A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary is a Garrison Keillor CD that brings Lake Wobegon fans back to a much more innocent and interesting time in this long-running public radio show. Aside from its 1987-93 hiatus, Companion has been on the air since 1974 and its best moments available from HighBridge Audio which is finally and slowly, too slowly according to me, re-releasing the early recordings on Compact Disc. Its most recent CD re-release, A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary, is a lot of fun. Kudos, by the way, for not trying to gouge the customer with the price of this set.

If as I have, you have grown a bit weary of Garrison Keillor using A Prairie Home Companion as a bully pulpit for his political views, reheated news from Lake Wobegon, and are a bit tired of the too frequent musical numbers featuring religious music, A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary is going to satisfy you thirst for funny songs, comic skits, and nice, humorous, and non-repetitive news from Lake Wobegon.

The first CD of the two CD 10th Anniversary opens with a few musical numbers in addition to the original Prairie Home theme, Hello Love. There is a fun rewriting of My Way, the orchestra plays Scott Joplin’s Cascade as well as another tune from the American songbook, One Hundred Years From Today.  These two musical numbers are interrupted by a short fake commercial for the Night o’Rest Motel.
The comedy bits on the first CD are Shows That Are No Longer With Us and feature Garrison Keillor at his funniest. It closes with a Prairie Home trademark, a series of fake funny commercials from the show’s “sponsors”A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary, Vol. 1

The second CD of this 10th Anniversary show features a great 20-minute long News From Lake Wobegon that includes news about how nobody picked up the complimentary tickets for the show at the Chatter Box Café, the Wippets’ winning season, the 10th anniversary of a local couple, and Keillor’s original story about working in a scullery.A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary, Vol. 2

Fans of A Prairie Home Companion musical numbers and old songs will certainly appreciate this second CD. There is a series of well-known oldies such as Red River Valley and also a series of classics from the American song book that are not performed very often such as Aba Daba Honeymoon (no, it’s not a wedding march composed by Fred Flintstone). The show closes with the singing of Psalm 23 sung to Amazing Grace.

A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary is a great 2 CD set any Garrison Keillor fan will appreciate. Gift wise, this one, because of its many older musical numbers, is more appropriate for the older fan.

A Prairie Home Companion 10th Anniversary
Garrison Keillor
Recorded Live July 6-7, 1984
2 CDs 102 minutes
HighBridge Audio 2006 re-release

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