There are some things I don't talk about here because they're too esoteric, and then there's this, which I feel like I have to talk about _because_ it's so ridiculously esoteric.
Like, honestly, a lot of TV shows, there are Doctor Who episodes that have varying edits. These edits tend to be very minor. Sometimes the wrong master tape is sent to a station - for instance, the version of "Resurrection of the Daleks" I taped off PBS growing up had no music or FX track for the second half. There was also a well-known early print of an episode of "Carnival of Monsters" sent to Australia that used a rejected re-arrangement of the theme put together for the tenth anniversary, the so-called "Delaware" theme. As far as I know nobody has specifically said why they wound up not using the theme, but once I heard it I didn't have any questions as to why they made that decision. The fourth episode of "Carnival of Monsters" was also edited for its 1981 rebroadcast, at the request of the director, to fix a particularly egregious special effects failure. There's also the case where the official audio release of The Celestial Toymaker has narration applied so as to obscure the completely gratuitous and unnecessary use of a grossly offensive racial slur in an earlier episode.
There are other edits as well. For instance, a number of times Doctor Who used popular music of the day on the soundtrack - The Master is seen listening to King Crimson's "The Devil's Triangle" in The Mind of Evil, for instance. Where this gets relevant is in Jon Pertwee's debut as the Doctor, Spearhead from Space, there is a montage of a doll factory soundtracked with the Fleetwood Mac song "Oh Well". Some releases have the music, some don't.
Well, it turns out the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. There are a couple of Youtube videos which miraculously haven't been taken down for copyright claims addressing an even more esoteric edit to this sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkSnVNDGRx8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f9QWqA6ppI
Towards the end of the sequence, there is a brief shot of dolls' shoes the version broadcast on the Dallas, Texas PBS station KERA. (While doing some research for this post, I learned that there are apparently no longer any PBS stations in the US showing classic Who, as the BBC will no longer sell them to anyone but BBC America in the States. I find this regrettable in the extreme and perfectly emblematic of the way the BBC has, for the past several decades, let down American fans and hobbled any attempts the show has made to appeal to prospective viewers.)
Anyway, MarcoPolo31West in his video refers to the shot as "curious", but frankly it's about the least interesting piece of obscurantist trivia I could imagine about the show. It's literally a two second shot of dolls' shoes. I am, however, delighted that somebody (a) noticed and (b) cares even a little bit about such marginalia.
Friday, 12 June 2020
Thursday, 11 June 2020
Shaft
OK, today I want to talk about the Shaft theme song. The connoisseurs may talk about "Hot Buttered Soul", but this song, this is probably the biggest defining moment of Isaac Hayes' career. I mean, for real, this thing is still _the_ definitive sound of blaxploitation funk, and that's with, like, Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack to "Superfly" as competition. Have you _heard_ the soundtrack to Superfly? It's fucking AMAZING!
The theme to "Shaft" is one of those songs that forever dances on the line between being badass and goofy. Wah-wah guitar has become completely, indelibly identified with the goofier parts of the '70s, for instance, but Charles Pitts' guitar here is good enough to transcend those associations. Same way, the lyrics? Those are some utterly goofy lyrics. Hayes sells them, though.
No, the goofiest thing about Shaft is that everybody in the world felt like they had to do their own version of it, no matter how completely and totally unsuited they were to tackling Hayes' funk barnburner. Tony Orlando and Dawn did a version on their TV show. Did you know that? Look, here's some analog hole video to prove it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ5GNeyHezU
I actually don't listen to the Isaac Hayes version. I just love listening to these bizarre detritus takes, sometimes hopelessly unfunky, sometimes surprisingly funky.
The first people to get their hands on the Shaft theme seem to have been the string cover version people. This was a huge thing - Enoch Light and the Light Brigade did a version, the Hollyridge Strings did a version. What they were doing, well, I don't know if it was that different from what groups like 2Cellos do now. If the idea was that adding a bunch of strings would make the song more mellow, well, it tended to turn out stranger in practice. The Hollyridge Strings' version has these big boxy drums and psychedelic phasing on the title. Plus the wah-wah is fully intact. All of the other lyrics get replaced with instrumental ba-ba-bas - now it is true that the original song used a word that was considered slightly profane at the time, and hinted towards the word "motherfucker".
The Enoch Light version is even weirder. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade did some weird goddamn shit for stuff that's thought of today as schmalz. Like instead of opening with wah-wah funk we have like fuckin' tabla. If the rest of the playing is occasionally a little stiff, the percussion here is driving and powerful. We also have a fair bit of sax in the style of GE Smith and the Saturday Night Live band - not a style I usually am fond of it but it works OK here.
Alan Hawkshaw over in England did his own version. Hawkshaw, well, he has a reputation of being one of the funkiest of the British '70s TV and film composers, along with Alan "Bullet" Tew, and Hawkshaw definitely lives up to that reputation here. The wah-wah is fierce, and the arrangement opens with the stark dramatic feel that characterizes much of his best work. After this the ensemble gets filled in by some tuned percussion. It's fascinating to hear all the different timbres different arrangers approached this with. You can do a lot with this song and still have it recognizable. Now, on this one, having the organ take the melody lead is perhaps not as strong a choice as it could be, but the persistent wah-wah here definitely makes this one a keeper. Like Enoch Light's version Hawkshaw's is instrumental.
