Musical ephemera from Australia and beyond. Jazz, soundtracks, field recordings, vaguely ethnic, folk, pop and whatever else I may find in the second-hand shops of Victoria.
Here's a lesser known release from the later career of Urban Bowerbird patron saint, John Sangster. This is one of a handful of releases on Sangster's own 'Rain Forest Records' imprint, put out in the early eighties - Peaceful being another. Expect more of Sangster's idiosyncratic, mischievous, trad-influenced jazz played by the likes of Tony Gould, Ian Bloxsom, Errol Buddle, Graeme Lyall, Len Barnard and Bob Barnard. Mediafire.
The Australian Jazz Quintet (also confusingly known as The Australian Jazz Quartet) were an old-school cool jazz act that achieved success both in their homeland and in the United States throughout the 1950s. There are some familiar players in this group with Errol Buddle (bassoon and sax) going on to a prolific career, often playing with Don Burrows et al and Bryce Rohde (piano) becoming a significant jazz composer. The addition of bassoon, flute and vibes to the established jazz format of piano, bass, drums and sax made the band stand out at the time and lead to national tours and television appearances in America. The A side of this LP is entirely taken up by the tremendous Jazz In D Minor Suite, written especially for the group by Bill Holman. The flip side is composed of shorter, more conventional pieces which are all impeccably played by the quintet (+1). Mediafire.
I picked up this gem at the Winchelsea op-shop a couple of years ago. In the past I may have skipped past a release like this, but I had recently heard and very much enjoyed RareCollections' 'Australounge' podcast, featuring music from the house bands of Australian establishments of the sixties and seventies. The Trio Orfeo were a group of Greek musicians who had relocated to Australia and during the sixties were enjoying a residency at Sydney Restaurant, La Taverne. As is described in some detail in the aforementioned podcast, these stints as a house band often resulted in the pressing of records so the group could make a little extra money and the diners could have a souvenir of their experience. The playing and harmonies on this LP are excellent and the song choices are generally fantastic, incorporating Greek folk tunes and some nice surprises such as the exotica standard Adventures In Paradise. Inevitably there is a version of Zorba The Greek and for some reason the trio plays The Mexican Hat Dance - which I'm sure says something about Australia's difficult relationship with racism although I have no idea what.
I love the sound of The Trio Orfeo and the feeling of being in a 1960s Sydney restaurant, however a contemporary critic said that one of their later LPs made them want to turn their record player off and described the group as "play[ing] inoffensive nightclub music"! No accounting for taste, I suppose. Mediafire.
I love conceptual synth albums from the seventies and eighties, particularly those which attempt to evoke or soundtrack the natural world. In recent years I have been inspired by Vangelis's L'Apocalypse des animaux and Soil Festivities, Joël Fajerman's botanical soundtrack L’Aventure des plantes and of course, Andrew Richardson's conceptual flute and synth oddity Expanse. These days my focus is increasingly on my homeland of Australia. Apart from that last record, where are the conceptual synth experiments from the seventies and eighties celebrating the unique Australian environment? There are a few examples. Rob Thomsett's legendary Yaraandoo comes close, but is light on the synths and more of a prog rock freak out. The didjeridu-lead impressionism of Gondwanaland is closer to the mark - creating native Australian soundscapes with didj, synths and field recordings. But beyond these few, there's not much out there in the way of Antipodean, synth-washed nature concept albums from the seventies and eighties. So, I decided to make one myself! Aurora Australis is the debut album by Bronzewing, combining synthesizers, a little guitar and field recordings that I have recorded myself during my naturalist wanderings in Victoria and Queensland. There are also hints of oud, soprano saxophone and one composition written for and played by the Federation Bells - an automated carillon on the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne.
As I’ve written previously, I think that ‘incidental’ music such as advertising, television soundtracks and the like is far more evocative of our past than the pop hits that are generally believed to fulfill this role. Don’t get me wrong – I love old pop music – but it gets continually reused by later generations, symmetrically enough often for advertising and soundtracks, and this reappropriation strips the music of its original context and it becomes part of the sonic canon to newer generations. Not so for the advertisements. Ad music is created, used and then forgotten all within a very short amount of time. It is here that you can experience a real time capsule and listen to what the past really sounded like. Sonic Design by Bruce Clarke’s Jingle Workshop is one such time capsule and a remarkable one at that. Sonic Design is intended as an advertisement of the advertiser’s advertising work. It’s an LP length mixtape of the Jingle Workshop’s existing jingles, campaigns and examples of what they can do in the recording studio. Put this on in your car as you drive down the street and you will swear you are actually travelling through late 1960s Australia. The Jingle Workshop was a production company helmed by Bruce Clarke – a talented and diverse performer and teacher – and which produced “3000 odd credits for television ads and programmes as well as film soundtracks produced for local and international markets”. There were apparently a number of similar promotional records produced by the Jingle Workshop, but Sonic Design is the most common, in my experience. The narration is a bit naff, in that peculiar late-1960s way, but the music still sounds great. Mediafire.
