Saturday, 18 March 2017

Hammond A Go Go Volume 2: James Last - Polydor 1968

I've had many years experience of scouring charity shops, car boot sales, jumble sales and the like in my search for second hand vinyl treasures. I mentioned in my introduction that the nuggets of gold can be few and far between and a great deal is sifted out simply by me glancing at the name on the cover and then passing it by. One of the main 'nothing to see here, move along' names I've come across has been James Last, and in that sifting I've come to view Last's albums in much the same way I've come to view women's diet magazines and internet porn. That is, as a casual observer, I can see there's rather a lot of it about, but I'm not sure I understand why or who is buying it all.
 
Is it a single, dedicated, obsessive completist hardcore audience that's buying up every single thing that comes on the market, or is it a larger number of ever shifting, multi-generational individuals who occasionally dip their toes in the waters every year for the occasional purchase but in sufficient numbers each time so as to make the whole economically viable? There's probably a bit of both going on I suppose, but either way, for a man who has reportedly sold over 200 million albums worldwide, not one of them has ever been sold to me and I know comparatively little about him or his music. I do know that he's now dead but in life led an orchestra that specialised in easy listening versions of popular and classical music, but I'm conscious that's not much butter to have spread as far as it seems to have done. There has to be something more.
 
In light of all this, I guess it was inevitable that at least one of Last's albums would turn up here sooner or later, if only to satisfy my own curiosity and add to my own sum of knowledge. My problem in the past has always been that I've never known which part of this vast ocean to dip my toe in first. There's simply so much of it 'out there'. And so I decided to take a punt on 'Hammond A Go Go Volume 2' simply because of the cover - an attractive woman, a magnificent looking teapot and a shadowy gentleman who, in that light anyway, looks a bit like Boris Karloff in 'The Raven' (the 1935 version). Now that's something that deserves to be listened to. At least once anyway.
 
Presumably intended as a dance album, "Hammond A Go Go" has its selections grouped together according to the type of rug you're meant to cut to them. Thus we get 'On The Street Where You Live', 'I Love Paris' and 'Bye Bye Blues' lumped together and played in the style of a foxtrot, while 'Samba Estrellla' and 'The Peanut Vendor' are collected and played as a samba. You get the picture. What I didn't get from the cover picture though was how all this was actually going to sound; to my mind there's a definite mismatch between what the sleeve suggests you're going to get and what the music actually delivers. With a scene of such ornate sophistication, I imagined some swish Viennese locale where waltzes are swished out by a full orchestra, and I expected music that would back that up. What we actually get is a stripped down trio of Hammond, percussion and then either a saxophone or guitar who take the lead alternately. While none is given special prominence, true to the title a Hammond parping away in the background is a constant presence.
 
Whether or not this music actually pushes those dance buttons I couldn't say, but for the casual listener your take on this is going to be mainly informed on your take on a Hammond organ. When they're wild they're wild, and the music does have a rough edged spikiness that I wasn't expecting - if not exactly lo-fi, it's certainly not over produced and it almost seems like Last was trying to be canny by positioning himself in two opposing camps. On one hand it's a partial bone for those feeling left out and left behind of the Sixties sex, drugs and rock and roll revolution and who wanted to hark back to the more traditional times of the cover shot where dance music didn't need the ingestion of a bagful of drugs to enjoy it, while on the other it's a come on to the fans of the organ driven freakbeat groups of the sixties. If that Hammond had suddenly kicked into the riff of '96 Tears' in-between 'Singing In The Rain' and 'Bell Bottomed Trousers' then I wouldn't have been too surprised as it wouldn't have sounded too out of place.
 
That fact alone meant 'Hammond A Go Go' caught my ear for a few minutes, but familiarity soon bred, if not contempt, then a weary acceptance that this pony only had one trick, and that it had another thirty five or so minutes still left to perform it. Pity really that Last didn't go for the throat and let rip with some overtly psychedelic versions of these tunes and then aim it directly at 'the kids' by wrapping it in a suitably 'sixties' sleeve. A missed opportunity perhaps, but it means that what's left doesn't really ring my bell and, once heard, I can't imagine any scenario where I would want to listen to it again. I doubt that chap on the cover would be slipping this on to the turntable when they 'retired' either, and if he did then I can't imagine that woman would be too impressed with either it or him.

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