Sammy Davis Jr. - I mentioned this one in one of my early posts, I think. This has a whole new set of vocals and boy, if you thought the original lyrics were stupid, you should hear Sammy's take. This is complete, pure, 100% cornball cheese, the sort of thing that renders parody unnecessarily.
The Onstage Majority - Oh! Now we're getting into the real shit here - private press lounge covers. This, again, was a HUGE thing. There are probably hundreds of private press lounge records with different versions of Shaft. I've only heard a select few, myself. Honestly, it is difficult to break these down and differentiate them. What brings this one is not only an organ that's more energetic than Hawkshaw's, but the distinctly un-funky lounge lizard delivery of the lyrics. Stick around to the end (I haven't) and you can hear their ten minute "Jesus Christ Superstar" medley!
The Social Circle - Another private press lounge version! The rest of the record is pretty much made up of very '70s medleys - they, too, have one from Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as one from Cabaret. Then their last is of '30s and '40s classics. I think the reason I kept this around is the very clear presence of the Mellotron, which is a musical instrument I'm sort of a sucker for. It's extremely badly played - in fairness, it's not really the sort of instrument suited to an up-tempo funk song in the first place. The vocals don't have the same unctuous vim as the Onstage Majority's version, but it's still fantastic to hear how less accomplished ensembles try to essay the interrupted "motherfucker" bit of the song.
The Esquires LTD - This is actually from a Numero comp of records from the Bahamas. In contrast to other versions, this rendition has more of a laid-back feel. I appreciate its easy groove. It's also more stripped down instrumentally, with no horns. The lead vocalist's diction is not 100% - I suspect English is not his first language. He's also dealing with backing singers who blatantly miss their cues on the "shut your mouth" section, leading it to be a total trainwreck. That said, his delivery is fairly impassioned and soulful, compared to the awkward recitation one tends to get from cover versions. It doesn't hurt that the group is far more in sync instrumentally than they are vocally.
Henryk Debich - Oh, I do believe we're into the disco era here. This sounds distinctly like a disco beat. The piano notes during the intro are also very reminiscent of the "Jaws" theme. We also for some reason have a whole shitload of phasing going on here. I'm not sure how necessary it is, but I like some nice psychedelic phasing so I can't complain too much. There's a tremendous amount of emphasis on the bass timbres when the main melody hits. The recitative portion is absent altogether - instead there's a big dramatic hit and then we're straight onto the finale, with some nice drum breaks. Another distinct and high quality take on the theme.
Decimo - Did I say Henryk Debich's version was disco? Oh, this is disco. It goes on for quite some time - ten minutes worth! '78 was a little late to really expect Shaft to be a disco floor-filler, but hell, you could say the same for "Night on Bald Mountain" I guess. We have an excellent string-heavy interlude section added here, and if it's not the _best_ such I've heard, it certainly gives it more of an epic feel, particularly when it's being used to accompany a guitar solo with a pretty filthy, psychedelic tone for a disco record. By the time we get to the breakdown the song has built up a serious disco groove.
South Carolina State College Jazz Ensemble - There are two sorts of private press '70s records where you're most likely to find a version of the "Shaft" theme: Lounge records and school jazz band records. This is a college jazz ensemble record and therefore is more tight and professional than you would hear from a high school group. The fact that they've worked up an arrangement of Shaft at all in '79 says a little something about their relative ambitions or lack thereof, mind. Still, the arrangement is suitably punchy. There are probably better version of this song on school jazz band records, and there is probably someone who has listened to every single school jazz band record from the '70s still known to be in existence and can tell you precisely what the best versions are. Still, this is a solid take, even if it's perhaps a little over the top in its arrangement. No wah-wah at all here. It's all about the horns.
Cheer-Accident - I find this deconstruction, from 1991's "20 Explosive Dynamic Super Smash Hit Explosions!" comp, to be extremely endearing. Cheer-Accident here sort of pioneer these sorts of supremely fucked up deconstructed versions of songs like "All-Star" by Smashmouth _avant la lettre_. I'm not musically versed enough to be able to tell you exactly what they're doing here, but the guitar sounds like Robert Fripp on a particularly bad day in 1974 - just a completely hellish maelstrom of noise. Oh, and the vocal section, the singer essays as though he is trying to choke out the lyrics while literally being strangled. Followed by an abrupt switch to a different recording where layers of voices, all out of tune with each other, sing the "He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman" line. Then the song goes to repeat the same song-ending hit over and over again in an aggressively anti-rhythmic manner, the same sort of systematic personality breakdown as portrayed in "Fracture" except more unrelenting. It's fucking brilliant, is what I'm saying.
So I've spent an hour listening to that wah-wah funk figure straight writing this post and I haven't tired of it yet. I tip my hat to you, messrs. Hayes and Pitts.
The theme to "Shaft" is one of those songs that forever dances on the line between being badass and goofy. Wah-wah guitar has become completely, indelibly identified with the goofier parts of the '70s, for instance, but Charles Pitts' guitar here is good enough to transcend those associations. Same way, the lyrics? Those are some utterly goofy lyrics. Hayes sells them, though.
