I agree. When I was in college, I did a couple of fill-in shifts of the campus radio station. This was in the days of vinyl records. I once played the Canon at 45 rpm from a regular 33 rpm LP.
Nah, I like the slow versions. I guess to each his own.
I believe that would be Canon in G (more or less).
It was almost scary how normal it sounded. I mean, with most music, if you speed up the playback you can tell. Not so much with the Canon.
In honor of that, a friend made me a mix tape with it played at 78. That’s what I should have gone for in the first place.
I was 12 years old when the Pachelbel “thing” broke. I remember ridiculous ads in magazines telling how “hypnotic” the Canon was, and how it would instill a feeling of bliss, even ecstacy, upon one’s mind (similar to what Yojimbo remembered upthread).
This was not long after the Jonestown mass suicides, and talk of mind control and brainwashing was everywhere. I became convinced that if I heard Pachelbel’s Canon I might be robbed of my own free will and easy prey for religious crazies.
PDQ Bach did a lovely little recording…a classical radio station, with the motto All Pachelbel, All the Time.
I think it was WTWP[sup]*[/sup], Classical Talkity-Talk Radio.
- Wall-To-Wall Pachelbel.
I like the chorale version at the beginning of the movie “Ordinary People”.
Yes, that’s exactly what it was! I remembered the station call letters, but forgot what they stood for–thanks.
That’s more than a nitpick, it’s a correction that should probably be made in the thread title.
And yeah… it’s overplayed and the cello part sucks, but damn it’s pretty.
It’s one of the few overplayed classical works I don’t mind listening to, over and over again.
The question in the OP was “do you have other classicals that are way over played?”… oh yeah:
- Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
- Vivaldi: Spring Concerto from The Four Seasons
I wonder if Pachelbel would be upset at people overplaying this one piece of his and never playing anything else he composed.
Tran-Siberian Orchestra’s version, with words, is pretty damn awesome. I love listening to it in the car, because I saw them live a couple of times, and saw the lady and her comapnions that do the singing; every time I hear it, I see it, and also try to sing along. I fail, not just in comparison to that angel’s beautiful, perfect voice, but because I invariably start bawling in the middle. I can’t even TALK when I’m crying, much the less belt out this beautiful number:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45wmyMgyZuY
I too, am sorry for the fairy thread-poop >.<
He would probably just be glad that people finally wanted to hear the thing, 300 years later. 
I have a CD of various arrangements of the Canon, called “Pachelbel’s Greatest Hit [singlular].” And one of my cousins thought it was called “The Taco Bell Canon.”
It could be worse. He could be Albinoni.
Another former cellist checking in, who wonders what evil bastard of a cellist murdered Pachelbel’s mother, to prompt him to write this horrid revenge.