Listen to three cues composed by Ennio Morricone for Pasolini’s 1968 film ‘Teorema’ (Theorem, Theoreme).  Japanese reissue, Barclay/ London Records, 1983.

Whilst Parcelforce and my local sub-post office were busy fouling up the delivery of this record, the ensuing delay meant that I found myself seeing the film at the BFI on London’s Southbank before hearing the soundtrack- an unusual sequence of events for me.

In Pier Paolo Pasolini’s groundbreaking and experimental film, a beautiful guest (Terence Stamp) arrives at the home of a wealthy industrialist, enchants and seduces, in turn, all members of the family, one house maid and then leaves. Immediately, all are transformed as they struggle to establish anything meaningful in their lives beyond the shattering experience that the nameless guest has visited upon them. The son becomes a charlatan artist while his sister enters into a catatonic state and is carted off by the men in white coats. The father gives his factory away to the workers and is last seen running naked, howling in anguish, across a barren landscape that may or may not represent the wasteland of the bourgeois soul. His wife, on the other hand, begins to trawl the local streets for young men with whom to have joyless sex, be it in sad little rooms or ditches within the church yard. After a self imposed diet of cooked nettles, only the faithful maid comes out on top (literally), suspended with her arms outstretched like Christ on the cross in mid-air, performing healing miracles upon sick children. Oh, and then she has herself buried alive: the worker sainted and martyred, the middle classes reduced to empty vessels, dried up husks. Go, Pier Paolo, lay it on the line!

When the film ended, the audience were delighted to welcome Terence Stamp himself onstage for a ‘Q & A’, whereas I , being a tad husk-like, an empty vessel and very hungry was hoping to make a fast exit and have a tasty dinner somewhere. No such luck. I was hemmed in by cinema goers who were all too happy to listen to the recollections of a lovely old thespian, complete with meaningful, piercing stares into the middle distance and long dramatic pauses. So long, in fact that I genuinely thought he’d forgotten what it was that he had been going to say next. Well, he is getting on. I don’t remember most of what he talked about because I was too busy thinking about food, but I do recall him saying, more than once, that the only reason he took the part in the first place was that he was guaranteed to get his grubby little mitts on gorgeous co-star Silvana Mangano.

Curiously, the soundtrack lp does not contain the stately, funereal  jazz piece that opens the film and reoccurs at several points throughout. I’ve since discovered that it is a tribute to jazz musician Eric Dolphy who died it seems, needlessly, from diabetes in Berlin whilst on tour in 1964. Entitled ‘Tears For Dolphy’, it was recorded in the year of his death and written by Ted Curson. It is uncredited in the film. The three tracks that I have included above, plus two more suspenseful atmospheric pieces, are all the Morricone we get with this record, the other side being devoted to sections of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ which also grace the movie.

Listen to bits of the Bruton Library LP ‘Driving Force’ (BRK 1, UK, 1978).

This is another record plucked from the crates at the Spitalfields Record Fair in London. I’m fond of the Bruton Library’s sleeve art aesthetic (I also love a textured cover) and can’t help looking at the logo itself and recalling my first attempts at 3-D writing which followed my discovery of perspective in art classes.

I only managed to piece together just over 6 minutes of music that seemed worthy of bothering to share, so this may be a fairly weak affair. Composers include Brian Bennett and Francis Monkman, as well as someone called L. Hurdle. I suspect the latter is a pseudonym- it’s just too silly a name. Library writers were notorious for making up strange monikers which is why we end up with such characters as T. Tape, W. Loose and G. Flat who all pop up on Conroy records.

Bruton albums have also been popping up at my local record shop lately- some cheap, some nasty, some both and some of them have found themselves coming home with me. It’s all getting a touch modern round my place at the moment.

More to follow…

Listen to Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, on MCA records, USA 1982.

Pleasure your ears with selections from John Carpenter and Alan Howarth’s  synth soundtrack classic. This score has recently been re-released by Death Waltz Recording Co. Good job too. However, I’m very pleased to own this pressing for the simple reason that I’m none too keen on the Death Waltz approach to sleeve art work. Trying too hard…..

Listen to ‘Fantasia’. Bruton library lp composed by Brian Bennett (BRI 10  UK 1980).

Recently, I picked up an original copy of John Carpenter’s 1982 soundtrack for ‘Halloween III, Season of the Witch’ in my local record shop. I stood there thinking that I possibly didn’t have enough synth (or horror) in my life and maybe it was time to address this. So I bought it. And I liked it. A lot.

