‘Bumper Bundle’, De Wolfe Library (DW/LP 3185, UK, 1971)

Great little record from the hugely productive Wardour Street music library, De Wolfe. They’re still going actually, and if a recent article in free rag ‘Metro’ is on the money, they were recently advertising for people who could break wind impressively enough to be recorded for library use. Quick, apply now. Think of the pride you will feel when, watching a film or TV programme, the sound of escaping gas reduces a hapless audience to tears; and it’s yours!

Anyway, back to Bumper Bundle. It’s a bold, brassy affair with The London Studio Group performing fourteen swinging, mod flavoured big band numbers by De Wolfe regulars Reg Tilsley and Peter Milray (AKA Jack Trombey, real name Jan Stoeckart). It’s the kind of record that drains the hatred for my fellow humans right out of me, so I tested it on headphones whilst visiting the supermarket today. Result? Despite a very full car park, and crowded isles, I succeeded in having an extremely pleasant shopping experience that even included a little shoulder swaying, sauntering and head nodding. I probably looked like an arse, but at least I didn’t get trolley rage.

Bora Bora, OST by Les Baxter (American International Records, USA, 1970).

When this steamy sexploitation film, directed by Italian Ugo Liberatore, came to the American marketplace in 1970, Les Baxter, one of the main mover/shakers of the late 1950s Exotica boom, was called upon to write a completely new soundtrack for it. Why, I’m really not sure, as Piero Piccioni had already written one in 1968 and from what little I’ve heard of it, it was a stunner (and sadly, a damn sight more difficult to get hold of than this record).

I’ve not seen the movie, and nor shall I bother, as I learned the hard way, long ago, not to waste too much of my time watching films simply because I had enjoyed the soundtrack on vinyl. A quick read up, and the synopsis reveals a tale of a married  French woman on the loose on Tahiti, shacked up with a virile local. Sacre blue. Her husband tracks her down and attempts to win her back by proving the quality of the lead in his pencil. How? By putting it about with the local totty who, of course, are only too willing to oblige. What? Are we in Europe so idiotic as to really believe that just because people wear less clothes than us, they are in a constant state of arousal? Will they really fornicate in the street at the drop of a hat just because they are hot? I have recently experimented with turning the central heating up a degree or two at home, and I can assure you that it does not result in an violent unleashing of passion. It just makes me tired.

Listen to Les, skip the skin flick.

Listen to selected tracks from ‘Contemporary Sounds And Movements Vol 1’ by The Sammy Burdson Group (Sonoton Recorded Music Library, SON 104, Germany).

I picked this shiny little beast up in my local record shop for a fiver, which was nice, as these things rarely turn up in the real world of an actual retail setting. It’s all online, innit?

Percussive and electronic, sparse and bathed in a bleak blanket of echo, this German library LP from Gerhard Narholz’s Munich label Sonoton hails from an era that I generally avoid. My fear is that library records from the late 1970s and 1980s will turn out to be horrible affairs that resemble the worst of the electronic synth pop of the time, minus the vocals. On the strength of this recording however, maybe I should stick my neck out a little more. At least as far as Vol 2 anyway.

Listen to ‘Das Unsichtbare Visier’ by Walter Kubiczek (Amiga, East Germany, 1979).

This is the music from an East German espionage TV drama which ran from 1973-1979 and who’s title translates as ‘The Invisible Visor’. I’ve had a brief trawl across the internet and it looks to me to be just the sort of thing that ITV4 ought to be showing instead of The Professionals, The Sweeney and Minder (Minder?!) We remember them fondly, but endless re-screening has only served to bring home the terrible truth that they weren’t actually very good television. And those old East German geezers have superb moustaches.

Amiga Records was the biggest label releasing popular music in the old GDR, but they still couldn’t stretch to decent card for there album covers. This one is just like those Polish ‘Muza’ jazz records and seems to be made of something only marginally thicker than a Rizla. And what is it with that secret agent’s disguise? No wonder they lost The Cold War.

Anyway, that’s enough cheap jibes about the sleeve, and Soviet style Communism. The music however is jibe-proof. As I may have mentioned before, it’s not always easy to listen to a soundtrack LP from start to finish without being disturbed by some musical abomination in the form of a nasty boogie-woogie, polka or march. With Walter though, the pleasure is all ours.

Listen to ‘Here and Now 1’ by Lesiman (Vedette, VSM 38559, Italy, 1973).

Ok, yes, I’m showing off a bit here, but after a long quest I have finally acquired the first volume of Paolo Renosto’s breathtaking two part library classic that he recorded for Vedette records under the pseudonym Lesiman, and I’m chuffed to bits. 

