Big Terror Movie Themes: Geoff Love And His Orchestra - Music For Pleasure 1976

Geoff Love and his orchestra pretty much had the budget film soundtrack market cornered in the seventies. A veritable cottage industry, Love released a series of albums themed around a particular film genre where his orchestra would play the main themes from the soundtracks from the most famous films therein. Big Western Themes, Big War Themes, Big Love Movie Themes - all were grist to Geoff's mill and that mill was certainly working overtime. Most of these can be bought for pennies these days and I could have picked up any number on a single visit to my usual charity shop, but I decided to settle on 'Big Terror' as the representative sample from the oeuvre, partly because of my long time love of horror films, but mainly because of that magnificent cover.

 

Because magnificent it certainly is, though you'd expect no less from Tom Chantrell, a man with a fine pedigree of designing movie posters, including the best ever 'Star Wars' poster. As the album dates from 1976 it presumably knows a good cash in when it sees it as the 'Jaws' shark dominates, but genre fans can have hours of enjoyment identifying which image represents which film.* And ironically, that's where it all starts to come unglued too. The very title 'Big Terror' suggests....well, some big terror. 'Jaws', 'Psycho', 'The Exorcist' - these films tick the right box so fair enough, but 'Earthquake'? 'Three Days Of The Condor'? 'The Eiger Sanction'? These, I'd submit, stretch the noun somewhat; no doubt someone with no head for heights would get the sweats at the thought of roping up to Clint Eastwood and climbing Mt Eiger, but if we're going to be that subjective then why not cover the theme music from public information films about visiting the dentist or how to reverse park into a tight space on a busy road, both of which would get some people's pulses racing. But whatever, it's too late to challenge it now so I have to take it as I find it, and I find it a bit of a mixed bag to be honest.

 

Most film soundtracks tend to be scored by a composer and, like any piece of the classical repertoire, the conductor and soloists have a degree of discretion in their interpretation of that score. For example, the Karajan and Furtwangler recordings of the Beethoven symphony cycle are different enough to warrant owning both, and though Glen Gould recorded Bach's 'Goldberg Variations' twice in his career (1955 and 1981), the former version runs for 38 minutes while the latter takes a more sedate 51. It's all down to interpretation. 

 

The difference with film soundtracks is that a version of a film score will tend to be 'fixed' to the one that plays over the opening credits of that film, and a good score can become as inseparable from the film as the lead actors and dialogue. Anybody tackling the more famous soundtracks would be wise not to stray too far from the familiar, and Geoff doesn't re-arrange his selections into musique concrète or anything like. After listening to the whole though, then as a general rule I can say he's weaker on the bigger, more 'traditional' soundtracks but better where there's more room to cut loose; it kind of feels as if Love has too much reverence for the major players to colour too far outside the lines and so tries to play them with a straight bat, but his versions are as own brand Corn Flakes are to Kellogg's.

 

For example, Love's take on John Williams' (rightly) famous 'Jaws' main theme remains faithful in tone, but the horns sound less like the deep, primal warning of a great white shark approaching than the sound of a fat man farting in a half full bath. Similarly, the jangling nerve violin screech of the 'Psycho' theme is, in Love's hands, muted and polite to the point that it would be more at home playing over a scene in an alternate film where Norman Bates knocks on the bathroom door to make sure Marion Crane is decent before he comes in and murders her. On the other hand, Love takes the spare piano fragment of 'Tubular Bells' that appears in 'The Exorcist' and gives it a full band blaxploitation treatment that's as interesting as it's unexpected, while their take on Herbie Hancock's 'Death Wish' theme swaggers with as much funk and groove as the original. Perhaps even moreso.

 

Which kind of sums up the whole album really - half of it works, half of it doesn't, but it's hard to be too critical; buying the full 'official' soundtracks for each of these films would, then as now, cost a pretty penny, even if you could find them and so as a cheap sampler of genre soundtracks it remains good value. Couple that with that superb cover and you have a charity shop cast off that's genuinely worth hearing and keeping.

 

* Not really, but see if you can spot the reference to 'The Executioner'.

