The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde: Bonnie, Bugsy And The Heavy Mob - Allegro 1968

There are a lot of words on that cover, but not the two that immediately spring to my mind when I look at it - 'Cash' and 'In'. This is 1968 and not only had the Hollywood version of 'Bonnie and Clyde' been released to acclaim the previous year (which explains the two cover stars trying to look as much like Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as budget, lighting and camera angles would allow), while Georgie Fame had released the number one single 'The Ballad Of Bonnie and Clyde' that same year, a song that both appears on this record and gives it its title as well as justifying that small print that says "The story in song of that wild pair".

 

Well that song does anyway; the rest of the tracks on here have nothing to do with the pair save the fact they were popular round about the same time as the duo were at large. None of these songs actually appear on the official 'Bonnie And Clyde' soundtrack either, and I guess the ones that have been chosen to make up this record are meant to be evocative of a "vivid, colourful period of modern American history" where "a young couple ran amok in an orgy of cold blooded killing of innocent folk". As a selling point, this does not strike me as being in terribly good taste; what reception would a compilation of early 70's UK hits get if it were marketed as a remembrance of the IRA bombing campaign I wonder? After all, that was another "orgy of cold blooded killing of innocent folk". I suppose 'The Troubles' have never been given a glamorous Hollywood makeover (perhaps with Johnny Depp as the president of Sinn Fein) that would give the backdrop to make such an album viable and for that we should be thankful for small mercies.

 

But whatever, this isn't being offered up as a moral imperative - it's a budget record I found in a charity shop and so the acid test for it is simply to ask 'is it any good?'. And I think the best answer I can give to that is 'it's good enough'. By which I mean it's as good as Bonnie. Bugsy and the Heavy Mob (AKA a bunch of disinterested sounding, jobbing musicians and session singers) need to be in order to deliver what's promised. There's nothing uncontroversial in its arrangements or delivery, but it's a lifeless album with not much in the way of enthusiasm to help draw you into the world it's trying to recreate.

 

The backing music is the predictable stabs of brass and bluster that never manage to swing and the vocals adopt the nasally twang of someone trying to impersonate the sound of a Twenties radio broadcast in a way that manages to be both endearing and irritating at the same time; to be honest, it all just sounds fake, false and forced. If you absolutely have to have a version of 'Broadway Melody', 'I Don't Know Why' or the like but don't want to pay through the nose for them, then this will do the job. For my own part I'd have had a lot more time for it if it had been marketed as a straightforward, old time radio compilation rather than leeching off the goodwill and acclaim generated by others. The fact that it's presented as the latter rather than the former still leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth, even after all these years.

Pop Organ Hit Parade: Franz Lambert - EMI 1978

That cover isn't giving the usual level of detail for the casual buyer is it? Ok, there's Franz and his organ and 40 'Super Hits' - I get that, but the usual custom for these albums has been to supplement that much with some kind of 'For Dancing', 'In A Hammond Style', or 'In A Country Way' type qualifier, something gives some indication of what the point of the album is and what it's going to sound like. You don't get that here, but after listening to it I kind of know why; the cover does in fact tell you all you need to know, this is an album of Franz Lambert playing some tunes on an organ in a Franz Lambert style. That's all there is to it.

 

Maybe that's a bit harsh - after all, it's not Lambert's fault that I expected something more, but then I think anyone with a Wersi Galaxis organ at home and a modicum of talent in playing it could have knocked this stuff out to much the same effect. According to my research, the Wersi Galaxis is a kind of programmable, hybrid synthesiser type instrument; that makes sense because, on this at least, it's made to work for its supper - there are no backing musicians here and all the rhythm tracks and percussion are generated by the organ itself with Franz picking out the melody over the top.