This Rugged Coast was an Australian documentary series that followed Ben Cropp and his team as they traveled around Queensland's Coral Sea in the 1970s - like a cross between The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and Ron & Val Taylor's Inner Space. I discovered it by accident a few years ago while watching late night tv and got so excited by it, I wrote a number of blog articles remarking on its amusing anachronisms and my genuine fondness for the show. As I described the program at the time:
The crew is lead by Cropp perpetually standing alert at the helm in nothing but skimpy bathers and a beard, smoking a pipe and continually lifting his binoculars skyward and scanning the horizon for anything film-worthy. The watery, blue depths are his domain and he presides over them like a tanned Antipodean Neptune. He is joined by Hal the fearless sea-snake expert with a perplexing accent and thick-rimmed glasses, a crew that seems to consist mainly of beach-belles in bikinis (it wasn't clear at first what their capacity on-board was, but Lynn was credited with 'sound' so I can only assume the other girls are equally technically equipped), guys with beards who look like they know a thing or two about boats and of course the ship's cat, Skipper. In tonight's episode, our crew are venturing around a treacherous maze of coral reefs called 'The Coral Labyrinth' (the name is repeated at every opportunity by the voice-over guy who pronounces it 'Lab-ee-rinth' with a faintly rolled 'r'.)
Like all good underwater documentary shows, the drama on This Rugged Coast is constantly underscored by music. I asked James Pianta of Votary Records, about the source of this music back in 2011 and he said; "I actually spoke to Ben Cropp a few years back about releasing his soundtrack music, he was less than interested. Although he did tell me that he uses library music. This is problematic as unless the original cue sheets exist (they never do) it becomes really hard to source all the tracks let alone licensing." So, I took it upon myself to piece together a soundtrack by ripping the audio from the DVDs. Most of the audio comes from The Coral Labyrinth episode mentioned above. There is the unavoidable presence of narration and dialogue from the program over the music that, at first bothered me as being 'messy' but which I now rather like as it truly recreates the atmosphere and the ambience of the show.
Now, here's a challenge. All of the music on this soundtrack is sourced from library records - does anyone recognise any of these pieces and can you identify them?
This post has been written by guest blogger, Roger Close. Demand for album-length recordings of field sounds is not
what it once was. In the mid-twentieth century, though, long before smartphones
could summon up any bird-call in seconds, there seems to have been a thriving
market. This suite of five EPs from the 1960s and ‘70s (packaged with slim
hardback volumes by The Jacaranda Press) brings together a splendid range of
field recordings from the Australian natural environment. The earliest two
records, Australian Bird Songs (1964) and Australian Bush Sounds
(1966), were recorded by Danish couple Carl and Lise Weismann during a
ten-month traversal of the continent in 1957. Zoologist Carl Weismann was one
of the pioneers of ornithological field recordings, having collecting bird
calls for Danish radio as early as the 1930s. However, it was the popularity of
their ‘Singing Dogs’ novelty records that financed
their Australian tour. Vocalisations on these two albums are presented without
a narrator: the interested listener can follow ornithologist Alan
Keast’s extensive written commentary. However, the calls are
sufficiently distinctive that it’s easy to keep in step with the track listing.
The later three recordings, ‘Menura—The Lyrebird’ (1967), Bird and
Animal Calls of Australia (1968) and Voices of the Australian Bush
(1970) are the end-result of thirteen years of outback travel by of one of
Australia’s leading wildlife photographers at the time, Harold J. Pollock.
Although these recordings also contain extensive notes, the subject of each
track is also announced by Mr Pollock in a delightfully old-fashioned tone.