Hammond Pops 8: Klaus Wunderlich - Telefunken 1972

From my own personal experience, Klaus Voormann and charity shops go together like vomit and too much alcohol; where you have one then sooner or later you will inevitably have the other. That's not to single out Klaus for the bumps - along with James Last and Burt Kaempfert they form the unholy trinity of Germanic peddlers of easy listening albums that clog up the vinyl crates in their hundreds. I was going to stay clear of all three as far as I could for the purposes of this blog because, with a back catalogue as daunting as theirs, I'd have no idea where to start.

I've broken my rule on this one for two reasons. First, and once again, the cover - what a wonderful shot. Yes, there's still plenty of room to tut tut over it being another blatant 'selling sex' product from the dark days of the sexist seventies, but surely even the most hardcore revisionist can't deny an eye catching design that's well executed (and if they can't then to hell with them). Second, an album with 'Pops' in the title that has tracks in its line-up called 'Es fahrt Zug nach nirgendwo', 'Eine neue Liebe ist wie ein neues Leben' and 'Es ist schwer, dich zu vergessen' made me laugh out loud. 'Popular' where I wonder? But whatever, there was more than enough here to warrant my further investigation.

I have to confess that before the needle hit the groove, even though I didn't have much of an idea what to expect, it's fair to say I expected rather more than I actually got. Wholly instrumental, 'Hammond Pops 8' sounds exactly like Klaus has plugged his Hammond in, played some tunes to the pre-set percussion until he had enough music to get away with calling an 'album' (this isn't the longest record you'll ever hear), and then stopped. Because that's literally pretty much all there is to it, the sort of stuff I bet any organist of mediocre talent could saw off by the yard. Each of the selections last less than two minutes and the overall impression is of Klaus on shuffle mode, losing interest after playing a few bars of one tune and then moving on to the next.

A frustrating listen then, and what doesn't help to make that listen any easier is my complete unfamiliarity with almost any of the music here. Most of the selections appear to be indigenous German tunes and so it comes as something of a  relief when the opening bars of 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' pipe up to put me on some kind of home ground. For a while anyway, and it at least gives me some breathing space to be able to make a qualitative judgement on the way Klaus strip mines all the solemnity out of Matthew Fisher's original playing and converts it into general rinky dink cheesiness. But once the main organ riff is done and dusted, Klaus is off into the next tune and I'm back playing away. 

And yet for all that restlessness, the music always swings in the same relentless key in the same relentless direction and with the low key swagger and faded jollity of an off season holiday camp; it's about as one dimensional as it comes. If this were a private recording of a keen amateur at the keys then I'd say fair enough, but surely a career of such longevity has to be based on more than this? 'Hammond Pops 1-7 has to have some variation surely? Surely? Cracking cover though.

The Band Of The Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst: Plays Lennon & McCartney - Hallmark Records 1972

"Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should"; my mother used to say that, and as I've moved through life it's turned out to be pretty sound advice. My mother's voice came to mind when I picked this up from the crate too; obviously, a military band can play Lennon & McCartney songs, but whether they should play them is a different question entirely.

I suppose that question would be "why would they want to"? Maybe as an attempt for a military band to slough off its stuffy aura and give themselves a kool makeover to get the kidz on board perhaps? Maybe, but if the sleeve is anything to go by then if this was an attempt to launch that particular boat then the vessel sank in the harbour.

Instead of a cover shot of the usual seventies saucepot in her skimpies we get a no nonsense portrait of Major DV Fanshawe on his horse Thor* heading up the steps of an important looking building, no doubt on his way to sign important papers dealing with national security. The back cover doesn't play it for laughs either, being little more than text that amounts to a potted history of The Band of the Royal Military College and Capt. Derek N Taylor's CV. Why anyone who didn't already know this would be interested in such information is a mystery to me, but it all goes to suggest that the brief given to the people behind this was not one based around getting the party started.

To start with the tracklist; I don't know why these particular songs were chosen from The Beatles' catalogue or if they naturally lend themselves to a military band context, but in fairness they haven't simply been transcribed for wind and percussion. Some attempt has been made to set them in original arrangements. Alas though, it doesn't sound like they were arranged by anyone with any love, sympathy or understanding of the source material. Rather, they sound like the output of a soldier following orders and each has been given a definite military makeover - you could imagine marching into battle or raising a flag and saluting it with almost any of these parping away in the background.