 

Like other albums of this ilk, those '40 Super Hits' are grouped into clusters of two or three and played in medley style, but while the cover suggests we're in for a late 70's hits from the UK type compilation, those familiar titles are interspersed with some very (to me anyway) unfamiliar ones like 'Im Wagen Von Mir', 'Und Dabei Liebe Ich Euch Beide' and 'Buenas Dias Argentina' which means listening to it in one sitting is a trippy, dream-like affair where familiar tunes emerge from a fog of Europop before being swallowed up again by tunes I don't know from Adam. Again, that's not Franz's fault, but it does put another cross in the debit column.

 

You see as game as Franz is, the simple fact is that many of these tunes don't translate at all well to the organ ('Mull Of Kintyre', 'Dancing In The City', 'Car Wash' etc.), and though he gets stuck in with a good natured enthusiasm that's hard to dislike, it's not something that's easy to enjoy either, and with an instrument that struggles to produce subtleties of light and shade, the relentless bombardment of too much organ just wears me down. Ultimately, I can't help but see this as anything other than a vanity project that either only Lambert's family and friends or else rabid fans of the Wersi Galaxis sound are going get anything from; there's simply nothing else here for the rest of us and I can't think of any context where playing this would make for a perfect accompaniment. Unless I was purposely trying to irritate.

Beatles Bach Bacharach Go Bossa: Arranged By Alan Moorhouse - Music For Pleasure 1971

'The music of George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Johann Sebastian Bach and Burt Bacahrach in Bossa Nova style': that cover note just about sums this up - what more do you need to know? What more is there to know? There's the obvious question as to 'why?', but I've asked that before and I know as far as these records go their lips are sealed. I could ponder if those B's were deliberately chosen for their pleasant alliteration, but does it matter any more than if it were 'Rammstein, Rachmaninov and Radiohead Go Reggae'? Not really. It is what it is. Ah well.

 

Mention 'Bossa Nova' to someone and like as not what comes to mind will be that girl from Ipanema and her jazzy, laid back samba soundtrack that epitomises the kind of blissed out summer most of us aspire to but few actually experience. It's what I think of anyway, but instead of delivering more of the same, arranger Alan Moorhouse takes some very broad brush Bossa Novas beat, laces them up in bovver boots and lets them clump out a backing track while a main melody is honked out over the top of it on a too loud, too busy by half saxophone. Laid back it is not.

 

Perhaps recognising that Bacharach's tunes lend themselves best to this approach, they make up five of the twelve tracks whilst Bach gets three, but in truth all sound much the same when they're set upon in this heavy handed, over egged manner. And fair play, with not one single nod to reverence, even Johann gets put through the same mangle as the rest of them with much the same outcome - that is, one that doesn't work too well and just ends up as awkward, stiff and uncomfortable as size ten feet in size eight shoes.  Being essentially ethic music, Bossa Nova works best when it's cooked up on its own terms and imbued with its own culture and tradition - trying to force other genres into its parameters can work with a bit of imagination, but imagination is in short supply on this thick gloop of novelty cultural tourism that reminds me less of a sun kissed day at the beach as the burned out husk of a pizza left in the oven for too long. Try as I might, I simply can't see any merit in any of this and fans of any of those B's are likely to feel equally let down by this one gimmick pony.

Summer Serenade In Torquay: John Allen & His Orchestra - RA Records no date shown but I'd guess early 1960s

Now there's a cover that shows you everything but tells you nothing; 'Summer Serenade In Torquay' - what is indigenous Torquay music that would (as the back suggests) 'remind you of the lovely days of summer, and bring you musical sunshine all the year round' and what would it sound like? Alas, the answer sadly, is 'like nothing much really'; rather than a set of compositions specifically about or referencing the titular Devon town, the music on this is simply a compilation of excerpts from light operetta played by a chamber orchestra. The whole 'Torquay' angle seems limited to the fact that it was recorded (so the cover tells me) in Torquay by 'West Of England Sound Ltd', which is a bit of a lame connection really, especially when on this evidence the town does not have sufficient personality of its own to seep into the music.