Nineteen species are included on Australian Bird Songs,
all of which are captured clearly and with minimal background noise—perhaps
attributable to the gigantic three-foot parabolic microphone reflector dish
pictured on the back of the EP (wielded by Carl; his wife (“at this stage a new
bride”) operates the portable reel-to-reel tape recorded slung over her
shoulder). Recordings were made in a wide variety of remote environments. Both
sides of this EP contain a mix of common and lesser-known (and more
unusual-sounding) species, although they are frequently referred to by obsolete
names, which might confuse modern listeners a little. Accompanying the black
and white photographs, Alan Keast provides lively and poetic descriptions of
each species’ calls, which are preceded by an informative discussion of the biological
roles of bird song.
Additional material recorded during the Wiesmanns’
Australian expedition was released the next year on Australian Bush Sounds.
Unlike their previous recording, this EP is not limited to birds, and features
several mammals, amphibians (the Weismanns professed to be overawed by the
incredible variety of frog calls on offer in this country) and even insects, a
greater variety of calls that makes for more pleasant background listening. In
particular, the far-off howling of a pack of dingos is very evocative, and one
can only imagine how the two Scandinavian globetrotters felt as they captured
this soundscape.
‘Menura—The Lyrebird’ is the only EP to focus on a
single taxon. Most of the recordings are of two Superb Lyrebird individuals: a
male, ‘Wanderer,’ in Sherbrooke Forest in Victoria, and a female, ‘Theresa,’
living near Sydney; the text gives detailed biographies, along with accounts of
the natural history of the lyrebird. An anonymous Albert Lyrebird from Southern
Queensland also makes an appearance. It seems this release was a tie-in with a
now-forgotten documentary film of the same name, during the
making of which Mr Pollock lived alongside his subjects for six months.
(Pollock also made short documentaries about pelicans, brolgas, red kangaroos and koalas, all financed by the State Bank of New
South Wales). The EP gives a terrific impression of the variety of calls and
imitations that these peculiar birds are capable of—particularly mimicry of
other bird species, although ‘Theresa’ does produce a fine imitation of a dog’s
bark.
Bird and Animal Calls of Australia (‘animals’ here
being synonymous with ‘mammals’) is the first instalment in this Jacaranda
series to be printed in full-colour. The first side of the EP presents calls
from a range of fairly common bird species, including the melodious Pied
Butcher Bird, the curious but familiar Pied Currawong, and the
less-commonly-heard calls of the Cassowary and Brolga. Side two is perhaps more
interesting, focussing on mammal species. The male and female koala calls
provide an amusing contrast, particularly the ‘courting’ vocalisations; we’re
also treated to the sound of koalas fighting and to a baby koala, which is
rather cute. More obscure ‘animal’ calls include the Squirrel Glider, Tasmanian
Devils (which sound remarkably like feral cats) and Flying Foxes. The natural
history of each species in included in the booklet, along with an extensive
description of the technical hurdles of recording field sounds, should you wish
to attempt your own. If you wish to go down the reel-to-reel tape route, the
German-made Uher 4000 Report S is a “lightweight masterpiece of electronic
engineering” (only 7 lb. complete with battery); this will no doubt make it
easier to lug around your parabolic reflector and AKG microphone.
The final EP, Voices of the Australian Bush
doesn’t include Mr Pollock’s announcements, but does cover 29 species of bird,
both rare and common, accompanied by colourful descriptions and photographs. In
addition to an updated guide to making field recordings, there is a portrait
showing Mr Pollock brandishing his equipment. Download - Mediafire.
Comedy is one of the most ephemeral art forms there is. What people find funny is very specific to a time and place and it dates almost immediately. While this can make comedy from only a couple of years ago seem stale and boring, that same effect can make comedy from decades or centuries ago incredibly illuminating in terms of understanding that culture and getting a feel for the real world of the bourgeoisie.
Alan Rowe was a very family-friendly comedian who did impressions, sang songs and performed bits about the suburban experience in Melbourne around the early sixties. His was an old-fashioned, one-man show in the vaudeville tradition. To a modern listener, this kind of performance can sound a bit Arthur Atkinson from The Fast Show, but there’s no question that Alan was a consummate performer with original material and a good rapport with his audience. One of my favourite bits, and one that illustrates the timelessness of certain Melbourne institutions, is the one where Alan calls the running of a train on the Frankston line in the style of a horse racing announcer. With a few minimal updates, you could probably perform this routine today and still get laughs in Melbourne. Rowe's songs Living In A Flat and Dad’s Lost Weekend likewise reflect an early celebration of Australian suburban-ness that is still recognisable today.