What this means is that even though I assume this album was meant to be filed under 'easy listening', it has completely the opposite effect on me. The arrangements here are not smooth, they're unnecessarily busy and messy and the band's playing is harsh, meaning that hearing tunes I hitherto knew as well as my own name now feel as strange as finding a character from a favourite soap opera suddenly being played by a different actor; it just leaves me on edge. Once familiar melodies are ridden over roughshod by heavy duty brass and drums that lay emphasis where I least expected it, and where that happens it's as jarring as eating chocolate but unexpectedly biting into a rogue piece of the foil wrapping. 

There are some spectacular own goals here too; I can imagine 'Yesterday' sounding mournful when played on a solo trumpet with a spare backing, but the overly fussy and brash arrangement here only swamps McCartney's simple melody in too much noise. Similarly, someone could have had a busman's holiday with the horn solo on 'Penny Lane', but instead it's largely ignored and buried in other business that's nowhere near as interesting.

Maybe it's just the unfamiliarity of it all that's getting to me, and maybe I could get used to them if I persevered, but then I ask myself "why should I go to the bother when I've got 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver' to listen to"? And to that question there's no other answer but "why indeed"? I think to properly enjoy this you'd need to be a) an ardent fan of military bands and b) an ardent non-fan of The Beatles, and I personally have to answer both of these the 'wrong' way. All of which is a roundabout way of me saying I do not like this record. At all.

* I know this because a note on the back cover tells me so - in all things military, it's nothing but thorough.

Sparkling Sounds: Various Artists - Music For Pleasure 1974

"Sparkling sounds, just the way you want to hear them"? Well I'll be the judge of that thank you very much, but before we actually get to those 'sparkling sounds' I should report that, try as I might, I've not been able to find any information about the Babycham tie-in to this. On the face of it, the whole album looks geared toward advertising the stuff, but I don't know if this was a promotional record that you had to send off for after collecting so many bottle tops or if you could walk into a shop and buy it off the shelf. The alcohol link makes the latter unlikely, but this came out in 1974 and I was buying sweets in the form of cigarettes back then so who knows? 

One thing I do know is that, on playing this for the first time, I was surprised to find that the tracks are all vocal versions. From the soft focus cover shot and back cover blurb, I was expecting some swishy string instrumentals tailor made to soundtrack some 'Abigail's Party' type of tacky, middle class gathering of aspiration, but not a bit of it; these are all 'proper' vocal versions. But whilst these are straight covers and as competent as they need to be (with nobody really trying to mimic the original artists), rather than the promised  'sparkling' sounds, the end results here are as flat and lifeless as if they'd been recorded underwater. Nobody is giving it too much welly or enthusiasm anyway, and as a case in point, rather than sashaying from the speakers like the urtext of 'Dancing Queen' the original was, 'Rock Your Baby' here has the stiffness of a week old corpse. 

That's ok I suppose, as long as nobody is singing for their supper then we probably shouldn't expect all that much from what might be a 'free' album anyway, but that track list is a rhyme and reason free mix of number one singles and more obscure songs (for example, 'Beautiful Sunday' was a number 27 'hit' for Daniel Boone in 1972) trawled up across a six year time frame from UK singles charts. Which leads me to think that these are perhaps random offcuts from different projects that were swept up and pressed into service for the Babycham cause rather than a fresh set of tracks recorded to order.
 
Maybe. It scarcely matters though; best to let 'Sparkling Sounds' keep it's element of mystery, it's about the only thing it's got going for it after all and I doubt getting the Scooby gang to clear it up would make it any more interesting. It's fair to say it's a pretty pointless and insipid release all round really, and far from 'basic ingredients for every good party', drinking Babycham while this burbles away in the background would be more like visiting a circle of hell straight from Dante. One of the lower ones.

Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits: The Top Of The Poppers - Pickwick 1972

That's what you want on the sleeve of an album of Simon & Garfunkel songs isn't it? A sharp focus shot of a woman (with a freakishly long right arm) sprawled out in a gravel pit with a look of combined mild fear and disgust at something lurking off camera. It's not what I would have chosen, but there you go. What I've never seen before either is the name of the recording artist asterisked to the biographical blurb on the back cover; someone was clearly anxious that this text was too important be missed, so I've added a photo of it down below with no comment, other than to say if someone was taking extra special pains to draw the casual buyers attention to the fact that this is not the work of Messer's Simon & Garfunkel, then a healthy sense of guilt and/or shame was probably behind it.