No, the goofiest thing about Shaft is that everybody in the world felt like they had to do their own version of it, no matter how completely and totally unsuited they were to tackling Hayes' funk barnburner. Tony Orlando and Dawn did a version on their TV show. Did you know that? Look, here's some analog hole video to prove it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ5GNeyHezU
I actually don't listen to the Isaac Hayes version. I just love listening to these bizarre detritus takes, sometimes hopelessly unfunky, sometimes surprisingly funky.
The first people to get their hands on the Shaft theme seem to have been the string cover version people. This was a huge thing - Enoch Light and the Light Brigade did a version, the Hollyridge Strings did a version. What they were doing, well, I don't know if it was that different from what groups like 2Cellos do now. If the idea was that adding a bunch of strings would make the song more mellow, well, it tended to turn out stranger in practice. The Hollyridge Strings' version has these big boxy drums and psychedelic phasing on the title. Plus the wah-wah is fully intact. All of the other lyrics get replaced with instrumental ba-ba-bas - now it is true that the original song used a word that was considered slightly profane at the time, and hinted towards the word "motherfucker".
The Enoch Light version is even weirder. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade did some weird goddamn shit for stuff that's thought of today as schmalz. Like instead of opening with wah-wah funk we have like fuckin' tabla. If the rest of the playing is occasionally a little stiff, the percussion here is driving and powerful. We also have a fair bit of sax in the style of GE Smith and the Saturday Night Live band - not a style I usually am fond of it but it works OK here.
Alan Hawkshaw over in England did his own version. Hawkshaw, well, he has a reputation of being one of the funkiest of the British '70s TV and film composers, along with Alan "Bullet" Tew, and Hawkshaw definitely lives up to that reputation here. The wah-wah is fierce, and the arrangement opens with the stark dramatic feel that characterizes much of his best work. After this the ensemble gets filled in by some tuned percussion. It's fascinating to hear all the different timbres different arrangers approached this with. You can do a lot with this song and still have it recognizable. Now, on this one, having the organ take the melody lead is perhaps not as strong a choice as it could be, but the persistent wah-wah here definitely makes this one a keeper. Like Enoch Light's version Hawkshaw's is instrumental.
Sammy Davis Jr. - I mentioned this one in one of my early posts, I think. This has a whole new set of vocals and boy, if you thought the original lyrics were stupid, you should hear Sammy's take. This is complete, pure, 100% cornball cheese, the sort of thing that renders parody unnecessarily.
The Onstage Majority - Oh! Now we're getting into the real shit here - private press lounge covers. This, again, was a HUGE thing. There are probably hundreds of private press lounge records with different versions of Shaft. I've only heard a select few, myself. Honestly, it is difficult to break these down and differentiate them. What brings this one is not only an organ that's more energetic than Hawkshaw's, but the distinctly un-funky lounge lizard delivery of the lyrics. Stick around to the end (I haven't) and you can hear their ten minute "Jesus Christ Superstar" medley!
The Social Circle - Another private press lounge version! The rest of the record is pretty much made up of very '70s medleys - they, too, have one from Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as one from Cabaret. Then their last is of '30s and '40s classics. I think the reason I kept this around is the very clear presence of the Mellotron, which is a musical instrument I'm sort of a sucker for. It's extremely badly played - in fairness, it's not really the sort of instrument suited to an up-tempo funk song in the first place. The vocals don't have the same unctuous vim as the Onstage Majority's version, but it's still fantastic to hear how less accomplished ensembles try to essay the interrupted "motherfucker" bit of the song.
The Esquires LTD - This is actually from a Numero comp of records from the Bahamas. In contrast to other versions, this rendition has more of a laid-back feel. I appreciate its easy groove. It's also more stripped down instrumentally, with no horns. The lead vocalist's diction is not 100% - I suspect English is not his first language. He's also dealing with backing singers who blatantly miss their cues on the "shut your mouth" section, leading it to be a total trainwreck. That said, his delivery is fairly impassioned and soulful, compared to the awkward recitation one tends to get from cover versions. It doesn't hurt that the group is far more in sync instrumentally than they are vocally.
Henryk Debich - Oh, I do believe we're into the disco era here. This sounds distinctly like a disco beat. The piano notes during the intro are also very reminiscent of the "Jaws" theme. We also for some reason have a whole shitload of phasing going on here. I'm not sure how necessary it is, but I like some nice psychedelic phasing so I can't complain too much. There's a tremendous amount of emphasis on the bass timbres when the main melody hits. The recitative portion is absent altogether - instead there's a big dramatic hit and then we're straight onto the finale, with some nice drum breaks. Another distinct and high quality take on the theme.
Decimo - Did I say Henryk Debich's version was disco? Oh, this is disco. It goes on for quite some time - ten minutes worth! '78 was a little late to really expect Shaft to be a disco floor-filler, but hell, you could say the same for "Night on Bald Mountain" I guess. We have an excellent string-heavy interlude section added here, and if it's not the _best_ such I've heard, it certainly gives it more of an epic feel, particularly when it's being used to accompany a guitar solo with a pretty filthy, psychedelic tone for a disco record. By the time we get to the breakdown the song has built up a serious disco groove.