 

As for that music, I can't say that it sounds particularly 'summery' or even particularly English; Viennese polkas, selections from 'Showboat', traditional Irish jigs, Maria Paradis' piano quartet 'Sicilienne' - there's probably something here for everyone, except someone who wants to summon up mental images of the English Riviera. The closest it gets is a revival of Edward German's proto Wurzels-like 'Glorious Devon', ("Dorset, Somerset, Cornwall, Wales, May envy the likes of we. For the flower of the West, the first, the best, the pick of the bunch us be"), but one out of thirteen is not a good strike rate.

 

All things being equal, as this record went on I would have kind of assumed that the wrong disc had been in the sleeve and that was why the contents and the cover didn't seem to match. But it isn't , the disc is the right one and it leads to an awkward situation where I can say as a piece of light entertainment, 'Summer Serenade' is perfectly fine. More than fine really - the music is played well, the songs are sung well and everyone knows what they are doing. But anyone looking for a summer feeling or some kind of souvenir of their time in Torquay may well feel as short changed by it as they would if they'd bought a cat that turned out to be a dog.

You Should Be Dancing: The Les Reed Orchestra - Warwick 1978

I picked this one up because, as a long time music fan I knew Les Reed came with a good pedigree. In case anyone didn't know about it though, his CV highlights are set out on the back cover. 'Delilah', 'It's Not Unusual', 'The Last Waltz', There's A Kind Of Hush' 'I Pretend' et al - Les co-wrote them all and plenty more besides, a fact impressive enough in its own right, and though I confess the 'Les Reed Orchestra' was a new one on me, also one that seemed to make this worth a listen.

 

And on listening the first thing I can confirm is that the 'Les Reed Orchestra' is no such thing; this stuff is just played by the usual instruments you'd hear in any pop/rock band (albeit one that had a new synthesiser for Christmas). No lead for a first violin here. The second thing to point out is that despite the generous twenty track playlist, none of these are performed in medley or megamix style - each is its own self contained instrumental (no vocals here) piece with the traditional gap of silence in the grooves to mark where one ends and the next starts. Which, let's be honest, is how it should be, but it's not something I've seen too often to date with these records.

 

What this is though is '20 up to the minute disco hits' as arranged by Les. I raise an eyebrow as to just how 'up to the minute' 'Don't Give Up On Us Baby' (1976), 'Singing In The Rain' (1952) or 'Dancing Queen (1976) ' etc. are in the context of a 1978 release, but these are minor quibbles (and I suppose he deserves some kudos by not taking the cheap shot of covering his own stuff) - my main bone to pick at lies elsewhere, namely in the idea that the likes of 'Dancing Queen', 'Don't Leave Me This Way' or 'Never Can Say Goodbye' needed re-arranging in a 'disco style' . To my mind it's like trying to re-arrange the parts of a Labrador to try and make it more in the style of a dog  - i.e. it's a task for which there is really no need and any attempts to mess with such an already perfect formula are surely doomed to end in tears. Which this does.

 

And it does because there seems to be a mistaken belief at play here that you can 'disco-fy' anything by adding a straight 4/4 backbeat behind it, paste some fancy synthesiser stylings over the top and then sit back to let them do all the work. But it's not as easy as that; straight 4/4 backbeats won't swing on their own and the clumping pace set by much of the stuff on this has none of the disco swish of the original masters and the fussy embellishments only serve to further nail these tunes to the floor.

 

And what's more odd is that the songs that would benefit from more of a disco do-over ('Don't Give Up On Us Baby', 'Chanson D'Amour', 'Summer of 42 et al)) are actually either slowed down to a somnambulist's heartbeat or else are overloaded with so many fussy, bumble bee guitar solos, saxophone honks or jarring keyboard frills and fills that they waddle out of the speakers like a drunk at closing time, too sluggish to walk in a straight line with any purpose, let alone with any groove.