As a point of fact, the first ever Simon & Garfunkel 'Greatest Hits' album was released the same year as this, and the track listing of both is identical, except that the 'official' release has two extra songs. The similarities don't end there either; when the cover says 'The Top Of The Poppers sing and play Simon & Garfunkel's' Greatest Hits, it's not lying - these are in fact straightforward copies of the original songs that stay as faithful to the source material as the talent involved allows. There are no radical drum and bass makeovers here, and as far as that approach goes it's both a blessing and a curse. 

Musically, the backing band are, as you'd expect, better on the more straightforward, acoustic based songs that don't need too much heavy lifting. They struggle badly on the more difficult tracks. Concern for my own sanity means I'm not going to give a track by track breakdown, but suffice it say it reaches a nadir of sorts on 'The Boxer' and a version that's truly awful on every available level. Simon famously took over 100 hours to piece together the original version of this song alone, and while it's neither fair nor realistic to expect the same attention to detail from an anonymous covers act, the version here sounds like a quickly knocked out, first take affair with the band falling over their own feet with every awkward step and the famous drum slam 'punches' on the chorus are reduced to the sound of a bag of spanners being dropped onto concrete, and then frequently dropped out of time.

As for the vocals, well one of the delights of Simon & Garfunkel was always the interplay of Garfunkel's celestial choirboy soar that never quite swamped or bullied Simon's more plaintive everyman weariness. You could forgive this album a lot of its misdemeanours if the duo here got at least half ways toward the same level of harmony, but I'm afraid the vocals here gel as well as salt on  ice cream. That they don't try and imitate the original vocals is a blessing of sorts, but even with their own voices there are times when the surrogate S&G are singing in different keys, different pitches and frequently out of tune, and both have a habit of aiming for notes they were never going to reach. We are literally talking late night pub karaoke standard and the end product genuinely sounds like two strangers only recently acquainted, both of whom have only a passing familiarity with the source material.

But enough - seriously, any Simon & Garfunkel fan who truly needed to own their greatest hits on vinyl would have to be down to the bare bones of their bare arse to have to make do with this rather than pay whatever the difference was in 1972 for the genuine article. Maybe someone was trying to sell a copy to the woman in the gravel. It would explain a lot.

Let's Kiss Kiss Kiss: The Midnight Sun Letkiss Jenka Band conducted by Harry Arnold - Polydor 1965

'Don't judge a book by its cover' they say, but I can't say I've ever really agreed with 'them' on this one; true enough, you might not be able to judge the quality of a book by its cover, but as the cover tends to be a book's main selling device it usually gives a useful indication of what's inside its pages. Usually, but not always. And through such roundabout musings we arrive nicely at my latest vinyl acquisition from Harry Arnold and his Midnight Sun Letkiss Jenka Band.

This caught my eye on its browse through the crates because I briefly thought I'd stumbled upon an obscure copy of  MGM's 'coke bottle' Velvet Underground compilation. After I'd twigged it wasn't, the cover then put me in mind of a soundtrack to an obscure European art film, which is also something that would be right up my street. On turning it over though I find that the back cover features a photograph of two young couples, naked apart from some towels, doing what looks like the conga in a sauna whilst the accompanying text talks of a dance craze from Finland's 'lonely backwoods' that is taking Europe by storm. As I've never heard of Jenka or Harry Arnold, and with no year of release stated anywhere on the whole album, I can honestly say I had no idea what I had in my hands or what it might sound like; this was one book whose cover was keeping schtum. 

 

A quick look on Wikipedia reveals Jenka to be:

"Jenkka ['jeŋkːɑ] is a fast Finnish partner dance originated in Finnish folk dance the Finnish version of Schottische. It is danced to the music in 2/4 or 4/4 time signature of about 140 beats per minute."