Press ‘play’ and hear for yourself how Renosto creates an edgy, sinister soundscape of hypnotic grooves, shot through with deep, intense repetitive melodic patterns played on pianos, organs, harpsichords and no doubt a few other keyboard instruments that I’ve failed to notice.

I don’t claim by any means to have an exhaustive collection, or knowledge of library music, but along with this record’s companion, ‘Here and Now 2’ (see August 2010), it sounds unique.

Music (by Morricone), and a montage of scenes from “Lizard In A Woman’s Skin” directed by Lucio Fulci (1971).

Wow.

Listen to ‘Ciao Italia’ by Bruno Nicolai (Edi-Pan, Italy, 1976).

Everyone likes a bit of Italian library music from time to time, and I’m no exception. Trouble is, it’s often silly money, and then you need to pay the Italian postman to boot. Happily, this particular record was offered to the entire world on ebay but nobody wanted it except me, so it cost a fiver (and I only had to pay that lovely English postie). At such a low price I was expecting a load of old rubbish, but as you will hear in the sound clip, it’s a satisfying hotch-potch of spikey jazz, cheap sounding electronic drum patterns, funky riffs that suddenly wander off down ‘jaunty street’, fuzzy guitar pop/rock instrumentals and sunny bossa. Not to mention the wonderful spoken word interludes that serve as postcards home throughout the record. There is also a smooth vocal number sung by Fred Bongusto. (I wish ‘Bongusto’ was my surname).

‘Ciao Italia’ was released on Bruno Nicolai’s own library label, Edi-Pan, but it appears to be an original soundtrack to a film of the same name that I know nothing about.

Ciao, for now.

Listen to ‘The Cop Show Themes’ LP by Henry Mancini, (RCA, UK, 1976).

There’s not a lot to say about this extremely pleasing record. It’s a powerful collection of well known television police drama theme tunes, two by Mancini himself. It was released the same year as Johnny Gregory’s much loved ‘The Detectives’ album (on Philips) and there is considerable overlap in the material. But while Gregory’s arrangements are good, Mancini makes the Englishman sound puny by comparison. (By the way, did you know that Johnny Gregory is Chaquito in disguise?).

Henry Mancini’s big band orchestrations, featuring heavy drum breaks, wah-wah, bonkers electric bass lines, harpsichords and even a theremin ensure that the album moves at breakneck speed, which is a bit of a shame as it only lasts 25 minutes. Never mind, quality vs. quantity, and all that.

So, if Steve McGarrett, Kojak and Jim Rockford are your kind of guys (or if you think they’re tossers but still like the tunes), pick this album up, in it’s wonderfully cheap looking washing powder pop art sleeve, for nine themes that (mostly) out-do the originals.

Listen to ‘Voix’ by Guy Chatelain & Herve Roy (Telemusic Library, TM 3016, France, 1971).

Summer is certainly over, once and for all, but that hasn’t managed to shake me out of the habit of listening to summery songs that are mercifully free of lyrics. There is a wonderful pop sensibility running through this charming record and I particularly like the inclusion of male voices alongside the more standard female chorus. It makes it sound like boys and girls having some nice clean fun together. I’m sure they did. After all, they are French.

This is one of those library records that has the usual quota of tracks clocking in at the 2+ minute mark, but for those of us that have shorter attention spans there is also a 30 second bite size rendition of each tune. If you find yourself in a real hurry however, you could just jump straight to the ‘goldfish versions’ that only last 15 seconds each.

Finally, this is probably the last wordless vocal record that I will be spinning for a while as I am trying hard not to wreck my marriage.

The utterly classic tune ‘Half Forgotten Daydreams’ by John Cameron. Find it on the KPM Library record featured below.

Listen to bits of ‘Voices In Harmony’ (KPM 1125, UK, 1973).

Yes, more from the dirty box of slightly soiled KPM library records that came my way a month or so ago. This is the album immediately before the KPM release featured in my last post, and the chaps down in Denmark St, London, WC2 were obviously going through a bit of a lovely-girls-singing-lovely-tunes phase at the time. So yes, another large helping of dreamy wordless voices dominate the fifteen tunes found here, composed by well known library favourites Keith Mansfield and John Cameron.

The soundclip contains just three tunes from the LP, and I have omitted perhaps the most well known title simply because it can be heard on youtube. So, if you want to go weak at the knees and marvel at the sublime beauty of ‘Half Forgotten Daydreams’ by John Cameron, then visit the post above this one. The kind up-loader has even slipped in a few minutes of the 1968 film ‘Duffy’ to accompany the music, which works remarkably well.

Listen to tunes from ‘Summer Songbirds’ (KPM 1126, 1973, UK).