South Carolina State College Jazz Ensemble - There are two sorts of private press '70s records where you're most likely to find a version of the "Shaft" theme: Lounge records and school jazz band records. This is a college jazz ensemble record and therefore is more tight and professional than you would hear from a high school group. The fact that they've worked up an arrangement of Shaft at all in '79 says a little something about their relative ambitions or lack thereof, mind. Still, the arrangement is suitably punchy. There are probably better version of this song on school jazz band records, and there is probably someone who has listened to every single school jazz band record from the '70s still known to be in existence and can tell you precisely what the best versions are. Still, this is a solid take, even if it's perhaps a little over the top in its arrangement. No wah-wah at all here. It's all about the horns.
Cheer-Accident - I find this deconstruction, from 1991's "20 Explosive Dynamic Super Smash Hit Explosions!" comp, to be extremely endearing. Cheer-Accident here sort of pioneer these sorts of supremely fucked up deconstructed versions of songs like "All-Star" by Smashmouth _avant la lettre_. I'm not musically versed enough to be able to tell you exactly what they're doing here, but the guitar sounds like Robert Fripp on a particularly bad day in 1974 - just a completely hellish maelstrom of noise. Oh, and the vocal section, the singer essays as though he is trying to choke out the lyrics while literally being strangled. Followed by an abrupt switch to a different recording where layers of voices, all out of tune with each other, sing the "He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman" line. Then the song goes to repeat the same song-ending hit over and over again in an aggressively anti-rhythmic manner, the same sort of systematic personality breakdown as portrayed in "Fracture" except more unrelenting. It's fucking brilliant, is what I'm saying.
So I've spent an hour listening to that wah-wah funk figure straight writing this post and I haven't tired of it yet. I tip my hat to you, messrs. Hayes and Pitts.
Wednesday, 10 June 2020
Sedition Ensemble - Regeneration Report (1982)
Am distracting myself today by trawling through lesser-known No Wave records. A curious genre, No Wave. You get wacky people with saxophones, you get marimba bands who you're not sure if they're trying to imitate Frank Zappa or Starbuck or both. And then you get this, fierce Black revolutionary music. It was pretty marginal, and I know why. I know that even when married to absolute fire grooves, listening to a record talking about not just the history but the continuing _present_ of white oppression of Black lives rubs white people the wrong way. That's my instinct, sure, to say "I know all this! You don't have to tell me!"
But if they don't have to tell me, why is it still happening? It's a testament, really, a testament to saying these things every way. Singing statistics about the carceral state over a smoky blues vamp, sure, maybe it brings to mind "The Most Unwanted Music" a little. Because these are truths that white people don't want to hear. There isn't any good way to say these things, any way of saying it that won't make white people defensive, argumentative, full of excuses.
Look, I don't care if you listen to this record or not. The stuff they're saying here, though - it was true in 1982, it's true in 2020, and it needs to be said.
But if they don't have to tell me, why is it still happening? It's a testament, really, a testament to saying these things every way. Singing statistics about the carceral state over a smoky blues vamp, sure, maybe it brings to mind "The Most Unwanted Music" a little. Because these are truths that white people don't want to hear. There isn't any good way to say these things, any way of saying it that won't make white people defensive, argumentative, full of excuses.
Look, I don't care if you listen to this record or not. The stuff they're saying here, though - it was true in 1982, it's true in 2020, and it needs to be said.
Monday, 8 June 2020
What Genre?
OK, let's try to dig a little deeper and see what I can come up with. Today I'm trawling through songs that I don't have tagged with a year or a genre. Could be anything. I've gotten it down to 5,821 as of now with a little easy work, but at some point the easy stuff goes away.
This one - this one is easy to tag. "It's No Secret" by Jefferson Airplane from "Bless Its Pointed Little Head". Psychedelic rock, 1969? Something like that.
Next up is Volo AZ 504 (instrumental) by Albatros. I guess this is basically a pop song in its vocal form, but in its instrumental it's pretty deep '70s funk, wah wah guitar and dentist-drill synth.
Ah! Pierre Bachelet's ripoff of "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part II" for the Emmanuelle soundtrack. Pass. Pass!
St. Louis Blues by "Jim & Bob: The Genial Hawaiians". OK, we'll call that "Hawaiian". Not bad.
The Contents Are - If You're Relaxing. Uh, sixties. Harmony vocals and a little bit of jangle guitar. A little Byrdsy, a little sunshine pop. Less than two minutes long. I'll call it sunshine pop. Close enough.
Ah. Here's my late friend John's cover of "Going to California". That's a painful one. He wasn't in good health then. His voice is all tore up. Pass.
"Moogies Bloogies" by Delia Derbyshire with Anthony Newley. I don't know what the hell this is. I really don't. There are a lot of songs here I didn't properly tag first time around and forgotten, and then there are songs like these where I just can't even come up with a genre.
"Lightnin' Struck the Poor House" by Wynonie Harris. Barrelhouse? Jump Blues? I'll call it Barrelhouse. 1948, I think it was?
"Shitheel" by Silica Gel from the "Scattered & Smothered" Wifflefist comp. I'm gonna go on and tag this whole comp as "Plunderphonics". Close enough.