Rowe’s final bit relates a story of a booking for a show in which all the other acts cancel, leaving Alan to take their place via his impressions. He replicates a female soprano, a bass baritone (“Michael Row The Boat Ashore), a countrified harmonica (“Home On The Range”), a banjo-mandolin player and finally as Graeme Bell’s six-piece Dixieland Jazz Band. I was pleasantly surprised to see that at the time Graeme Bell was such a well-known fixture in Australian pop culture as to be an instantly familiar reference.
To round out this little sonic window into lost Melbourne, here’s a 10” 78RPM record by Graeme Bell & His Dixieland Jazz Band that I found in a Reservoir op-shop. Ever the skilled showman, even with only his voice and a piano Alan does a pretty good impression of the band.
EDIT 11/01/2015: When I posted this a month ago, I uploaded the wrong song. I had accidentally uploaded The Settlement; an original Libaek soundtrack composition which can be found on the I Love Australian Movies LP. A nice track to be sure, but not of the quality of White Midnight, which has now been uploaded to the player below.
Sven Libaek produced so much wonderful music during his career, but at some point in the late seventies his output suddenly became very schmaltzy and unremarkable. Gone are the exciting, idiosyncratic soundtracks, replaced with easy listening orchestral cheese. I see these late-career records regularly in my travels and sometimes I can’t resist buying them, despite knowing full well they’re going to be terrible, due to my deeply ingrained love of Libaek. Every now and again, I find that these records harbour a song worth listening to or even, in this case, a flat-out excellent example of the Libaek genre. 1983’s Love Is In The Air is a collection of pedestrian covers played by the Sven Libaek Orchestra and is unlikely to be included in the Libaek classic canon. However, buried in the middle of the second side is White Midnight, a song written by Sven and originally recorded in 1965 by The Saints (not the well-known Australian punk rock band) on their obscure Australian skiing record, Ski With The Saints, which Libaek produced for CBS. This track, despite bearing sonic hallmarks that make it clear it was recorded in the eighties, is pure golden-era Libaek, sounding like it could be a condensed section from Australian Suite or an excerpt from one of Sven’s soundtracks. Have a listen and be the judge: is this a lost Libaek gem, or what?
When
discussing The Hobbit Suite record two years ago, I offhandedly described John Sangster’s Lord of the Rings LPs as too ‘trad-jazzy’ for my tastes. I have
been revisiting a few of these albums of late – prompted in part from reading Sangster’s
autobiography Seeing The Rafters
(1988) – and I’ve gotten new insights into the man’s work that have caused a
revision in my thinking on these albums.
Sangster’s
Tolkien-themed series of albums comprised, The
Hobbit Suite (1973), Lord of the
Rings (1975), Lord of the Rings Vol.
2 (1976), Double Vibes: Hobbit
(1977), Lord of the Rings Vol 3.
(1977) and Landscapes of Middle Earth
(1978). All of these were double LPs released on EMI apart from the two hobbit
records which were single LPs released on local jazz label Swaggie. The EMI
records have all been excellently remastered and re-released on CD by Move Records. Swaggie have remastered and re-released The Hobbit Suite and selections from Double Vibes which features the
aforementioned album plus four songs from the latter title. (Given the paucity
of reissues of Australian jazz recordings from the sixties and seventies, this
may provide some indication of the esteem in which these records are still held
by people in the local music industry.)
The Hobbit Suite was apparently quite a spontaneous
recording with a small ensemble and most of the tracks are first takes. After
the success of this record Sangster was emboldened to try more ambitious
arrangements for the new music he was writing and went to a major label that
could support his vision. These records feature expanded brass and string
sections in addition to the core jazz band.
For
the past year or so I have been thoroughly listening to the first two LOTR albums and The Hobbit Suite which preceded them. (I haven’t heard LOTR Vol 3. or Landscapes of Middle Earth at all – and I won’t do for quite some
time. Sangster died in 1995, his musical output was finite and I’ve got to make
this stuff last.)
Firstly,
despite the aesthetics of the cover art and the song titles being allusions to
Tolkien at face value, Sangster’s autobiography makes clear that these records
too, are autobiographies. His life, in musical form. For example, the ‘Knockabout
Trolls’ from The Hobbit Suite? Those ‘trolls’
are Sango and Sluggsy AKA his mate, drummer Len Barnard, doubling on washboard out
the front of the band! And as for the stoned laughter and banter in the
background of Longbottom Leaf from LOTR Vol 2. well, let’s just say that they
may well have been method-acting. Legolas et
al may hail from Middle Earth, but the bird calls in the field recordings
on these albums are clearly from natives of the New South Wales temperate
forests, near Sangster’s home of Sydney.
