The Happy Hammond Goes Pop: Phil Allen - Hallmark 1971

Now that's a nice cover isn't it? Neat, classy, understated and somehow (for me) a perfect summation of what these budget albums are all about. And it's not just me; it was purloined wholesale for RPM's 1994 compilation album of Reg Dwight's pre Elton John, budget label session work too and it worked just as well there. So far so good then, but seeing that this cover houses yet another compilation of contemporary hits played on a Hammond organ then my heart sinks faster than an old woman ducked as a witch.

 

Amusingly though, the album itself is savvy enough to acknowledge my disinterest - from the back cover note; 'There are some people for whom the sound of a Hammond organ means musical paradise on a grand scale, but for others it's just another boring organ sound' - well I know which side of that particular fence I stand on, but before I get all sniffy it puts me in my place again; 'But we're not concerned with the latter - although it might surprise them to realise just how versatile the Hammond can be when it's well played, and is matched with a selection of songs that bring out the best in it'. Well Excuse Me I'm sure! It's not often that I'm ticked off by my own records, but ok, I accept the challenge - show me just how versatile that wretched organ is.

 

What we have here is a selection of pretty big hits from the late sixties/early seventies (including seven number ones) played as Hammond led instrumentals. What's unusual for this type of album though is that there's a full band playing behind that organ that, for the most part anyway, faithfully recreates the music of the original songs. At times unnervingly so - hearing the familiar piano intro to 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' brought about a Pavlovian expectation to hear Art Garfunkel's vocal kick in, but replacing it with a raspy Hammond 'singing' the vocal line was as jarring and unnerving as hearing the young Regan McNeil telling Father Karras that his mother sucks cocks in hell. It's not what anyone would be expecting.

 

All the tracks continue in much the same vein; that is, the usual backing with (despite the promise of that cover note) the Hammond playing the main vocal melody with the same levels of versatility and variation as you find in the colour of orange juice. What's also slightly incongruous is that despite being billed as 'The Happy Hammond', even a cursory glance at the line-up tells you that these are by no means all 'happy' songs and, ironically, the ones that are ('The Pushbike Song', 'Sugar Sugar' etc.) are slowed to a crawl and dropped to a lower key that sucks out the joy like a vampire. So go figure. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture and so I'll let the album itself have the last word: 'Instead just sit back and enjoy the dazzling sounds that come from the Hammond organ and if, by the time this album is ended, you're not among the happy band of people who like their pop music played in a lively and different way, then we'll be very surprised!' No surprises as to which band I don't belong to.

 

 

Cocktail Piano: Rene Armand with Carlini's World Of Strings - Stereo Gold Award 1970

"When the lights are dimmed and the mood is one of quiet relaxation there can be no finer company than the smooth and delicate piano style of Rene Armand especially when he himself is in the company of the World of Strings". That's what it says on the back anyway, and that cover is certainly aiming at a degree of classy swish and a quiet night in; evening dress and tuxedo, cocktails and strings, flock wallpaper by the yard - it's got it all, and this album is presumably meant to be the missing piece of the jigsaw for an evening of sublime sophistication.

 

The problem is, however, that 'Rene' and his piano and 'Carlini' and his strings are not exactly reading from the same page. Or even reading from the same book to be honest; instead of the promised 'smooth and delicate' background sounds, the two battle each other in a duel to the death with the poor listener as the real victim. Because instead of seeking any kind of harmonious hook-up, Carlini revs up those strings till they boom with an overcooked sturm und drang while Rene pounds the keys like an avant garde jazzer wired to the mains, never playing one note where five will do. Frankly, it's an awful, Wagner in a teacup type racket and something that's completely at odds with what is meant to be on offer here. That's not to say it's death metal levels of loud and raucousness, because it's not, but my point is that death metal is meant to be loud and raucous and so anything less than that would be a disappointment for its fans. For an album selling itself as sophisticated easy listening, the bar at where 'easy' becomes 'rather less than easy' is set pretty low, and 'Cocktail Piano' clears it with room to spare.