A compilation of all of Thin Lizzy's guitar solos, 1973-1980. I will call this "Mixtape" I believe.
Hammer Screwdriver. What the hell do I call Hammer Screwdriver? I guess I can always go with "Lo-fi".
"Overseers" by Sounds of Salvation. One of those very weird '70s Christian records. I think they were Episcopalians. The mainline people get weirder than the far-out ones, in my experience. Anyway, "Christian".
Biff Rose - Ain't No Great Day: God, I don't know. This synth squiggle, and then this piano, and this catchy melody sung pretty badly out of tune. Oh, my tag says this is Van Dyke Parks on the Moog. Well, there is a certain amount of instrumental professionalism.
Unknown Artist - A2 Hidden Track From Disco Hamam (id please): Jeez, I don't know. Psychedelic soul?
That's all I got today, y'all. Sorry about that.
This one - this one is easy to tag. "It's No Secret" by Jefferson Airplane from "Bless Its Pointed Little Head". Psychedelic rock, 1969? Something like that.
Next up is Volo AZ 504 (instrumental) by Albatros. I guess this is basically a pop song in its vocal form, but in its instrumental it's pretty deep '70s funk, wah wah guitar and dentist-drill synth.
Ah! Pierre Bachelet's ripoff of "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part II" for the Emmanuelle soundtrack. Pass. Pass!
St. Louis Blues by "Jim & Bob: The Genial Hawaiians". OK, we'll call that "Hawaiian". Not bad.
The Contents Are - If You're Relaxing. Uh, sixties. Harmony vocals and a little bit of jangle guitar. A little Byrdsy, a little sunshine pop. Less than two minutes long. I'll call it sunshine pop. Close enough.
Ah. Here's my late friend John's cover of "Going to California". That's a painful one. He wasn't in good health then. His voice is all tore up. Pass.
"Moogies Bloogies" by Delia Derbyshire with Anthony Newley. I don't know what the hell this is. I really don't. There are a lot of songs here I didn't properly tag first time around and forgotten, and then there are songs like these where I just can't even come up with a genre.
"Lightnin' Struck the Poor House" by Wynonie Harris. Barrelhouse? Jump Blues? I'll call it Barrelhouse. 1948, I think it was?
"Shitheel" by Silica Gel from the "Scattered & Smothered" Wifflefist comp. I'm gonna go on and tag this whole comp as "Plunderphonics". Close enough.
A compilation of all of Thin Lizzy's guitar solos, 1973-1980. I will call this "Mixtape" I believe.
Hammer Screwdriver. What the hell do I call Hammer Screwdriver? I guess I can always go with "Lo-fi".
"Overseers" by Sounds of Salvation. One of those very weird '70s Christian records. I think they were Episcopalians. The mainline people get weirder than the far-out ones, in my experience. Anyway, "Christian".
Biff Rose - Ain't No Great Day: God, I don't know. This synth squiggle, and then this piano, and this catchy melody sung pretty badly out of tune. Oh, my tag says this is Van Dyke Parks on the Moog. Well, there is a certain amount of instrumental professionalism.
Unknown Artist - A2 Hidden Track From Disco Hamam (id please): Jeez, I don't know. Psychedelic soul?
That's all I got today, y'all. Sorry about that.
Friday, 5 June 2020
The Blob (Accordion Version)
Been kind of a crazy week, so yes, I've sort of let this site slip a little bit. Lotta life going on and things do get a bit heavy around here from time to time.
So let's try a nice light relatively low-effort post. I mean, not so low-effort that I just recommend the ridiculously heavy late-'00s Japanese King Crimson tribute band ZaKS. That would be a bit _too_ content-lite.
Nah, time to crank up the randomizer and see what we get.
Guy Klucevsek - The Blob
It looks like this one hit my library sometime in late 2018. I was aware of Klucevsek from fairly early on - I recall seeing "Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse" in old Wayside Music catalogs. I think I heard some of his work with John Zorn and concluded he was a little too New York downtown for my taste. Later I heard his work with the Accordion Tribe - I believe he played a key role in getting that fantastic group together - but his actually compositions seemed to me to be the weakest of the five. So I didn't explore further.
I believe that it was his rendition of "The Blob" that got me into this record. I know people argue about the value of "The Blob", one of Burt Bacharach's earliest hit compositions. Personally I am all on the side of it. It's absolutely atypical for a horror/monster movie. I haven't ever seen the movie, but I have vivid memories of it from a series of '50s horror movie picture books that were at our local library. This is all mixed up in my head with my memories of the fear-inducing invincible blob from the "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" game for the Intellivision. This blob was not _that_ intimidating. It moved extremely slowly. However, I frequently panicked upon seeing it - I don't exactly have gaming nerves of steel - and the notoriously finicky Intellivision disc controls didn't help.
So it seems to me perfectly appropriate that the theme song should be light and silly and somewhat novelty-ish, because the blob in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was also fairly silly. Also, the incredible power of that mouth-pop is completely undeniable. Klucevsek's accordion interpretation does not exactly bring out the more menacing side of the piece (if there is one). Not only does he present the same fantastic earworm melody, but he comes up with all sorts of increasingly absurd new verses ("It tangos/eats mangoes/chit-chats/wears spats"), as well as putting in some fantastic instrumental sections further developing the basic theme.