In
addition to these coded titles, the music itself represents the myriad of
styles that Sangster has played in, beginning in the burgeoning Australian jazz
scene of the forties. From his book: “If you want a musical autobiography, it's
all there in the Lord of the Rings albums. A crazed montage of all the jazz
(and other) idioms I've been involved with during my life. All the musics I
love are in there; some plainly stated, some distorted and disguised a little
bit the way memories sometimes go."
My
dismissive description of the LOTR
records as merely ‘trad jazz’ is just plain wrong; these records encompass a
ridiculous range of music from within and without the jazz scene, such as old-style
trad, ragtime, be-bop, big-band/swing, blues, film music, avant garde and musique
concrète. The fact that the first LOTR record
has a track like Uncle Gandalf Needs You
followed immediately by Ents And Entwives
is a feat of juxtaposition that shows how ballsy Sangster really was. Sangster
worshipped old greats like Bix Beiderbecke and Ellington, but he was equally a
fan of experimental icons like Sun Ra, Moondog and Xenakis and all these influences
coexist on these discs.
I’m
glad I persevered with these records as these are superb examples of Sangster’s
work and are significant albums, not just for Australian jazz, but Australian
music in general. Is it too much to hope that one day Sangster’s music will see
a resurgence amongst the hipsters and the Oz music bourgeois alike, and Sango
himself celebrated as an unheralded genius? I really hope so. Australians are
famously unwilling to revere their own as cultural figures worth praising, but
a talent like John Sangster must transcend this and take a rightful place in
the antipodean cultural canon alongside the likes of Barry Humphries or Charles
Blackman. On yer Sango.
This is the second single from The Cambrian Explosion's album release Marine Theology. Yes, this is a song from my own band and I'd very much like you to hear it. On this one, we grind out some garage gospel with an arsenal of vintage and modern instrumentation, including flute and cümbüş.
The lyrics recount a lament from a protagonist attempting to reconcile the existence of fossils, dinosaurs and other natural phenomena with a fundamentalist belief system. Lord, why'd you leave the shells on the mountaintop?
A Wave In The Ocean is lovely vocal pop number with an overall middle-eastern fusion style, accented by the Turkish oud. (To be more precise, a cümbüş.) It's the first single from Marine Theology, an oceanic theme album from my band, The Cambrian Explosion. I realise this is a little outside of my usual brief for this blog, but this is music of which I am extremely proud and would like to share with as many people as possible. Let me know what you think, and please pass this on to musical fellow travelers if this is your kind of thing.
Although I was brought up in Victoria - Australia's southernmost mainland state and a long way from tropical Queensland - this record of environmentally themed children's tunes reminds me of my childhood. My family's particular jam was the classic Feathers, Fur or Fin by Don Spencer, but there must be a whole world of Australian ecological kid's music out there to discover. Due to the incredible natural heritage we've inherited, environmental education is often given a high priority in Australian schools, even at the earliest levels. And as all educators know, there's no more effective route to data retention than singing along to a catchy, upbeat tune strummed on a guitar.
Although a lot of these tracks are folky, three chord guitar-based numbers, there is plenty of inventiveness in the execution of these Nature Songs. I'm The Spider is rendered as a weird, glammy stomp with a delay pedal guitar solo. Marsupial's instructive lyrics about our unique native mammals are delivered via kind-of-rapping backed by indigenous didgeridoo and rhythm sticks.
The lyrical content is occasionally a little ham-fisted, but overall fun and informative and not afraid to touch on environmental issues that might seem too obscure for kids. What songwriter today would have the balls to write an entire song about decomposition for a children's audience with lines like: I decided to look closer, I bent down on my knee, I saw some fruiting bodies of the bracket fungi. Looking even closer, I saw some fibrous threads, fungi have no roots so use hyphae instead? Or an entire song about coral polyps or epiphytes?
The record is divided by the two sides; side one is the dry side featuring songs about life on land, side two is the wet side (from The Polyp Song onward), featuring songs about life in the water.