 

A word too about some of the arrangements on this - as the label is 'Stereo Gold Award', we're back in cheeky L Muller territory. And sure enough, his name crops up on the label as a chief arranger. Presumably because he's still alive and can afford good lawyers, Muller leaves the Jimmy Webb stuff alone, but reading 'Tchaikovsky arr. L Muller' can either raise a smirk or a snort of derision depending on your viewpoint and/or general mood. That's one thing, but then reading the 'Mozart arr. J Last' credit (to the 'Theme From Elvira Madigan'), just smacks of a lazy, can't even be arsed-ness. Which is probably fitting in the circumstances - I'm finding it hard to believe that these tunes were recorded specifically for this project and this record feels instead like it's populated by the hastily cobbled together offcuts of other projects clumsily packaged as something it's clearly not. Maybe that's why the woman on the cover looks like she's having a glass of stale piss wafted under her nose; if this album is playing in the background, then she may as well be.

Close To The Carpenters: The Hamilton Pop Orchestra And Singers - Chevron 1979

'Close To The Carpenters'? Well you can see what they've done there can't you? Name checked one of the biggest selling easy listening acts of the seventies (or as the back cover note informs us, 'The most successful brother and sister act since Fred and Adele Astaire') with the added suggestion that anyone buying this is in for some pretty faithful reproductions of how those Carpenters hits originally sounded . That seems to be the sell anyway, but I think anybody coming to this what that expectation is likely to be in for a disappointment.*

Although 'The Carpenters' were ostensibly a duo, it was Carpenter singular Karen and her voice (rather than her drumming) that effectively sold the band to millions of listeners. A uniquely pure and highly distinctive sound, it would take a singer with either a great deal of talent, balls or stupidity to go toe to toe and try to emulate it. Which is probably why the line up of lead vocalists here by and large don't try. True, some make an attempt to take on her mannerisms, some less so whilst others wouldn't even fool a dog that they're listening to the real thing.

Almost to compensate, the arrangements of the songs this more cluttered and busier than The Carpenters own versions and they're done in a way that draws the spotlight away from whoever is up front so as to make it easier to overlook that it's not Karen, but I'm not sure any of this is a fair stick to beat it with. After all, title aside, there's no real claim that this is going for pure authenticity - these are songs associated with The Carpenters sympathetically performed by The Hamilton Pop Orchestra and Singers and your reaction is going to be gauged by how high you'd set your expectations up front.  To paraphrase that great philosopher Melanie, you shouldn't pay a nickel and expect a dollar song and buying this instead of a Carpenters compilation proper and expecting like for like would be as misguided as buying mutton expecting lamb and you'd deserve all you got (or didn't, if you see what I mean). If, however, you only wanted fairly faithful versions of songs associated with The Carpenters, played and presented in a reasonably competent manner, then you couldn't go too far wrong with this.


 * I was going to mention that the wagon wheel and the bloke's hand on the cover seem very suggestively placed, but I'm not sure if it's deliberate or just my bad mind. The woman seems happy enough anyway. No discernable disappointment there.

Golden Film Hits: Klaus Wunderlich - Telefunken 1970

I'll say one thing for Wunderlich (or, more likely, the people behind him), he knows how to package his stuff in an eye catching cover; this is the third on the trot that I've picked up solely because....well because it caught my eye. What's lurking behind it, however, is a disparate mix of music from film soundtracks (everything from 'High Noon' to 'Goldfinger'), each given the Wunderlich makeover. And by 'the Wunderlich makeover', I mean played on a reedy Hammond organ that sounds like its never seen the sun. True, it's not entirely solo and you don't need to be a native Berliner to work out the cover note where it says 'Hammond Orgel mit Rhythmusgruppe', but any backing musicians in that rhythmusgruppe play very much a fourth fiddle to the man on the organ (and truth be told a lot of what they do is so far back in the mix it just sounds like one of the organ's pre-set rhythms anyway).