I would definitely rank this among the all-time Bacharach interpretations. Deserves to be a #1 Christmas hit in Britain.
OK, good enough! More later.
So let's try a nice light relatively low-effort post. I mean, not so low-effort that I just recommend the ridiculously heavy late-'00s Japanese King Crimson tribute band ZaKS. That would be a bit _too_ content-lite.
Nah, time to crank up the randomizer and see what we get.
Guy Klucevsek - The Blob
It looks like this one hit my library sometime in late 2018. I was aware of Klucevsek from fairly early on - I recall seeing "Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse" in old Wayside Music catalogs. I think I heard some of his work with John Zorn and concluded he was a little too New York downtown for my taste. Later I heard his work with the Accordion Tribe - I believe he played a key role in getting that fantastic group together - but his actually compositions seemed to me to be the weakest of the five. So I didn't explore further.
I believe that it was his rendition of "The Blob" that got me into this record. I know people argue about the value of "The Blob", one of Burt Bacharach's earliest hit compositions. Personally I am all on the side of it. It's absolutely atypical for a horror/monster movie. I haven't ever seen the movie, but I have vivid memories of it from a series of '50s horror movie picture books that were at our local library. This is all mixed up in my head with my memories of the fear-inducing invincible blob from the "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" game for the Intellivision. This blob was not _that_ intimidating. It moved extremely slowly. However, I frequently panicked upon seeing it - I don't exactly have gaming nerves of steel - and the notoriously finicky Intellivision disc controls didn't help.
So it seems to me perfectly appropriate that the theme song should be light and silly and somewhat novelty-ish, because the blob in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was also fairly silly. Also, the incredible power of that mouth-pop is completely undeniable. Klucevsek's accordion interpretation does not exactly bring out the more menacing side of the piece (if there is one). Not only does he present the same fantastic earworm melody, but he comes up with all sorts of increasingly absurd new verses ("It tangos/eats mangoes/chit-chats/wears spats"), as well as putting in some fantastic instrumental sections further developing the basic theme.
I would definitely rank this among the all-time Bacharach interpretations. Deserves to be a #1 Christmas hit in Britain.
OK, good enough! More later.
Monday, 1 June 2020
Torn Music
Just wanted to make a quick little post today to recommend a book called Torn Music by Gergely Hubai. It's this enormously informative and detailed trawl through decades and decades of rejected music. I'm not very familiar with the world of film scoring, so there is lots for me to learn. Hubai clearly knows his stuff - there are a couple small errors I ran across doing secondary research, because if I read a book about music I want to hear as much of the music as I can. I haven't gotten so much from a book on music since Robert Chase's Dies Irae.
(Who do the two books have in common? Peter Sculthorpe, who had a late '60s/early '70s Australian film score replaced, and who in 2004 wrote a requiem mass prominently featuring the didgeridoo. It was only a couple days ago that I managed to track down Sculthorpe's Requiem. I don't much like it unfortunately.)
Anyway, it is an absolutely luxurious thing, to gorge myself on this knowledge. I want to share all of it with you, because it is amazing knowledge and because I will remember it better if I write it down, but I don't know how fair that would be to Hubai. Some of these I'd love to hear as much as I'd love to hear Charles Stepney's symphonic composition "Cohesion" (featuring Minnie Riperton, soloist).
Like, just an example:
This Columbo episode, The Greenhouse Jungle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPKufHu9TtE
Was originally scored by this composer, Paul Glass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9xCLPHtDYQ
As a concerto for this instrument, the heckelphone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBhkaL6z82M
Of course I would love to hear that. Of course! I also read of a score for a film on Gauguin written by a woman named Elizabeth Swados but rejected for sounding "too much like Stravinsky". Couldn't find a recording of that, either, but I found that there was an animated film based on her picture book "My Depression" made in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy8ImYafS_s
This looks like a fantastic film. I am going to try and watch it.
OK, here's something else I learned from the book today, I can't help myself.
Jimmy Webb was originally contracted to write the soundtrack to "Love Story". What he turned in featured a composition for oscillator-repitched car horns. They decided not to go with it.
He later reused the recording as the intro to "Music for an Unmade Movie: Songseller":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1k-B9NARG
(Who do the two books have in common? Peter Sculthorpe, who had a late '60s/early '70s Australian film score replaced, and who in 2004 wrote a requiem mass prominently featuring the didgeridoo. It was only a couple days ago that I managed to track down Sculthorpe's Requiem. I don't much like it unfortunately.)
Anyway, it is an absolutely luxurious thing, to gorge myself on this knowledge. I want to share all of it with you, because it is amazing knowledge and because I will remember it better if I write it down, but I don't know how fair that would be to Hubai. Some of these I'd love to hear as much as I'd love to hear Charles Stepney's symphonic composition "Cohesion" (featuring Minnie Riperton, soloist).