  

Well fair enough I guess, but as there's no instructions anywhere on this album on how to 'do' this dance, I'm guessing it's aimed at the diehard hardcore Jenkka-ists out there who don't need to be spoon-fed this stuff. As I don't fall within that category, I have to rely on Wikipedia to come to the rescue again:

  
"Men and women do similar steps. The initial dance position is the man is to the left of the woman both facing in the direction of the line of dance, with their inner arms on each other's waists. The dancers go forward in a run similar to Polka: "left-right-left-hop(on the left foot)", "right-left-right-hop". After than they join the free arms, assume the face-to-face closed dance position and proceed with the chain of pivot turns stepping "left-right-left-right" or "left-hop-right-hop". The runs of similar steps are normally started at the beginnings of musical phrases" 

All of which is slightly suggestive of some kind of group based pastime along the lines of line dancing. Perhaps. I had no idea - all that was left to me was to listen to the thing and, as far as that goes, the album is made up of a series of jaunty, horn led instrumental ensemble pieces, any one of which could have soundtracked a 1960s - early 70's saucy British comedy film, one probably starring Peter Sellers or Leslie Phillips (as an aside, I checked online and this came out in 1965 so that sounds about right).There's very little variation on this theme, next to none if truth be told and to these ears the track titles are as completely interchangeable as the music - 'Jenka In Sauna' sounds like exactly the same exercise as 'At The Jenka Show'. You can take Jenka anywhere it seems. 

Ultimately, by the end of side two I'm left with a certain feeling of frustration about it all; my usual process is to line these records up in my sights as sitting targets to take pot shots at, but I've got no direction home with this one. I do not know if this is good Jenka, bad Jenka, overly commercial Jenka or proper roots Jenka. I don't know if Harry Arnold and his Midnight Sun Letkiss Jenka band are the Captain Beefheart of Jenka or the Bon Jovi, the Kenny G or the Miles Davis. The album takes pains to point out that there's a polar bear and Viking logo on the cover that, like the Chess logo on a Chicago blues album, should be taken as proof of some kind of authenticity, but in truth I've no idea what they are talking about. None whatsoever. I've listened with an open mind, but I now know this wasn't meant to be a standalone artefact and that there's a whole dimension here I'm not privy to. I've come at it with my gloves pre-loaded with my usual sarcasm and distain, but I've found I can't lay a good, clean punch on it; I'm like the school bully who picks on the weedy looking kid who fights back. In short, it feels like Harry Arnold has pwned me.

And this makes it difficult to come to any conclusion about all of this Jenka malarkey. Again, all that's left is the music, and whilst I don't hate it, I simply don't trust it; the snob in me looks at it sideways, fearful that my Finnish counterpart would take the piss out of me for liking something the snob in him would see as so much cheesy crap. But then if I'm being honest, if this same disc had been packaged as the soundtrack to an Eastern European art film then it would sit easily in my collection along with the rest of them, even though once played I'd probably never listen to it again.  Let's call it a draw.

Smash Hits '71: Various Artists - Music For Pleasure 1971

British music buyers in the 1970's would have been well familiar with the shady practice of budget labels releasing compilation albums of recent chart hits, usually with a young, attractive female wearing not much in the way of clothing on the cover. 'The 'Top Of The Pops' series is probably the most familiar/notorious example of this carry on and would probably deserve a blog all of their own, but plenty of other labels were in on it too.  

If the knock down prices of these releases seemed too good to be true, that's because they were; on getting their 'bargain' home, the uninitiated would have been surprised to find that, instead of an album of the latest number ones from Mud or Slade, they had in fact bought a load of cover versions by anonymous session musicians who often didn't take too much trouble to sound anything like the artists they were aping. Charity shop crates are stuffed full of this stuff and I was going to try and stay away from them as far as I could with this blog, unless there was something about a particular release that caught my eye, something that 'Smash Hits 71' managed to do as surely as if it had reached out and shoved a fish hook into it.

Firstly, that cover; what do we have here? A cheesecake shot of a topless woman wearing what looks like a nappy (complete with oversized safety pin) holding a baby whose 'Where's my mummy and who is this strange woman' expression suggests a child freshly stolen from a pram not ten minutes hence. If that wasn't odd enough, the back cover features the same duo, only this time both are wearing different coloured nappies. If there was a 'concept' at work here or a 'message' to be read then I'm afraid it's sailed right over my head. Second up, that track list. On first glance it looks a fair round up of the usual suspect glam and bubblegum hits of 1971, but then what's that nestling amongst them? Mozart Symphony Number 40? Well that's got to be worth a pound of anyone's money.  