 

Turn it over and the back studiously sets out the name of the tune, the film it came from, the year it was released and the names of the lead actors in a way that suggests we're in for some faithful recreations of the scores as they were written. But alas, Wunderlich is not Geoff Love and he makes no attempt at that all. Instead, all are plonked out in a mono tone and mono key style that gives them a homogenous, flat quality that's all out of step with how they sounded in the context of their host movies. Like most film music, these tunes were scored for mood and dramatic effect, all of which goes straight down the drain when they're reduced to just the bare bones of their melodies. Linking some of them medley style doesn't help either; in fact, on occasion it makes it worse - the one tune that would most fit the Wunderlich approach (Francis Lai's 'A Man And A Woman') is enjoyable enough in it's own way until it suddenly pulls a handbrake turn into a parping version of 'Goldfinger' that's not enjoyable on any level.

 

Because of that, I can't imagine many film fans getting anything from this except disappointment and the feeling they've been sold a pup; for all that window dressing this could more accurately have been served up in a plain cardboard sleeve - this is music more suited to the lift shaft and shopping mall than a serious listen for film fans. A plain sleeve would have at least more accurately reflected the bland and faceless contents within - contents which, instead of the relaxing, easy listening experience it's meant to generate, actually left me feeling more and more tense as it went on and I willed the whole thing to be over and done with. So, not good then.

Organ Favourites: Ken Griffin - Embassy 1973

Another album of organ music, though instead of the usual random, head scratching compilation of music, the tunes on this album (they're there on the cover) are meant to be linked by the common theme of 'romantic anniversaries'. I can't see that myself, but that's rather by the by; despite the intended celebratory angle, it wouldn't be completely inconceivable to use this music to soundtrack documentary footage of the Holocaust - it's as sad as Sunday. Almost wholly played on that organ (save for some very fleeting guitar motifs) in a lurching 3/8 waltz time and at an arthritic pace that's as drab and bland as that cover, Ken picks out the tunes note by note as gingerly as if the keys were studded with razor blades. It's dry and it's boring but it's also deliberate and the back cover note presents it as some kind of virtue:

 

"All are performed with his artful simplicity. It is a most deceptive simplicity, but he believed in letting the composer's melodies speak for themselves without all the embellishments used by so many 'show off' instrumentalists, unnecessary embroidery that tended to obscure the pure melodic lines". Well ok - on the evidence of this then no one could accuse Ken of being a 'show off', but a little bit of that 'embroidery' wouldn't have gone amiss - I wouldn't expect him to go all Keith Emerson on them, but a little flourish here and there to knock the dust off would have made this far more listenable. But he doesn't, and in not doing so it raises the question why anyone would want or need 'Organ Favourites' played in this plink plonk pedestrian way. Unless, I suppose, the 'romantic anniversary' is of the death of your spouse and you want something playing in the background as you sob into a faded photograph. If you do, then this is the record for you. Knock yourself out. But keep it to yourself eh?

Laughter With A Bang: Blaster Bates - Big Ben Records 1967

I once had a go at a friend of a friend for telling me he'd never heard of Patti Smith. This wasn't something that came from me out of the blue, he had set himself up in conversation as a self confessed 'authority' on popular music and was pontificating on what he believed were the 'all time classic  albums'. When I mentioned Smith's 'Horses' as a contender that he'd overlooked, he gave me the blank look of a dog staring at a smart phone which I in turn met with (admittedly over egged) hoots of derision. "Call yourself a music fan but never heard of 'Horses'? Pfffffft".

 

"But just because you've heard of something doesn't mean everybody should have" he argued back. And true enough up to a point, but my own point was that he'd set himself up as an authority who was now confessing he'd never even heard of one of the key figures of Twentieth Century popular music, let alone her oeuvre. This was not something I could let pass, as far as I was concerned this was no different to a football 'authority' telling me they'd never heard of Maradona. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be able to reel off his strike rate, the clubs he'd played for or the name of his children - just having heard of him and the fact he was Argentinean would have been enough. Similarly, I wasn't expecting my own 'music authority' to necessarily be able to reel off Smith's albums, singles and lyrics by rote; just having head of her and her album 'Horses' (which has regularly appeared on every critic sourced 'all time albums' list almost since it was released) would have been enough. For me anyway.

