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 ‘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 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.