 A few weeks later I made one of my all too infrequent trips to the freak show that is the Friday Spitalfields record fair. I had a vague recollection that someone had once told me people began arriving at 6am and that that was when all the interesting records got snapped up. I thought I’d give it a go, but being a little sluggish I only managed to arrive just after 7 and discovered, in the biting chill of a bitter April morning that no, nothing happened until 8am. Frozen, I reluctantly took shelter in a nearby Starbucks and made my small contribution to their tax free profits. The shame, the shame.

When 8am came around all hell broke loose, as scores of men (yes, sadly it’s always men) came springing out of the woodwork to gently elbow and shove each other over assorted crates of vinyl. It does pay off on occasions, and I walked off with, among others, this synth classic by prolific library drummer and composer Brian Bennett.

It’s one of those relatively rare library beasts in that it’s a concept album of sorts: “An electronic suite not conforming to the usual rules of music, but comprising various airs and movements according to the composer’s creative inspiration”. The individual tracks are ambitious soundscapes by library standards and all bar one of the six cues clock in at over six minutes.

Along with the aforementioned ‘Halloween III’ OST, it has set me on a bit of an electronic path. I’ve been digging into my collection to revisit the small number of 70s and 80s synthesizer records that had, until recently, lurked there undisturbed. I’m sure that some of them will appear here shortly.

Hear three cues from the original soundtrack album ‘His Wife’s Habit’ by Jim Helms, Gary LeMel and Norma Green (Capitol Records ST 641, USA, 1970).

This rabid exploitation flick was half of a popular American double bill in 1970 when it went under the equally lurid title of ‘Women And Bloody Terror’. The other movie was the likewise sensational ‘Night Of Bloody Horror’. You can find the trailer for that doubtless thrilling night at the drive-in on youtube. I don’t think I’ll be seeking either of them out.

I have a soft spot for soundtrack records that contain bizarre songs and ‘His Wife’s Habit’ has its fair share: two are performed by Sonny Geraci of a band called ‘The Outsiders’ and are tunes that couldn’t possibly have made an impact on the pop charts if they’d been released conventionally, being as they are, ever so slightly, but wonderfully ‘wrong’ in the way that soundtrack songs often are. Looking at the ‘official Sonny Geraci website’ leads one to the conclusion that he was possibly a singer who’s time came and went a little too speedily, or possibly never came at all.

The third is a beautiful hippy-psych folk ballad that comes first in the sound clip, sung by Gary Lemel. Here, my past and this record strangely intertwine: I had a friendship with a wild Californian girl in the mid 1980s in London. We kept in touch and five or so years later I paid her a visit in LA. She turned out to be from a wealthy family and one evening I ended up having dinner with her charming parents at their swanky hill side home in one of Los Angeles’ canyons, and swimming in their swanky pool. That was Gary Lemel’s house, who by this time had moved on from composing and singing on soundtracks for low budget drek, to being a top music executive in the Hollywood film industry supervising smash hit soundtracks such as St Elmo’s Fire, Ghostbusters and The Big Chill.

Listen to three cues from ‘La Cosa Buffa’, 1972 film soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (Diresa Records, Spain 1973).

This came my way far more easily and cheaply than I was expecting, but then again, it is probably the least desirable of three available pressings, there being an Italian one on Cinevox and a Japanese version on King Records.

It’s one of those classic Morricone scores that he produced during the period covering the late 1960s to early 1970s that almost sound as if he went into the same studio, with the same group of musicians one day in 1968, and cut five years worth of soundtracks that he then slowly drip-fed to the film industry whenever they came knocking.

Most of the music on this LP would sit comfortably amongst the cues for Veruschka, La Donna Invisible and others, but this is by no means a negative criticism or complaint: I can listen to boundless quantities of Morricone’s trademark orchestral lyricism, baleful oboe melodies and jangling harpsichords, all bolstered by bass guitar and drums.

The pleasant surprise about La Cosa Buffa for me, was the many tracks featuring famed Italian chanteuse Edda Dell’Orso. She provided celestial, gossamer, wordless vocals for Morricone and other big name Italian film composers for years. As you’ll hear in the sound clip, she really does sing from another realm entirely.

‘Husbands’.

I saw this John Cassavetes film recently and loved its opening sequence, comprised of a series of stills, taken at a pool party prior to the main action of the movie. I noticed in the opening credits that jazz bassist Ray Brown was responsible for the music. As far as I can recall, this brief drum and bass solo that accompanies the very start of the film is the only music we get to hear in over two hours of sprawling, shambolic, super-realistic cinema. I love the way that the double bass solo slyly morphs into ‘the animals went in two by two, hurrah’.

Listen to highlights from the Telemusic library LP ‘Mondial Scoop’ by Michel Gonet (TM3065, France, 1976).

To be honest, beyond what I’ve crammed into the sound file for this post, there is little else of interest to be found on this release, although I am strangely taken with the weird striving, soaring, optimistic nature of the opening two tunes. The whole record also strikes me as being slightly ahead of its time, although I have possibly become such a throw-back that I am poorly qualified to make such judgements.

