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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