Well I can clear up 'the Mozart mystery' early doors; a closer inspection of the cover notes reveals 'Smash Hits 71' to be of Dutch origin, and a quick Google shows that an Argentinean conductor called Waldo de los Ríos (with the Manuel de Falla orchestra) scored a number one hit in Holland  that year with a pops version of the first movement of Mozart's 40th (it was popular all over Europe apparently but it didn't chart in the UK). Strange, but what's stranger is that the arrangement that's played on this album doesn't sound much like Waldo's own treatment of the score, making this version a curious hybrid of both a cover version and an original piece of work.  

As for the rest, well the backing tracks throughout are pretty faithful, chicken in the basket circuit, covers band stuff. The vocals, however, range from the "rough approximation-alikes" ('Did You Ever?', 'Hot Love' (which doesn't stint on the 'la la la la la la la's' either)) to the "makes no attempt at all to sound like the original artist-alikes" ('Indiana Wants Me', 'I Did What I Did For Maria', 'My Sweet Lord').* But though it's fair to say that nobody here would win 'Stars In Their Eyes', to criticise any further would be churlish; these are meant to be cheap and cheerful knock-offs, not faithful reproductions. On that level - and as long as you know what you're in for before you part with your money - they work just fine. If you don't, then the disappointment will be a palpable as paying to see 'The Drifters' and having four white guys turn up on stage.

* I should give a mention in dispatches to the unknown female who (to these ears anyway) provides a fair go at Nancy Sinatra on 'Did You Ever' and a not quite so fair go at Diana Ross on 'I'm Still Waiting' - this girl is game if nothing else.

To The Tables Down At Mory's: Lee Gotch's Ivy Barflies - Pye Golden Guinea Records 1959

Well what's this? ...."songs for getting together...drinking beer...and raising hell!!!".... well fair enough, but though I confess to being partial to a sing song after a few scoops myself, it's normally a good bellow along with whatever comes over the pub speakers at the end of the night. Which in my day tended to be 'Living On A Prayer' and I usually got the words wrong. And the timing. All of it really. 

On the strength of these recordings though, it does not sound like anybody involved is actually drinking anything, and if they are then they're not drinking enough. Instead of the raucous hellraising that the cover promises, the vocalists here are performing incredibly tight and intricate harmonising with perfect pitch and barber shop syncopation; I know that I wouldn't sound like these lads after a skinful. I might think that I did, but to anybody listening it would sound as melodic as Norwegian death metal. 

But for those paying attention then the back cover gives the game away; "For the want of a name, we call the group on this recording the Ivy Barflies. Actually, these talented gentlemen, under the direction of Lee Gotch, are among the finest vocalists in Hollywood today". So then, these aren't field recordings of regular Joes on a weekend bender, they're professional singers in a studio performing some songs that you may or may not want to sing whilst having a drink. And whilst this isn't a revelation along the lines of the three secrets of Fátima, it does lead me to shrug my shoulders and ask 'what's the point'? I mean 'Shine On Harvest Moon', 'I've Been Working On The Railroad', 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' - these aren't songs about drinking at all but are instead offered up as songs you might like to drink along to, but who on earth would want to? 

Well, the back cover suggests 'In this collection we have selected a programme that is, for the most part, inevitable at any party" - I'm sorry, I don't know if something has been lost in the passage of time, but that doesn't apply to any party I've ever been to or would want to; the songs here may have been popular in 1959, but I've not heard of at least half of them, and the ones I have heard I would never have regarded as 'drinking songs'.  It's horses for courses I guess, and the guys on the cover look happy enough, but that Technicolor drenched shot is indicative of how incredibly polite and dated all of this is.

With the references to 'Ivy Barflies' and 'Alma Mater' and 'Sigma Chi' in the songs themselves, we're clearly in American college territory here, with these Eisenhower era, preppy looking, middle aged teenagers cast as the Ivy League version of Oxford's Bullingdon Club, happy to be 'raising hell' safe in the knowledge there's a trust fund to pay for the damages and expensive lawyers on hand to hush it all up should anyone get hurt. At heart, the whole amounts to very professional and very serviceable easily listening experience  You can't criticise it for that in itself, but with the cover text suggesting something more raucous was on the cards then I can honestly say I'd rather have an early night than go to any pub session that took this as its text.