I've set out the above by way of background to this current album and ,I suppose, to own up to a certain level of hubris. You see, when I first picked this up from the box I had no idea I was holding an album that had been certified gold or that the man behind it had enjoyed no small fame in his time and had his 2006 obituary carried by The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and the BBC. Frankly, I'd never even heard of Blaster Bates, let alone knew what he was famous for and in truth I was struggling to make sense of what I was actually looking at. With that front cover image of Bates looking alarmingly like a cross between John Wayne and Nye Bevan and a back cover note telling me: "Blaster Bates has  become a household name in the Midlands and North of England, for not only does he enjoy the reputation of being Britain's leading professional  demolition expert - but by virtue of his prodigious extrovert sense of humour  and an almost inexhaustible supply of stories about his exploits he has  become a unique entertainer" then for all the world it looked like some kind of piss take, a Monty Python spoof made flesh.

Only it's not. It's genuine; this is a live, spoken word comedy record of a professional dynamiter's shaggy dog anecdotes of the buildings he's blown up. Not only that, the 'Volume One' on the cover isn't kidding - this was apparently the first in a series of eight other volumes (others include '1001 Gelignites', 'TNT For Two', 'Gelly Babe' and 'Blastermind' - you get the picture) which would seem to offer plenty more of the same*. But again, I'd never heard of him. No doubt a 'Blaster Bates' fan would look at me, a self confessed vinyl (and, let's be honest, comedy) fan sideways for my ignorance of an act who had shipped gold (that's at least 100,000 copies) in the same way I'd looked sideways at the poor bloke above. I'd like to say it will teach me not to be so judgemental, but it probably won't though I will take the lesson on board in my own quiet way.

Anyway, whatever - I have heard of him now and I've also heard this album and, as with all comedy albums, the $64,000 question is 'is it funny'? And I'm aware that a degree of caution must be applied as one man's humour is another man's blank, dog stare incomprehension. All I can do is report from my own perspective and, on that front, the answer has to be 'not really' - where the back cover says Bates 'will provide exhilarating entertainment for nearly all the family', I'm afraid it must have been me they had in mind with that subgroup. 

 

There's no doubt there's plenty of scope in Blaster's tales for humour, and stories like the time he was hired to clear out a farm's septic tank using explosives (called "The Shower of Shit Over Cheshire" here) might have been funnier if he'd stuck to the point, but Bates has an annoying tendency to ramble in the telling of his tales and the frequently veers off piste like Ronnie Corbett in his chair but without the charm or erudition. Bates has a habit too of using his broad Cheshire accent as both a crutch and a tool to prise cheap laughs from a partisan home crowd (this was apparent recorded live at a meeting of the Congleton Round Table); he only has to say 'bugger' or 'shit' for the crowd to collapse into laughter like a house of cards in a draught. Such talk may have been nearer the knuckle in 1967, but it hasn't aged well and any edge it once had has long since been blunted and it makes this more of a time capsule curio than something worth tracking down on its own merits.


* Though volume 8 is called 'Hunting & Shooting Stories'; clearly, the demolition game is not a bottomless well of humorous stories.

The Very Best Of Franck Pourcel: Franck Pourcel - EMI 1977

Franck Pourcel is another of 'those' artists who I seem to have heard of (as being an orchestra leader and instrumentalist in the same vein as James Last or Mantovani) via some weird alchemy but actually know nothing much about; to put it bluntly, I couldn't name a single piece of music he's famous for. On that basis, a 'Very Best Of' might seem as good a place to start as any to find out about his work, but I'm not sure that it is. Pourcel has apparently released over 250 albums in his time and having such a wide catalogue to draw from for a 'best of' compilation would probably account for the rather eclectic tracklist on this - The Beatles, Abba, Serge Gainsbourgh, Irving Berlin, Glen Miller and the theme tunes from 'Bonanza' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' all jockey for position in a line-up that plays out like ADHD in the form of a mixtape.