By the way, mondial is an adjective, which means relating to, affecting, or involving the whole world. You were wondering, weren’t you?

Listen to four tracks from ‘The Blue Eyed Bandit’ OST, by Ennio Morricone (Cerberus Records, CEM-S  0114, 1982, USA).

Morricone wrote nearly all the cues (even the slow tracks) for this 1980 Italian thriller in 5/4, but as the sound clip reveals, we are not in the easy swinging territory that Dave Brubeck made his own. The classic 3 followed by 2 groove is distinctly angular, populated by nerve jangling piano, discordant brass and crisp machine gun drums. The let up is brief, during which we get to relax to a pastiche classical orchestral composition for strings (in a stately 2/4 time) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place during Haydn’s time at the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy. Well, it would have slipped by unnoticed until the bass and drums kicked in anyway.

Listen to ‘Barra Limpa’ by Luiz Henrique, (Verve, mono, VLP 9207, 1967, USA).

“Never ‘eard of ‘im!” I hear you cry. Well, neither had I until I stumbled over this lp on ebay for a paltry fiver. I’ve always been a bit partial to a spot of bossa and Luiz does not disappoint. I’m very taken with the funny vocal noises he makes to intro some of the tunes: an odd form of Brasilian scat singing maybe (there is most likely a technical term or official name for it that I am ignorant of). Listen to the odd vocalising during his version of Jorge Ben’s ‘Mas Que Nada’- it’s not a million miles away from the 1970s English playground taunt of ‘nyaa nyaa nya nyaa nyaaa’.

Luiz died in 1985 before reaching the age of 50. Prior to his career in music he had been a professional footballer, so he can join the ranks along with Julio Iglesias and Gordon Ramsay. I know who I’d rather have a kick around the park with.

Listen to three tracks from ‘Today’ by Gary McFarland (Skye Records, SK-14, USA 1969).

I came across Gary McFarland when a friend of mine recommended his 1965 album ‘The In Crowd’ to me. It’s a stunningly hip slice of jazz informed pop and comes in a wonderful pop art sleeve adorned with yellow polka dots, one of which turns out to be the yolk of a fried egg. By 1969 Gary’s music had moved with the times, and the album covers had even jumped a few years ahead of themselves and landed in 1973 judging by the artwork for his ‘Today’ LP.

McFarland started out playing jazz and is always filed under that genre. He also ran  Skye Records with fellow musicians Gabor Szabo and Cal Tjader, and together they form, in my mind at least, the advanced guard of the smoother-than-smooth jazzers. You could even say ‘easy’, and I for one attach no negative connotations to that word when it’s applied to music. By the time this record was recorded however, the jazz sensibility was simply forming a faded back drop for gorgeous, shimmering arrangements of 60s pop standards. We listen in awe as Gary strokes his vibraphone whilst softly singing, whispering or even whistling his magical takes on Leonard Cohen, The Beatles, Fred Neil and other big name song writers of the day, not included in the sound clip. If he were any more relaxed he would probably stop breathing.

Sadly, that’s exactly what he did do in November 1971, when he was mysteriously and fatally poisoned by a methadone spiked drink while frequenting a bar in Greenwich Viilage, NYC.

Listen to selections from the LP ‘Sweet Honey Bee’ by Duke Pearson (Blue Note, BLP 4252, USA, 1966).

A lovely collection of smooth, laid back bop tunes from pianist Duke Pearson, accompanied by, among others, Ron Carter on bass and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet. Standout track is ‘Sudel’, (first in the sound clip), which Pearson first recorded for the small, short lived New York label Jazz Line. It appeared on his now highly collectible ‘Hush!’ album of 1962 which sells for up to, (and even beyond )$600 in minty condition. I once found a battered copy for £4 and some jazz nut collector in the far east paid me over £150 for it!

The woman on the cover is Duke’s fiancee, Betty, and it appears to me that she has just run up a hill, in order to take in the view, with the ease and grace of a gazelle. Dear old Duke, on the other hand, is huffing and puffing along behind her like some wheezy old uncle. A very strange photograph.

Listen to selections from ‘Africadelic’ (on French library label Mondiophone: 46.507, 1973) by African Pop Group, AKA Manu Dibango.

The big daddy of Afro funk decides that he needs some money to buy a new sax so knocks out a quick C.O.D. library album. Compared with Dibango’s other work from the same era this record could be viewed as ‘Manu lite’, with its catchy pop and soul tunes (and even an Oriental pastiche). Regardless of this, I’m still loving it.

A montage of scenes from the film ‘Woman In A Lizard’s Skin’. Original soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. Wow.