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.
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