 

Maybe I expected a bit too much from Les and set my bar of expectations too high. In truth some of the individual tracks do offer some reward from their playing, like the imaginative re-jig of 'Singing In The Rain' or the extended dance workout based around the five note 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind' motif, but these really are slim pickings from a whole that's a mass of unappealing clutter of too many square pegs hammered into round holes that only makes me itch to turn this nonsense off and get the originals out. This isn't one for the CV Les.

The Hits Of Barry White: Lee Charles - Chevron 1979

This is a tricky one. On the face of it, what we have here is an album of songs associated with either Barry White or Love Unlimited and re-recorded by one Lee Charles. Put it like that and it seems a straightforward enough proposition, but the question is whether this a 'songbook' type album by one singer paying homage to another, or is it a recording of one singer passing himself off as another by imitation? I ask because the sleevenotes suggest the latter (it says (of Barry White) 'what better sound for Lee Charles to emulate'), but if that is the case then we have a problem.

 

In terms of pure visuals, it's not hard to adopt a Barry's persona; all you need is a few pillows strapped around your waist, some unwise facial hair, some spray perspiration and yes, in less PC times, to black up too and boom, you're more than halfway there. Far enough along anyway to let those visuals shoulder the weight of any shortcomings in the vocal department, a department in which Mr White was pretty unique. That though doesn't work on a record where the output is 100% aural, 0% visual - there's no curtain to hide behind and although Charles is hardly a slouch in that vocal department himself (after all, he had a minor career of his own), he doesn't sound much like Barry White. Or anything like him if I'm being honest.

 

If my former suggestion above is the case then that needn't be a problem - to take an example from elsewhere, one of my most played discs is Barb Jungr's 'Every Grain Of Sand', an album of Bob Dylan cover versions. Barb doesn't sound anything like Dylan either, but that's not the point and it doesn't matter - she neither tries nor wants to sound like him. She doesn't have to; Dylan's songs are malleable and Jungr could bend them to her will and interpret them in her own way because they don't come with any excessive Dylanesque baggage that ties them to him exclusively.

 

Barry White's oeuvre, on the other hand, does come with rather a lot of Barryesque baggage. It's next to impossible to reduce it to the dimension of the songs only and so unless you're going to give them a radical hip hop or thrash metal makeover then even stepping one foot into Barry's arena is going to invite comparison to the source. The problem facing Charles is that his versions do sound like he's using White's original vocal as a click track and he copies his style and mannerisms almost to the breath and syllable. But it's in vain - Charles' vocal doesn't have anything like the depth and presence of White, and in the absence of a strong vocal identity of his own it just sounds insipid and washed out - two descriptors you could never apply to Barry White.

 

When played at a suitable volume, White's growl and spoken introduction on 'I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little Bit More Baby' could move the furniture around all by itself; Clark's copycat attempt is an apologetic mewl in comparison. No loverman he. The same goes for the music really, the band are game enough but none of the music swings or grooves and a truly anaemic production means any attempt they do make to bring the funk is stuffed in a weighted sack and thrown into the river to drown by the wishy washiness of the sound. But as I say, it's a tricky one - I don't want to be unduly harsh or glib with Mr Charles as I don't know what his brief was in all of this, but suffice it to say this is no substitute for the real thing in any way, shape or form.

Hits From Burt Bacharach With Love: The Tony Mansell Singers - Stereo Gold Award 1971

In the context of churning out one of these low budget albums, I can see the appeal in covering Bacharach and David; their songs are virtually bullet-proof, tried and tested safe harbours for any interpreter where the familiarity of the song itself can paper over any cracks in its delivery. You'd need to approach them with criminal intent if you wanted to screw them up and even my own Exhibit A in the 'ill-advised attempt' stakes (Deacon Blue's 1990 'Four Bacharach & David Songs' EP) has now, with the passage of time, adopted a strange charm of their own in the strained, over earnest way they're performed, and even then they're the exception that proves the rule.

