"to venus and back" Songbook

Updated March 13, 2000


Jacquie P tells me that the piano/vocal/guitar sheet music for "to venus and back" became available on November 16, 1999, and you can find this, along with the Selections from Great Expectations songbook at www.sheetmusicplus.com. The "to venus and back" songbook is $29.95 plus shipping and handling (and for anyone who wants to know, the sheet music book for Great Expectations is $18.95). I have been told that www.eqsmusic.com is a good source sometimes as well. Many people have also seen the TVAB songbook at their local music store. The book includes all the studio songs and all the live songs too. However, the arrangements are for the studio version of those live songs unfortunately. (Thanks to toE knEe for the correction!)

Here are more details about this item sent to me by Brian Hoffman:

i just bought the venus song book... here is what is included:

venus orbiting

bliss
juarez
concertina
glory of the 80s
lust
suede
josephine
riot poof
datura
spring haze
1000 oceans

venus live.still orbiting

precious things
cruel
cornflake girl
bells for her
girl
cooling
mr. zebra
cloud on my tongue
sugar
little earthquakes
space dog
waitress
purple people

so as you can see there are some b-sides! cooling and purple people are new songs to the sheet music scene. so the book acts as a sort of compilation with the 'live' stuff. as you know it retails for $29.95. in my opinion, totally worth it. the pictures inside are right off of the album and there is no new artwork. most of the more piano pieces sound good too like 1000 oceans. feel free to email me at Datura_garden@hotmail.com for any questions


More details from Erin Martin, who posted the following to the Precious Things mailing list:

I got the TVAB songbook a couple weeks ago and am mostly happy with it. Glory of the 80's is the only song that I've noticed sounding off; the transcriptions of Lust and Bliss are divine. I wish they'd retranscribed songs from the live album; for the old songs, they just used the preexisting ones, including the inadequate Cornflake Girl. One problem with the book: (this could just be mine, let me know if it is!) Cooling was a big reason I got the book, but in my book, the first page of Cooling is the first page of 1000 Oceans. (However, 1000 Oceans is complete and correct.) I was just warning you and confirming that this is a universal thing. The rest of Cooling is very good though. All in all, I recommend the book highly.


Toriphile derf send me his thoughts on the new 'to venus and back' Songbook, which are different from what has already been reported. While some versions of the songbook have the first page of Cooling incorrect, derf's version was indeed correct. So be careful when buying it and make sure you get the correct version.

just wanted to tell you that i got the book for christmas and my copy had the correct first page of cooling which someone else mentioned was defective. also wanted to say that although time will tell, my first reaction is that i disagree with some other people and imho the arrangements are about as poor as ever. i would rank the arrangements for the books as follows:

bee sides (awesome ... very faithful transcriptions)
boys for pele (pretty good)
under the pink, venus (mediocre)
choirgirl (not that great)
earthquakes (pretty bad)

some songs start off great, like concertina, but just fizzle out. the ones that are more solo piano and voice are better, but even songs like 1000 oceans, josephine, and lust could have been much better. plus, it's irritating that half of the book is old stuff, but i guess finally having cooling makes up for it (excellent transcription of it, btw, although it uses the live version instead of the b-side version, thus completely omitting the fantastic bridge, which really is too bad) ... and it's also amazing as always to be able to see what tori looks like on paper. for example, datura, in terms of rhythmic, melodic, and structural complexity, is nothing short of genius ...


Comments from Erica Macy:

Hi, just a quick note about the tori song book for venus...Cooling is complete from the first page to the last in my book, and the first page is NOT the first page of 1000 Oceans. The version of the book I bought was released just a couple weeks ago, so I am not sure if it is a different one or what...but Cooling is complete and beautiful, and the book is fantastic!


Comments from Arjan Welles:

This is an excellent book! I got it some weeks ago and haven't had the time to play much from it but I already like it a lot! The book really is worth the bucks. Beautiful photos (and as far as I know the two beautiful images of Venus do not appear on the cd!). 'Bliss' was transcribed very accurately. 'Juarez' is one of those songs that is hard to play while sounding interesting. It mainly consists of one or two chords (F#m and B7). Too bad the string/piano section of 'Concertina' is only printed in the beginning of the songs (and not for the chorus!). 'Glory of the 80's', 'Josephine', '1,000 Oceans' are all pretty good. What I said about 'Juarez' also kinda goes for 'Riot Poof' and 'Suede'. And 'Datura' is not very accurate in the end but there's a lot of repetion in the end anyway. I do miss the what they call 'random singing of 'hey hey'' because I don't think it is THAT random. About the live-tracks: I can't believe they just copied the album versions' transcriptions right out of other books! I think the version of 'Cornflake Girl' is horrible when you are not that good in improvising. I thought it was a pity 'Mr Zebra' was not transcribed from its live version (since I absolutely adore this song). But all in all a pretty good book!



Go Back To Merchandise

Go Back To ToriNews


Please give me feedback, comments, or suggestions about my site. Email me (Michael Whitehead) at mikewhy@iglou.com