Like, just an example:
This Columbo episode, The Greenhouse Jungle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPKufHu9TtE
Was originally scored by this composer, Paul Glass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9xCLPHtDYQ
As a concerto for this instrument, the heckelphone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBhkaL6z82M
Of course I would love to hear that. Of course! I also read of a score for a film on Gauguin written by a woman named Elizabeth Swados but rejected for sounding "too much like Stravinsky". Couldn't find a recording of that, either, but I found that there was an animated film based on her picture book "My Depression" made in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy8ImYafS_s
This looks like a fantastic film. I am going to try and watch it.
OK, here's something else I learned from the book today, I can't help myself.
Jimmy Webb was originally contracted to write the soundtrack to "Love Story". What he turned in featured a composition for oscillator-repitched car horns. They decided not to go with it.
He later reused the recording as the intro to "Music for an Unmade Movie: Songseller":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1k-B9NARG
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Roxy Music performing "Ladytron" Live with Brian Eno
OK, having just said I wasn't going to make this post, I'm gonna go ahead and make it anyway.
I just happened to randomly find, searching in private mode for "1973 music", a pro-shot performance of Roxy Music playing "Ladytron" live in Montreux. I had no idea this even existed, and from the view count it seems like neither does anybody else! So I wanted to take a little time and talk about the three live videos of Ladytron from the Eno period I know of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCzhAeukF1A
This is the first and most famous one - Roxy Music's breakthrough TV appearance. I've known and loved it for ages - it appears on the fantastic "First Kiss" bootleg of Eno-era BBC sessions. Video of it has been circulating since at least the '90s.
I didn't, though, know the exact date (the broadcast date turns out to be June 20, 1972). I knew it had to be early on, as Ferry hadn't cut his hair yet. While I was looking up the exact date I ran across this article that gives more context:
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/roxy-music-ladytron-the-old-grey-whistle-test-1972/
Now, I had no idea whatsoever of Whispering Bob Harris's sneering put-down in his intro - because it doesn't exist any longer! The Old Grey Whistle Test is one of those BBC programmes notorious for not being preserved in the archives. The Roxy Music performance beats the odds by still existing, as do all the clips from the episode. What doesn't survive, however, are any of the presenter intros!
It seems, then, that Roxy Music made their television debut on a TV show hosted by the chairman of the Fuck Roxy Music league. Here's Harris's surviving intro to their second appearance a year later:
https://youtu.be/j2R8sZ4SlXI
Even though this intro obviously exists, it has been trimmed from most of the many rebroadcasts of the song. Bob Harris is still shit-talking Roxy Music. I don't judge him for that. We all have our own hills to die on, all of our own topics that drive us, against our better judgement, repeatedly look like total berks in public. I see no reason to have any animosity towards Bob Harris in a world containing Graham Linehan.
Anyway, it is true that Roxy Music on this appearance come across as, well... they're pretty extra on this. Which is why I love it, of course. It's fantastically, ludicrously over the top. It's also, though a little rough around the edges. Ferry misses his intro. Their stagecraft is a bit tentative. Ferry's hair is long and not particularly flatteringly styled. In some shots you can see their band logo, which looks like glitter applied to a cardboard box. The wardrobe is amazing, for sure, but they're carried by the wardrobe and the music. Pretty much everything they're wearing is shiny, and it's that quality that holds them together visually. I mean for God's sake not only are both Eno and Ferry wearing animal prints but they're not even _complementary_ animal prints.
It's that outro. A long and crazy duet between Manzanera's guitar freakout and Eno's knob-twiddling. Absolute heaven. How could it get any better?
Well, it didn't, immediately. Their next TV performance of Ladytron was on November 25, 1972, on a show called Full House. This show is now solely remembered for having Roxy Music perform on it; everything else about it has been overwritten by the Olsen Twins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0--qm-yj3w
This performance of "Ladytron" is just not as impressive. Mostly this is down to the staging. The lighting is pretty poor on this performance; everything is dark. It's no real reflection on the band - I've heard other performances of them from around this time and they were at a peak. They were doing amazing 18-minute versions of "If There Is Something". Not to say that they're perfect - Mackay's oboe solo is noticeably sloppy. One can tell overall Ferry has improved. The haircut is doing wonders for him, and he's got a better sense of how to play to the camera. Most of it is shot in closeup with fades, with long shots being these De Palma pans. Manzanera is more confident as a guitarist as well - his soloing here is more shredding, less reliant on Eno's knob-twiddling to evoke pure noise. In some senses yes it's a step back.
So the one that has me posting this is a video from Roxy Music's last tour with Eno, from April 29, 1973 in Montreux. It says it's from a "festival" but it doesn't exactly look like a rock festival - looks like your typical live performance for TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56eeYrYKSh0
There's a lot more rock and roll bravado at play here. The mixing is great. Unfortunately the broadcast doesn't include the intro, but Mackay absolutely kills his oboe solo, legs akimbo in a power stance (did he wear a codpiece? His outfits do tend to draw a lot of attention to that area) while Thompson whacks holy hell out of the skins. Ferry glistens with sequins and sweat. At the end of the song Manzanera and Mackay are jamming with each other like they're in the fucking E Street Band or something, just incredible power and energy. Eno is, as usual, in the back with his reel recordings and synths, wearing a suit with shoulders that make him look like Quasimoto. To make up for the missing intro, the jam goes on longer than even the OGWT performance, with a long slow fade into Eno's noise outro. I am just blown away by watching this, the idea that they could find a way to match their stunning Old Grey Whistle Test recording.