 

In saying that, The Tony Mansell singers do their damndest to sabotage that back catalogue on this album through what I'm taking to be sheer incompetence rather than anything deliberate. Another of the sort of co-ed, easy listening vocal groups that were ubiquitous in the seventies, the massed male and female vocals are kept as separate as day and night and they grind against each other like unoiled gears. Chalk dry and just as brittle, the singers flail around in search of a harmony in a way that suggests they had never heard some of these songs prior to entering the studio and they're just trying to make the words on the lyric sheet scan with the music they're hearing for the first time. In so doing, they make up their own melody lines as they go along and put the  EMPHASIS on the words in ALL the wrong places in a way THAT turns the songs into strangers, Dr Jekyls transformed into Mr Hydes to give listeners the creeps with the added bonus of them being miked so loud it's as if they're shouting in your face.

 

The back cover note says these songs were 'recorded in their "Original Feel", but with a new depth of romantic colour and swinging beat' and scored by 'Derek Cox, who is, as they say in the studios "Tops In His Bag". I don't know what on earth all that is supposed to mean, but suffice it to say the background music on this is just that - kept well in the background and amounts to little more than a thin gruel of percussion and bass which leaves those vocals to do all the heavy lifting.  It's horrible stuff certainly, but that's not the worst of it - there are two songs listed on the cover ('What Made You Go' and 'Good Year For Young Love') that I'd never heard of before, certainly not as being written by Bacharach and David either together or apart.  But those paying attention will note we're back on the 'Stereo Gold Award' label and I'll offer no prizes for anyone who guessed these are L Muller originals slotted in amongst the real McCoys, presumably to harvest royalties off the back of someone else's hard work and goodwill.

 

'What Made You Go' is a non-descript affair that, in being presented in the same rough and ready way as the rest of it, manages to blend in as an equal instead of standing out as the sore thumb it obviously is - try and listen to it in between the classic versions of these songs as recorded by Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin et al to get the full effect of it's stench. At least it's a song that's trying though - 'Good Year For Young Love' doesn't even bother with finding it's own tune, it simply hijacks the same five syllable chorus melody to 'Guantanamera' wholesale (try singing that title to it and you'll have heard this song) and passes it off as its own. How they got away with it I'll never know, and how they got away with shoehorning this stuff onto a 'Hits From Burt Bacharach' album without someone suing I'll never know either. But they did, and the outcome does nobody any favours, not least me for wasting thirty minutes of my life sitting through it. That's a mistake I won't be making again.

Yesterdays Dreams: Baker Street Philharmonic - Pye Special 1971

I've commented previously on the dangers of judging a record by its sleeve.* Whilst that still holds good as a rule of thumb, it doesn't take into account those situations where a record seems to go out of its way to set up an expectation for the casual buyer that they're almost encouraged to take on face value and in good faith? Like this one for example - what do we have here? A soft focus summer shot of a woman looking wistful in a field, a title (with no apostrophe) that screams 'nostalgia' and maybe 'regret' and the promise of a Philharmonic orchestra to deliver it. I know what I was expecting anyway, but then the music on this fails to live up to those expectations on almost every single level. 

For a start, despite that 'Philharmonic' credit, you can forget a full orchestra experience. Yes there are strings and stuff to found here, but no more than you'd find backing any contemporary pop or rock track. Rather, this presents a more straight ahead band affair with drums, guitars and bass. So I wasn't expecting that. Secondly, most of the tracks are presented with a split down the middle with the first half of them played as an organ led (pipe rather than Hammond) instrumental before changing gear at about the halfway point and becoming a full band and vocal version. The effect bad cop then even badder cop and is not unlike being slapped in the face just as you're dropping off to sleep.

Thirdly, despite the warm glow of that cover image and wistful title, there's nothing delicate about most of this. In fact, it's downright rowdy in parts with the biggest sucker punch surprise coming at the end of side one in the form of a version of The Rattles (German proto krautrockers) 1970 single 'The Witch' (misleadingly listed as 'Time Switch' on the back cover).  I mean, fair play, they go for it gangbusters with freaky fuzzbox guitar and Hammer horror screams but it's as relaxing as finding a spider in your bed. Just what the hell it's doing here is anyone's guess, but it's the wildest card in a fairly wild pack.