Label: Private Released: 1978
Players:Brian Mackness - words and music. Sandy Pollard - lead vocals and harmony, six and twelve string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, flute, descant recorder, alto recorder, sopranino recorder, autoharp, glockenspiel, percussion and sound production. Laurie Stone - mandolin, technical advice, sound mixing and production. Steve Errey - sound recording. Jacky Nisbet - vocals and harmonies. Keth Ross - banjo. Mick Walker - blues harp. Darryl Boyd, Jason Boyd and Leanne Mash - narration, vocals. Sam Bun'tarrawuy - didgeridoo. John Guillot, Robyn Kreis - percussion. Brian Mackness - sound production. Peter Ogilvie - bird call recordings. Amanda Hadley, Melinda (Lindy) Hadley, Gregory Hadley, Gregory Mash, Tony Rasmussen, Stuart Mash, Kathryn Mash - vocals. Engineered by Laurie Stone at Multi Media Studios, Spring Hill, Brisbane.
If anyone's interested I'm selling some singles on eBay, amongst them, a few Libaek records: the Thatcherie single from the Inner Space soundtrack, the Boney Title Theme single from the Boney soundtrack and the Andy Sundstrom Northern Territory single composed and produced by Libaek and previously featured on this blog. I've also got a bunch of 7" singles released by Secret Chiefs 3 in 2007 and a Ween single from White Pepper, if you're into those sorts of things.
Due to their proximity, there are a lot of folk recordings from the islands of the Pacific to be found in Australian charity and secondhand shops. Some of them are great; many are forgettable. I really like this EP because it’s a field recording of the performers in their traditional setting. It was recorded in a bure (a Fijian wood and straw hut) in Tamavua by one James Siers. You can hear the crickets buzzing in the background and it has genuinely captured a certain sound and place. This is also an interesting recording as in addition to four traditional Fijian compositions there is a rendition of Twelfth Street Rag, an old Tin Pan Alley standard. The aforementioned tune is played with hacky gusto by the guitarist - or is it a ukelele? - without any accompaniment by the vocalists.
I wanted to create a new label for categorising recordings from this part of the world. I assumed that Fiji would be in Polynesia, but it is in fact part of Melanesia along with New Guinea and associated islands. I’ve since ran with Oceania which is the most all encompassing term for this region, although this also apparently includes Australia. (I don’t think this inclusion makes for a particularly meaningful term. Australia is too culturally overbearing to be included in the more modest nations of the Pacific and should probably be left out of any such definitions.)
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Incidentally, this record was released by Hibiscus Records, a subsidiary of Kiwi Records. I am very interested in any releases from either of these labels, both of which specialised in indigenous musics, field recordings and other wonderfully esoteric materials from Oceania and New Zealand respectively. Label: Hibiscus Records Released: I really have no idea. Probably 1970s. Players: Samu Loki Malakai Niubasaga Semesa Lewai Aca Tomasi Bulewa Vilitati Mediafire.
This is a classy set of original Greek folk music from 1966 composed by Stavros Xarcharkos. The dominant presence of the bouzouki on most tracks lends the album a strong Greek, traditional feel, but there is a welcome addition of unorthodox tones for this style of music such as electric guitar and glockenspiel. As the liner notes say, Xarcharkos has a ‘talent for blending unusual instrumentation with the warm melancholy of beautiful songs’. There’s a lot of range here, from slow, spooky bazouki numbers such as Horos Tou Sakaina - which when I first heard it, I was sure was the source material for Secret Chief’s 3’s Ship Of Fools* - to fast, odd-metred folk dances like Fos Tis Avgis and Ipomoni.
This LP was originally released in 1966, but was reissued in 1972 when one of the tunes was appropriated as the theme song to the successful BBC drama series The Lotus Eaters. It is from this reissue that this rip was made, which I was fortunate enough to find at the Phillip Island Vinnies Store.
*It's probably not.
Label: EMI
Released: Originally 1966, this reissue sometime after 1972.
Bruce Clarke was an Australian jazz guitarist, composer and founder of legendary label Cumquat Records. He was one of those diverse hired-guns of the Australian scene, active from the late fifties until the seventies when he started teaching. In 1957 he set up The Jingle Workshop, a studio and production company responsible for countless pieces of television music and soundtracks.