It was the way of the future for them. Ferry would go on to write even better songs. The band without Eno would grow more confident, exude even stronger rock energy. They weren't the same without Eno - that tentative, over the top weirdness from '72 would vanish - but Eno is on record as saying that he thinks Roxy Music were better after he left, and I can't argue too hard with his assessment.
I just happened to randomly find, searching in private mode for "1973 music", a pro-shot performance of Roxy Music playing "Ladytron" live in Montreux. I had no idea this even existed, and from the view count it seems like neither does anybody else! So I wanted to take a little time and talk about the three live videos of Ladytron from the Eno period I know of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCzhAeukF1A
This is the first and most famous one - Roxy Music's breakthrough TV appearance. I've known and loved it for ages - it appears on the fantastic "First Kiss" bootleg of Eno-era BBC sessions. Video of it has been circulating since at least the '90s.
I didn't, though, know the exact date (the broadcast date turns out to be June 20, 1972). I knew it had to be early on, as Ferry hadn't cut his hair yet. While I was looking up the exact date I ran across this article that gives more context:
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/roxy-music-ladytron-the-old-grey-whistle-test-1972/
Now, I had no idea whatsoever of Whispering Bob Harris's sneering put-down in his intro - because it doesn't exist any longer! The Old Grey Whistle Test is one of those BBC programmes notorious for not being preserved in the archives. The Roxy Music performance beats the odds by still existing, as do all the clips from the episode. What doesn't survive, however, are any of the presenter intros!
It seems, then, that Roxy Music made their television debut on a TV show hosted by the chairman of the Fuck Roxy Music league. Here's Harris's surviving intro to their second appearance a year later:
https://youtu.be/j2R8sZ4SlXI
Even though this intro obviously exists, it has been trimmed from most of the many rebroadcasts of the song. Bob Harris is still shit-talking Roxy Music. I don't judge him for that. We all have our own hills to die on, all of our own topics that drive us, against our better judgement, repeatedly look like total berks in public. I see no reason to have any animosity towards Bob Harris in a world containing Graham Linehan.
Anyway, it is true that Roxy Music on this appearance come across as, well... they're pretty extra on this. Which is why I love it, of course. It's fantastically, ludicrously over the top. It's also, though a little rough around the edges. Ferry misses his intro. Their stagecraft is a bit tentative. Ferry's hair is long and not particularly flatteringly styled. In some shots you can see their band logo, which looks like glitter applied to a cardboard box. The wardrobe is amazing, for sure, but they're carried by the wardrobe and the music. Pretty much everything they're wearing is shiny, and it's that quality that holds them together visually. I mean for God's sake not only are both Eno and Ferry wearing animal prints but they're not even _complementary_ animal prints.
It's that outro. A long and crazy duet between Manzanera's guitar freakout and Eno's knob-twiddling. Absolute heaven. How could it get any better?
Well, it didn't, immediately. Their next TV performance of Ladytron was on November 25, 1972, on a show called Full House. This show is now solely remembered for having Roxy Music perform on it; everything else about it has been overwritten by the Olsen Twins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0--qm-yj3w
This performance of "Ladytron" is just not as impressive. Mostly this is down to the staging. The lighting is pretty poor on this performance; everything is dark. It's no real reflection on the band - I've heard other performances of them from around this time and they were at a peak. They were doing amazing 18-minute versions of "If There Is Something". Not to say that they're perfect - Mackay's oboe solo is noticeably sloppy. One can tell overall Ferry has improved. The haircut is doing wonders for him, and he's got a better sense of how to play to the camera. Most of it is shot in closeup with fades, with long shots being these De Palma pans. Manzanera is more confident as a guitarist as well - his soloing here is more shredding, less reliant on Eno's knob-twiddling to evoke pure noise. In some senses yes it's a step back.
So the one that has me posting this is a video from Roxy Music's last tour with Eno, from April 29, 1973 in Montreux. It says it's from a "festival" but it doesn't exactly look like a rock festival - looks like your typical live performance for TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56eeYrYKSh0
There's a lot more rock and roll bravado at play here. The mixing is great. Unfortunately the broadcast doesn't include the intro, but Mackay absolutely kills his oboe solo, legs akimbo in a power stance (did he wear a codpiece? His outfits do tend to draw a lot of attention to that area) while Thompson whacks holy hell out of the skins. Ferry glistens with sequins and sweat. At the end of the song Manzanera and Mackay are jamming with each other like they're in the fucking E Street Band or something, just incredible power and energy. Eno is, as usual, in the back with his reel recordings and synths, wearing a suit with shoulders that make him look like Quasimoto. To make up for the missing intro, the jam goes on longer than even the OGWT performance, with a long slow fade into Eno's noise outro. I am just blown away by watching this, the idea that they could find a way to match their stunning Old Grey Whistle Test recording.
It was the way of the future for them. Ferry would go on to write even better songs. The band without Eno would grow more confident, exude even stronger rock energy. They weren't the same without Eno - that tentative, over the top weirdness from '72 would vanish - but Eno is on record as saying that he thinks Roxy Music were better after he left, and I can't argue too hard with his assessment.
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