercial ground until the rerelease on the TSO album. Cool to know it was a Savatage number though.

Interesting, it peaked in 96. So it was a hit right off the bat. Huh.

Sorry, I would edit these together but I'm on mobile (and should be working).

The sad part of the story is that Jon Oliva to this day apparently still thinks the Savatage name was what held everyone back from success back in the day.

Savatage recorded that Sarajevo track and tried to get it on radio - nobody touched it. The exact same track with a different band name? Exploded.

I mean, cool to finally have your pay day, but that's got to be discouraging as hell...

Runicen wrote:

The sad part of the story is that Jon Oliva to this day apparently still thinks the Savatage name was what held everyone back from success back in the day.

Savatage recorded that Sarajevo track and tried to get it on radio - nobody touched it.  The exact same track with a different band name?  Exploded.

I mean, cool to finally have your pay day, but that's got to be discouraging as hell...

That track was all over radio as a Savatage track. I heard it the very Christmas DWD came out, and the DJ's trying to figure out how to pronounce "Savatage"..

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Runicen wrote:

The sad part of the story is that Jon Oliva to this day apparently still thinks the Savatage name was what held everyone back from success back in the day.

Savatage recorded that Sarajevo track and tried to get it on radio - nobody touched it.  The exact same track with a different band name?  Exploded.

I mean, cool to finally have your pay day, but that's got to be discouraging as hell...

That track was all over radio as a Savatage track. I heard it the very Christmas DWD came out, and the DJ's trying to figure out how to pronounce "Savatage"..

Interesting. I never heard it called a Savatage track when it was all over the radio.