Music Album Review: 'By Request: The Best of John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra'
Over the last 31 years, By Request: The Best of John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra has been in my music library in both cassette and compact disc formats and a favorite "listening experience." The cassette version, in fact, was one of five tapes I took with me on my 88-day study-abroad stint in Seville, Spain. I had a very cheap Walkman clone and I'd walk from my apartment to the College Consortium for International Studies' Seville Center four times a week with John Williams' music providing a bubble of the familiar amidst the very Spanish atmosphere of that lovely and ancient city in Andalusia. Considering how fond I became of that cassette tape (I still have it somewhere, even though it hasn't been played in over 20 years), it won't surprise anyone that By Request was among the first batch of compact discs that I bought after my first CD player and fledgling collection of CDs were stolen from my house. First, I bought only the