On this record Bruce teams up with Maryan Kenyon, a classical pianist from the Melbourne Conservatorium who worked at The Jingle Workshop. Bruce was a big fan of the Moog synth and Maryan ‘used her spare time to learn and master the equipment at hand’, so the liner notes inform us. ‘Maryan is not just a very pretty face’. The notes, after having reassured us that the classically trained pianist featured on the album is good-looking (what about Bruce?), mostly wax lyrical about how unusual and eclectic this album is; a combination of bold, unique flavours, just like vichyssoise - a vegetable based French soup - which helps to explain why Clarke and Kenyon are posing in front of a giant leek on the cover. There is a wonderful and unexpected array of sounds to be found on this disc, mainly from the various Moogs and other electronics featuring in most songs.
The feel of the album is dominated by white-Australian jazz funk with a hint of exotica, exemplified by the brilliant Djerba. Djerba opens with a slow, middle-eastern section scored by tom drums and a back and forth interplay between Clarke’s classical guitar and Kenyon’s wah-wah synth. The song then segues into an upbeat funk riff, allowing Kenyon some space to noodle around a bit with the synth and for Clarke to bring on some fuzz guitar.
Vichyssoise is a consistently good listen throughout due to well-chosen songs (about half originals by Clarke or Kenyon, the rest covers) and the extremely high quality of playing from the two stars and their band. Also, the very well-executed and constant presence of Moog and early synths on the tracks always keeps me entertained, setting it apart from other albums of it’s oeuvre.
Postscript: As inexplicable as it sounds, Howard Moon and Vince Noir appear to be members of Bruce and Maryan's band. Howard has a well documented love of jazz, but I'm surprised to see Vince involved. I'm pretty sure this proves the existence of parallel fiction realities.
Label: Cumquat
Released: 1973 Players: Bruce Clarke - composer/arranger/conductor, classic and electric guitars, Fender bass, Moog synthesiser, vocals Maryan Kenyon - composer/arranger, Fender-Rhodes, acoustic pianos, harpsichord, Moog synthesiser, vocals Brian Czempinski - percussion and special effects Ted White - woodwinds (sax) Llloyd Knapp - woodwinds Barry Veith - woodwinds Fred Hosking - woodwinds Ron Anderson - woodwinds Bill Harrower - woodwinds Eddie Oxley - woodwinds Keith Stirling - trumpets and/or flugelhorns Bruce Gardiner - trumpets and/or flugelhorns Reg Walsh - trumpets and/or flugelhorns John Hughes - trumpets and/or flugelhorns Ron Webb - trumpets and/or flugelhorns Orme Stewart - trombones Clive Webber - trombones Jack Glenn - trombones Col Williams - trombones John Kennedy - cello Judy Grieve - cor anglais Maurice Sheldon - tuba
More cigarette advertising songs! This is a promotional 7" I found at the always awesome 3MBS record fair. Braddock are a brand of cigarettes that no longer exist, but who were clearly aiming for a very manly, conservative image with this campaign. I found it very difficult to get any details about this record at all until I found the website of what turned out to be the producer: Brian King. There are a lot of Brian Kings out there, and it wasn't until he replied that I knew he was the right man. Here is an excerpt of his email: For about 10 years starting in the 70's I was in partnership with Larry King (no relation). We had a company which produced advertising jingles and film music. When "Braddock" came our way it was right in the middle of the "Women's Lib" movement and the brief was to create a campaign which celebrated the differences between men and women. Larry King was a good looking guy, kind of like the "Marlborough Man" and as well as our company producing the music Larry also got the gig as "The Braddock Man". This involved a short live tour to Melbourne which was the place they decided to test market the brand. The slogan for the campaign was "Braddock....Not Mild".
It was all good fun but to this day I've still never smoked a cigarette!
I emailed Brian back with a few follow-up questions - I was quite curious as to whether there were any photos of 'The Braddock Man', for example - but he didn't reply. There are eight tracks on this record with lyrically consistent themes of women dressing differently to how they used to, bureaucracy and red tape making a man's life difficult and very little mention of tobacco or cigarettes - although every composition ends with Braddock's aforementioned tagline, 'Braddock…not mild'. As Brian alludes to, this was a pitch aimed at the kind of blokes who were threatened or bewildered by the womens' rights movement and there's an amusing lack of subtlety in the lyrics which pretty much all boil down to 'Everything is different to how it used to be (so smoke our cigarettes)'.