I was fortunate enough recently to find myself in front of a box of around twenty KPM Library records. This is fortunate indeed, as one only usually comes across these LPs in the realms of the online sales lists or auctions. They also happened to be mostly very good; a small collection, mercifully free from Scottish reels, ragtime piano, nationalistic themes from around the world and novelty comedy pieces. The man selling them came complete with a greengrocer’s demeanor, a fine set of butcher’s fingers and a desire to pile it high and sell it cheap (well, not that cheap, but hey, record dealers aren’t stupid).

On ‘Summer Songbirds’ we get to spend a side each with Tony Kinsey and Pete Winslow, during which we enjoy ‘warm vocals in harmony’ and ‘solo girl voice features’. I for one can listen to almost limitless amounts of ‘la la la lee’, ‘do do do dooo do do dooo’, ‘li li li lee lee li li’, ‘die dee die shoo dup ‘n’ day’, especially if it is pleasantly accompanied by swinging bossa and samba played by top London session musicians in shirt sleeves and pressed flannel trousers.

And hey, what a perfect soundtrack to what appears to be a glimmer of summer finally gracing the UK. Quick! Grab your sunniest records, get outside and have a scat picnic before the return of graphite skies and several months of on/off precipitation.

Listen to three tunes from the OST to ‘Breezy’ (MCA, 1973, USA) composed by Michel Legrand.

If you are even only slightly diverted by film soundtracks you will be aware of Legrand, a towering figure in jazz and cinematic music for many decades. However, if you find yourself in the camp that doesn’t know its Pinocchio from its Piccioni, then Michel Legrand (or ‘The Big Michael’ as he is known round here), is the composer of ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’ and ‘The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg’. So, now you know.

His score to this 1973 Clint Eastwood directed movie about an older man finding solace through the love of a nubile young hippy chick (yawn), isn’t an OST one sees around too often, so when it appeared on a very, very long list of soundtrack records being auctioned on ebay a few months back, I picked it out, along with a few other cherries.

To be honest, it doesn’t set the world on fire, which is most likely why it has never  aroused much attention. However, it does have a, dare I say it, breezy, pastoral appeal, which makes for particularly successful, lazy summer listening, experienced at its best on the Shelby Flint sung title song (Flint was once cited by Joni Mitchell as the singer that she most wanted to sound like during the embryonic stage of her career). And of course, it also has a wonderful, long Legrand trademark big band jazz number, subtly fuzzed guitar, dancing electric bass,  horns a-blazing and the man himself at the piano.

Hear selections from the soundtrack to “L’Aube Ne S’est Pas Encore Levee”, composed by Thierry Fervant (Gamma 1972).

The film that this music was written for seems to be so obscure that one cannot even find it on imdb.com. Any internet search of the title, which translates as something like “The Dawn Has Not Yet Lifted” only leads straight back to the record itself, so I am a little in the dark. All I can tell you is that the movie is Swiss (as is Monsieur Fervant) and focuses on a young soldier’s return from war and his ensuing mental unraveling. I presume that is him on the front cover humping a chimney pot, sporting a reverse version of an English football fan’s face paint whilst imagining catching himself with a smelly old fishing net.

The record was released in France, or Canada, or maybe Switzerland. Or possibly all three. Certainly somewhere where everyone speaks French.

As for Thierry Fervant himself,  he wrote a beautiful tune for a 1970 French TV show that featured in this blog back in October 2010 (use the ‘archive’ option to find it). He then mutated into a full blown, big haired Euro-synth monster surrounded by endless banks of keyboards and, if what’s been posted up on youtube is the best that his fans can unearth, then I wouldn’t bother. Stick with Tangerine Dream.

Listen to extracts from “Melody In Percussion” by Sydney Dale, on the Impress Library Label (IA 398, UK, 1970).

Lovely old Syd Dale. I imagine him to be an unassuming English bloke with sensible shoes. In fact, had he not found his musical groove courtesy of the 1940s big band explosion, he might have ended up as a rather unassuming engineer for the chocolate manufacturers, Rowntree, where he had begun an apprenticeship at the age of 16. Phew, saved by jazz!

He is probably most well known for the work he did for the KPM Library in the late 1960s, including ‘The Sounds Of Syd Dale’, and for striking out on his own in 1971 to form his own music library, Amphonic.

This particular LP, on ‘Impress’, charms me mainly because of its brilliant use of a huge array of tuned and standard percussion instruments: crotale, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimbaphone, xylophone, tubaphone, tubular bells, boo-bam(!), bongos, triangle, maraccas, guiro, queeka & timpani, and no, I haven’t made any of them up. If you went to primary school in the mid seventies you probably had a host of those and other toys to use during music lessons. If only we all could have made such sweet music instead of the hideous cacophony we doubtless produced.