 

In saying that though, the same broad brush selection of tunes does nevertheless reveal a common denominator in everything Pourcel touches - that is, a tendency to turn almost everything up to 11. I say 'almost' because on those tunes where he doesn't, he turns it up to 12 instead* - on the strength of these recordings it's fair to say that subtlety is not high on his agenda and everything is over egged to within an inch of its life. Pourcel rarely does anything radical with the tunes themselves in the way of deconstructing them - they're all recognisable from the off - but  McCartney's previously brittle and tender 'Yesterday' is drenched in a Tchaikovskyan wail of strings, 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'  becomes a Sousa march as written by Wagner for a Nazi rally and Abba's 'Fernando' clatters with the sturm and drang of the battles described in its lyrics.

 

So it goes on for track after track from start to finish in an experience that's akin to watching television for an hour with the colour turned full up. And what at first has a certain novelty appeal soon starts to grate until you're longing for something to break up the blare; it makes for some very uneasy listening. Maybe if they were set and heard in their original contexts as whole albums of Beatles songs, film soundtracks etc as arranged the Pourcel way than they'd be easier to digest, but twenty of these things in one go are too much to swallow and it would definitely be a case of 'less is more' if some of them had been pruned.

 

 

* Perhaps fittingly, half of these recordings are credited to 'Franck Pourcel and his Orchestra' while the other half are credited to 'Franck Pourcel and his Big Orchestra'.

Honky Tonk Sing-Along Party 1: Nick Nicholls - Contour 1975

At this stage of the game I tend to wear a similar expression to that chap on the cover there every time I put one of these records on. That is, a bemused, "what the f!%* am I doing with my time" look that's half embarrassed at what I am doing and half wishing I was elsewhere doing something else. But then again, I'm only writing about this stuff, I'm not trying to sell it and so for the star of the show to be looking like he knows he's selling us a pup before we even start does not inspire confidence that I'm in for forty minutes of top entertainment.

And indeed I wasn't; what we have here is a straight collection of the sort of songs a Kim Cordell would no doubt enjoy belting out in her pub (i.e. British music hall/American/musical type standards) played ragtime style on a piano with added percussion courtesy of somebody on the spoons. Instead of Cordell leading the charge though, there's a Greek chorus of singers (who may or may not be the people on the cover) who, instead of raising the roof in an alcohol fuelled singalong frenzy, dampen the mood by droning out the words in a curiously detached, defiantly emotion free style that's akin to the half hearted, one key chanting of reluctant schoolkids singing hymns at morning assembly than anything redolent of anyone having a good time. Puncture flat and with just as much bounce, this is tired stuff that never comes close to catching fire. Or even smouldering to be honest.

As for the music, well Nicholls has got the sort of crazy flipper fingers you need for ragtime and there's no doubt he can play, but if you listen to him in isolation then he doesn't sound like he's paying much attention to the score. Rather, the music is the sound of a man amusing himself by playing whatever he wants; there's no discernable 'tune' to any of it and it's left to those singers to mould the songs and provide the structure and tunes that make them recognisable. For example, I found I can sing 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' over the top of the piano on 'Ship Ahoy!' with neither undue benefit or detriment to either; the music underneath is almost interchangeable. And (it has to be said), it's very, very samey.

Which kind of sums up this curious piece of vinyl - there's not much to like about it, but there's not much to actually hate either beyond the vague feeling I've just wasted forty minutes of my life in arriving at that conclusion. In the end it's just there, twelve inches of dullness in search of an audience. Who that might be I honestly couldn't imagine, and it would probably take a lot more than the three and a half pints on the cover before anyone believed listening to this was filling a gap in their life.