PS Classics Offers Holiday Super Sale - Over 60 CDs Marked Down to $9.95

Just in time for the Holidays, PS Classics boasts over 60 CD'S marked down to just $9.95.

PS Classics celebrates Broadway hits and Americas most popular songs.

You can get Howard Sings Ashman, Where the World Mine, The Marvelous Wonderettes, Dear Edwina, Philip Chaffin: When the Wind Blows South and Jackie Hoffman: Live At Joe's Pub for just $74.95.
Click below to order these 6 CD's:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/sc_cart.cgi?7014208255133439

You can see all the CDs at http://psclassics.com/

Founders Tommy Krasker & Philip Chaffin tell the story behind PS Classics:

One evening in the fall of 2001, about a year after we'd founded PS Classics, we sat down and forged a five-year plan. During our first year in business, we'd released three CD's - a solo disc, a songbook, and a vintage musical restoration - and with that in mind, we charted a course of three albums per year for the next five years. It was a fanciful wish-list, composed without any thought as to how we'd actually finance these CD's, or how they'd sell. (As longtime readers of this column know, we weren't what you'd call smart businessmen in the beginning.)

We mention this now because Tommy was on the phone last week with the head of another record label, and the label head casually asked, "How many albums did you put out this year?" And Tommy did the quick math, from Xanadu (PS-858) to The Marvelous Wonderettes (PS-874), and said, "Seventeen." And then they moved on to other topics. And then three days later, the phone rang, and it was the other label head, and he said, as if continuing the conversation, "Let me ask you: how did you manage to put out seventeen CD's this year?" And Tommy Responded, sort of avoiding the question but unwittingly answering it at the same time, "I have no idea - I'm too tired right now to figure it out."

Our five-year plan had called for fifteen albums over five years; we managed to put out seventeen albums this past year alone. And where our initial plan had called for albums purely in a music theatre vein, this year we released our first opera, our first comedy album, and our first soundtrack. Not to mention two archival discs and six cast albums, which were never part of our original plan either. (But of course, in 2001, who could have imagined that independent labels would start producing a good chunk of the Broadway and off-Broadway cast recordings?) And yet, when all is said and done, there's not one album we would have chosen not to release just for the sake of a few extra hours of sleep. Since June: Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie's three-act opera The Grapes of Wrath; solo albums by Jason Danieley, John Miller and Philip himself; the original off-Broadway cast album of The Marvelous Wonderettes; the soundtrack of the independent film Were the World Mine; our star-studded studio cast recording of Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich's Dear Edwina; Jackie Hoffman's solo album, live from Joe's Pub; and a two-CD set of Howard Sings Ashman. A set of releases that left us exhausted, but also gratified and proud.

PS Classics has changed enormously over the last eight years. Once we got past our humble beginnings (in the first few years, Maury Yeston used to lovingly refer to us as a "Pop and Pop operation"), we began to gravitate towards more albums that strayed from our "chosen field" (music theatre); we started to favor artists who had a deep connection to the music they were performing, even if it veered from the Broadway repertoire - since our tastes, too, were varied. (We did an interview early on, in 2002 or 2003, for a Broadway radio station, and the interviewer asked us what music we currently had in our CD players. I think he was expecting us to say Kern or Loesser or Sondheim, but Philip responded "The Dixie Chicks." The poor interviewer didn't know who they were, and changed the subject.) I think it was our first album with Rebecca Luker, the glorious Leaving Home, that pointed us in a new direction, where the most important thing was no longer the nature of the repertoire, but the talent of the artist and - something equally important - what the artist brought to the material.

And once we'd expanded the possibilities of repertoire, the increase in output was inevitable. If we saw or heard something unique, we longed to record it. We received an E-mail in May of this year simply titled "award-winning musical film soundtrack." We had no idea what was inside - heck, it could have been spam (we get fooled a lot) - but it was director Tom Gustafson pitching his new film Were the World Mine, which had been making the rounds of - and cleaning up at - various film festivals. Tom knew we had never released a soundtrack, but armed with knowledge of our catalogue, our audience and our outlook, he thought we might be a good "fit." And when we saw the film, and watched the audience laugh and cheer, and found ourselves doing the same, we thought so, too. Although we'd be very happy if every person reading this column purchased our CD, we suspect we'd be even happier if everyone reading this column bought a ticket to the film (and then you can purchase our CD - hey, we can be a little mercenary); it's that good, and, in these tumultuous political times, that important.

Speaking of unique projects: Jason Danieley wrote us a year ago. He was in the middle of a stagehands' strike-induced break from Curtains and had time to pursue a private dream. He invited us to attend a show he was doing at the Zipper Factory in New York and noted, "In my mind it's not a cabaret/concert piece as much as the beginnings of a band with a recording and touring future. I'd be interested in your thoughts and vision." At that time, we were putting finishes touches on four releases, so we didn't come armed with much of the "vision thing," but we definitely came armed with curiosity. And to our delight, Jason had indeed formed a band (ultimately christened The Frontier Heroes), and a marvelous one at that, with a back-porch Americana sound all its own. And the astonishing part is that Jason never got lost in the concept - if anything, it seemed to liberate him. If you've heard Rebecca Luker soar on "Getting Over You" (Leaving Home) or Luba Mason's stirring intensity on "Calm Before the Storm" (Collage) or Jessica Molaskey's beguiling reinvention of "Summer, Highland Falls" (Sitting in Limbo), then you know the pleasure of hearing an artist exhilarated by new kinds of material; Jason Danieley and The Frontier Heroes offers that experience. It fuses ragtime, blues, country, folk and Broadway standards; I don't think we would have dared release it in Year 1, but we couldn't not release it in Year 8.

So things have definitely changed at PS Classics. And yet, the more things change... Eight years later, it's still just the two of us working here full-time, assisted by the same gifted, indefatigable souls who've been around for pretty much the whole ride, including art directors John Costa, Derek Bishop and Jeff Hardy; webdesigner extraordinaire Robbie Rozelle; and engineer Bart Migal, who's had a hand in just about every album since our fourth. And through it all, the one big constant has been our affection for the artists, for the repertoire, and for the final product. Forever polishing our albums, long after common sense has told us to stop, we've been known to change the sequence at the last minute, or the cover art; to throw out a track, or add one - the kind of down-to-the-wire refinements that drive our distributor and our manufacturer crazy. We changed the sequence on Kerry Butler's CD at midnight the night before it was to ship to plant -- someone came up with a better order. ("Is it too late to change it?" Kerry asked, and we replied, as we always do, "It's too late when it's in stores.") Although our catalog has grown exponentially, and our product grown more diverse, we remain an artist-driven label: eight years later, it's still about the singers and the songwriters, and we strive to showcase them just as convincingly as when we were putting out only three CD's a year.

So as the holidays approach, we leave you with seventeen recordings for 2008, representing literally thousands of artists - actors, authors, musicians, engineers, designers - at the peak of their talents. We're already hard at work on releases for 2009, and although we don't anticipate the quantity will approach that of 2008, from what we've heard so far, the quality will match it note-for-note. Look for more of the solo albums and songbooks that remain our bread-and-butter; expect more cast albums, of course, plus - who knows? - perhaps a soundtrack, a comedy album, or an opera or two. And as a teaser, although our last vintage musical restoration was in 2005, we're hard at work on two of those. See you back here in 2009, when we will - no doubt - once again turn our five-year plan on its ear.