'Do You Know The Way To San Jose', 'Theme From Love Story', 'Here, There And Everywhere' - all fair enough in context I suppose, but a version of McCartney's 'Singalong Junk' seems bloody mindedly obscure for the sake of being bloody mindedly obscure, and 'Woodstock' and 'Theme From Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolfe' aren't exactly easy listening staples either. Throw in two faceless Mike Vickers originals to close and you have a truly random bag of broken biscuits - tasteless, dry and well past their sell by date. Through all the time I spent listening to this I never knew quite where it was going and, when it ended, I didn't know where it had been. As I said at the start, it's not what I was expecting at all and I can't say the surprise was a pleasant one. Not at all.


* You can't really tell from the picture above, but that woman's dress is see through and she's not wearing a bra. The cynic in me sees this as a purposely pitched subliminal selling point designed to shift more copies of an album that would probably otherwise be nailed to the shelves, but then maybe I'm giving the people behind this a bit too much credit.

Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits: Sefton & Bartholomew - Windmill 1972

Lest anybody be foolish enough to think that one low budget Simon and Garfunkel hits compilation would be enough for anyone in 1972, I've come across this other effort that more or less covers the same ground as the last one. This time, the folk behind it are not anonymous 'Top Of The Poppers' session men but Sefton & Bartholomew, a duo who, although sounding like a firm of low rent undertakers, are actually (well as the back cover says anyway) "two Yorkshire lads" who have "tried successfully to re-create the special sound of their trans-Atlantic idols". Well fair enough I suppose, but I'll be the judge of how successful they are in recreating that "special sound" if you don't mind. Harrumph.

 

And now having sat through it, I can say at the start that those Yorkshire lads make a much better fist of it than the last lot. A lot better in fact. But before anyone breaks out the brandy and cigars, I should caveat that with the observation that the 'last lot' managed to set a bar low enough for an elephant to clear, and elephants can't jump. That's not to damn all my positivity as feint praise, and musically it strives to be as faithful as it can be, albeit in a rough approximation kind of way. But just like that over literal cover shot of a bridge over some fairly calm looking waters, it's simply not right.

 

That's because the overall impression I get from this is like tracing a Leonardo sketch and then photocopying it on a machine low on toner; it's 'there' in essence, and you can make out the detail, but it lacks all impact, substance and emotion - you simply don't 'feel' any of these songs the way you should with Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe it's churlish to over criticise on these grounds - Simon racked up Herculean hours in the studio to create the originals and so in at least getting to first base in replicating them on a shoestring, it would be fairer to recall Dr Johnson's comment about seeing a dog walking on its hind legs; it doesn't do it well, but the surprise is to find it can do it at all.

 

By far the weakest link in this chain, however, are the vocals; for all those attempts to mirror the music, Sefton and Bartholomew simply don't have the raw materials to pull them off. Not with any conviction anyway. Garfunkel's soaring choirboy tenor could fill a cathedral unamplified, but even in tandem the voices here would struggle to fill a garden shed. There's an attempt to disguise their shortcomings via an over use of pained falsettos and a treacly production that drowns them in echo, but despite the smoke and mirrors at heart they harmonise as well as water and electricity in a bathtub and the missed notes drop as subtly as spanners onto a tin roof with the wincing frequency of Chinese water torture.

 

I suppose this would be passable enough if they were earning their shilling by busking this stuff in a subway, but played through a decent system (which - ahem - I have), then nobody's fooled, there's nowhere to hide and they are exposed as surely as a searchlight pinpointing out two prisoners trying to escape over the wall dressed as a pantomime horse - a clumsy attempt that's doomed to failure. Again, if I couldn't afford the real McCoy then I really would rather go without; this wouldn't fill the Simon and Garfunkel sized gap in any collection.