Label: Private press Released: 197? Players: Larry King - vocals
The Place I Want To Be - Pat Aulton (1980). Pat Aulton is quite a celebrated musician and producer who was particularly successful in the sixties and seventies, producing hit records for people such as Normie Rowe. I was familiar with Aulton through a fantastic library track called Barrier Reef that he contributed to Standard Music Library ESL 126 alongside John Sangster and Sven Libaek. On The Place I Want To Be he is front of the microphone and singing this somewhat awkward paean to Great Eastland - a chunk of northern New South Wales and south Queensland. Aulton forges ahead with gusto, even (almost) selling artless lines like, ‘We’ve got people peanut picking up in Kingaroy’ or ‘All through the inland and right along the coast, when you look at people’s faces, you can almost see them boast’. I suspect this was the theme song for the regional television network Great Eastland Television as they commissioned the track and the term ‘Great Eastland’ isn’t widely used in a geographical sense. The B-side, Country Nights fares no better lyrically but has some lovely production touches.
It’s Another World - Phillip Merifield (198?).It’s Another World is actually the B-side of this single, but I like it better than the A, so here it is. This is another promotional single either for the Gippsland region in general, or a business called ‘Lakeland Wonderland’ in Lakes Entrance, that rare thing that has basically zero Google presence, so I haven’t the faintest idea. Anyway, the song itself is in the same ‘list as many towns as you can’ school of songwriting as The Place I Want To Be, but feels a little bit more natural. I haven’t found any information at all about Merifield, but the single was produced by John Wallis, a folk muso who has been active since the eighties and is still playing today. (And, to illustrate the incestuousness of the Australian music scene, on his 1984 LP A Singer Of The Bush he was joined on keyboards by Ian Eccles-Smith, whose progressive releases I have previously showcased on Urban Bowerbird.)
The Lights Of Adelaide - Barry Hall At The Conn Organ (1969). Barry Hall is a bit of a star organ player who released a number of LPs in the sixties and seventies and at 77 years old still has new CDs for sale on his website today. This track is off his Choose Your Own LP which was the name of Barry’s radio show on Adelaide’s 5DN. On this show, Barry would ‘spin records, give cheerio calls to listeners, handle competitions and play the organ’. Little wonder that Barry remained a ‘firm favourite with housewives over the years’. One competition that 5DN held in 1968 was an Australia wide songwriting contest for a song about Adelaide. The winner, The Lights Of Adelaide written by Mr. Cliff Johns of Belair, is given Barry’s organ-driven treatment with accompaniment from Kevin Roper on drums and Roy Wooding on guitar. Sure, it’s a daggy and antiquated tune (have you ever been to Adelaide?) but it’s pretty charming and the addition of live guitar lifts it above the general standard of op-shop organ music. All in all, it perfectly sums up Adelaide, or ‘Radelaide’ as it is regularly, sarcastically referred to by Melbournians and Sydneysiders alike.
Although the fabulous Howard Morrison and his quartet were all New Zealanders playing traditional Kiwi songs, there’s a definite Hawaiian feel to this four-track EP. It seems obvious enough why they would take this stylistic route; Hawaiian music was huge in the sixties, these fellow denizens of the Pacific must have felt a kinship with its culture, and why not take advantage of a musical trend while you can?
The songs on the EP all showcase the strong multi-part harmonies of the fabulous quartet and are all sung in their native Maori tongue. My favourite is the upbeat closing track, Haere Haere Ra E Hine, which features some sweet, reverby sixties guitar playing.
Postscript: As inexplicable as it sounds, Howard Moon and Vince Noir appear to be members of Bruce and Maryan's band. Howard has a well documented love of jazz, but I'm surprised to see Vince involved. I'm pretty sure this proves the existence of parallel fiction realities.
The Place I Want To Be - Pat Aulton (1980). Pat Aulton is quite a celebrated musician and producer who was particularly successful in the sixties and seventies, producing hit records for people such as Normie Rowe. I was familiar with Aulton through a fantastic library track called Barrier Reef that he contributed to Standard Music Library ESL 126 alongside John Sangster and Sven Libaek. On The Place I Want To Be he is front of the microphone and singing this somewhat awkward paean to Great Eastland - a chunk of northern New South Wales and south Queensland. Aulton forges ahead with gusto, even (almost) selling artless lines like, ‘We’ve got people peanut picking up in Kingaroy’ or ‘All through the inland and right along the coast, when you look at people’s faces, you can almost see them boast’. I suspect this was the theme song for the regional television network Great Eastland Television as they commissioned the track and the term ‘Great Eastland’ isn’t widely used in a geographical sense. The B-side, Country Nights fares no better lyrically but has some lovely production touches.
