Two reasons why I picked this one up. First one -
unless I stumble upon some old recordings of Hitler's speeches, I don't think
I'm going to be writing about another album that has a swastika in the middle of
the cover, along with a nice watercolour of two SS officers, so there's a
novelty value in reviewing something that would probably be banned for sale from
ebay. Second, it has one of my all time favourite TV themes on it's tracklist -
'Galloping Home', Denis King's wonderful theme music to the seventies Sunday tea
time staple 'The New Adventures of Black Beauty', a piece of music that, along
with the themes to 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Van Der Valk' are evocative enough of
my childhood so as bring a tear to my eye.
Geoff's version on this brought a
tear to my eye too, but for all the wrong reasons; King's theme is all urgent
strings of motion punctuated by the hoofbeat pound of kettledrums, in other
words music fit to soundtrack scenes of a thoroughbred stallion charging though
an English meadow on his way home. On his version, Love dispenses with the
kettledrums and adds a constantly ticking drum rhythm that's less indicative of
speed and power and sounds more like a Yorkshire Terrier scampering for a
biscuit, while the horns smear the tune all over the shop like so much cheap jam
on so much white bread. This is not a good start Geoffrey.
Maybe I should be too surprised though -
for the observant, the back cover note give a heads up on what's to come:
"Now Geoff Love has selected a further twelve
of your favourite TV themes, investing them with his own attractive and popular
brand of arrangement to enable you to enjoy these familiar pieces of music in
their entirety". The problem of course is that 'attractive' is a
rather subjective concept isn't it? And what's so attractive about putting
'favourite TV themes' through the Geoff Love mangle? Because elsewhere, even though the triumphant march of the
World of Sport theme had a sense of occasion out of all proportion to the
'sports' the show tended to feature (usually wrestling from Northern town halls
and Canadian tractor pulling), Love's arrangement speeds it up, thins it out and
adds musical 'jokes' and 'laughs' that would be better suited to soundtracking a
sitcom.
Elsewhere, the 'Nationwide' theme is chivvied along
with added banjo and quite spectacular walking bassline while on 'Upstairs
Downstairs' Love plays the same 'Black Beauty' card and adds an incessant drum
pattern that rattles like a click track and shakes all the stateliness clean out
of the music, sitting it firmly 'Downstairs' in the cheap seats. This is a
constant theme to all on offer here - Love does not play it like it was written
and instead fiddles around until the familiar becomes just unfamiliar enough to
be irritating. All, that is, except the theme from Colditz where even Love seems
to know better than to piss off the Nazis and offers up an almost carbon copy of
Robert Farnon's stirring theme. Which means he can do it when he wants
to, but the fact he rarely does makes this release a frustrating affair and
largely redundant in my eyes. Maybe it made more sense back in 1973 when direct
comparisons to the originals were harder to come by, making the back cover claim
that this album will 'serve as a permanent reminder of the programmes you enjoy'
more honest. If all you're after is a 'reminder' then I suppose it works well
enough, but those wanting to add accuracy to the pot had best look elsewhere.
Start with YouTube.
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