Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Doo-Wup Doo-Wup Doo-Wup Doo-Wup - John Sangster (1980)

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.  

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Australian Jazz Quintet + 1 (1957)

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). 

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The Trio Orfeo at La Taverne (~1965)

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.

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The Selling Sounds of the Seventies: Sonic Design - Bruce Clarke's Jingle Workshop (1970?)

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.

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Comedy and jazz from lost Melbourne: All Aboard! - Alan Rowe The One-Man Show (196?) and Graeme Bell & His Dixieland Jazz Band (1947)

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.

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Nature Songs - Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service (1978)

 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.

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A beautiful sixties Greek soundtrack: Hellespontus - Stavros Xarcharkos (1966)

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.

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Moog-tinged jazz-funk from the King of Jingles: Vichyssoise - Bruce Clarke & Maryan Kenyon (1973)

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

Strings uncredited.

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Our man of many trumpets: John Robertson and his Multi Trumpets – John Robertson (196?)

John Robertson was a classically trained trumpeter, originally from New Zealand, who emigrated to Australia in the fifties or sixties. Despite a strong reputation as an orchestral player, he also cut a few popular LPs such as this exotica/Latin record from the mid-sixties. The reference to ‘multi trumpets’ seems to simply refer to Robertson using multi-tracking of trumpet lines and accompanying himself on most tracks – fairly standard practice, I would have thought, but I guess you’ve got market your instrumental trumpet LP somehow.

Most of the information I’ve been able to find about Robertson has been from a conversation on a trumpet forum from 2005. They’ve got some solid information about Robertson and some good stories such as this one about the musicians who were playing at Sydney’s famous Trocadero jazz venue: One of their numbers had each musician playing some novelty trick... Robbo's gimmick was to hold a high C for 16 bars revolving the trumpet on his lips, while the band played chords underneath. Apparently all the Sydney musicians would crowd in to see him do this act - couldn't believe the lack of mouthpiece pressure. And [trumpeter] George Dobson commented later about these days saying each night he (still seated) would be covered in 'a fine spray of spittle as Robbie (standing) went into act'!

Anyway, John Robertson and his Multi Trumpets is a fine set of instrumental standards played with great skill by Robertson and arranged beautifully by Thomas Tycho. The first track to really make an impression on me was Sugar Plum Cha-cha, an adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s piece of (more or less) the same name. Yes, it’s twee as fuck, but the bass and percussion is swinging and it’s ultimately quite a well executed interpretation.



Label: RCA
Released: 196?
Players: John Robertson: Trumpet and flugelhorn
Thomas Tycho: Musical director and arranger
Don Andrews: Guitar soloist on La Spagnola

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Bach + koto and shakuhachi + jazz trio = J.S. Bach Is Alive And Well And Doing His Thing On The Koto – Tadao Sawai et al (1971)

This rather unusual and improbably named LP marks the moment that I realised I had been neglecting the ‘classical’ bins at the record fairs. I’m not a huge fan of Bach – he’s a bit too chromatic and conventional for my tastes – but I couldn’t go past an album of his music being interpreted by traditional Japanese instrumentation supported by a jazz rhythm section.

How/why did this get made? God only knows, but I suspect that it was conceived and produced by the Japanese players who thought it would be an interesting musical exercise but that it then later made its way into the hands of an American label who thought that the only way to market such a chimera would be with a wacky angle and silly record cover. (As you can see, the cover depicts a gentleman in full baroque regalia whimsically nursing a koto in a traditional Japanese room. It's basically a direct appropriation of the cover concept for Switched On Bach.) The liner notes continue this light-hearted theme with a faux interview with Bach himself who muses on his works, gives his approval to this new interpretation of his music and cracks a few very corny gags. The LP appears to have been released in an earlier incarnation in 1969 with the (slightly) less silly title “A New Sound From The Japanese Bach Scene”.

Despite the label trying to sell this set off as a bit of a joke, the music itself is very well produced and skilfully played. The fusion of the disparate elements of Bach, Japanese traditional and jazz works seamlessly and it’s actually a very congruent listen overall.

Label: RCA

Released: 1971 (Original release 1969)

Players: Tadao Sawai - first koto

Kazue Sawai - second koto

Hozan Yamamoto - shakuhachi

Sadanori Nakamure - guitar

Tatsuro Takimoto - bass

Takeshi Inomata - drums

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Viva Elec. Guitar - The Spacemen (1965)

Apparently, back in the sixties there was quite a big wave of Japanese bands inspired by the surf guitar bands of the United States. They called this music 'eleki' and there were many bands playing in this style, until the Beatles and the British Invasion kind of wiped them out. The Spacemen seem to be a pretty obscure proponent of this sound, but hot damn are they good! 

My brother found this LP in a tip shop in Canberra and it's a great listen -  inventive arrangements, ancient keyboard tones and loads of baritone guitar. There's also a kind of 'outsider' feeling to the overall sound of the album, presumably due to the amplified isolation of Japanese musicians in the early sixties who were miles away from the California surf sound to which they were paying tribute. Even standards like Tequila and Caravan, tracks that I thought I might be skipping past, are given exceptional interpretations by The Spacemen and the LP is a great listen from start to finish.

Label: Victor

Released: 1965
Players: Unknown. There are extensive liner notes, but they are in Japanese.

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Nākšu Es - Staburadze (1978)

I’m having some trouble working out the geographical provenance of Nākšu Es (I Will Come). It’s an album by a charming vocal group of multi-instrumentalist Latvian teenage girls that seems to be a private press made for an Australian tour (hence how I found it in an op-shop in Northcote, Melbourne). But there are pictures on the LP from Australia so, did they make it while they were here, or have they toured Australia before? The one source I could find online that mentions Staburadze even implies that they were based in the U.S. or at least toured there, so this LP's origin is still unclear.

Anyway, Nākšu Es is a nice set of vocal, folky songs from circa 1978, mostly recorded as a live ensemble, if not in front of a live audience. The LP starts off a little slow, but there are some great tracks throughout the album, particularly on side two. There is a great cover of Fernando (by fellow northern Europeans ABBA) sung in Latvian and flourished with some nice flute playing. I like the tracks where the arrangement is a little unconventional such as the excellent minor key number, Vīzija which jumps between a slow, melancholy verse and a driving chorus. Another interesting arrangement is Ar Tevi Vien which is almost reminiscent of Estonian band Collage with it’s jazzy piano and rapid, multipart harmonies. Finally, check out the Latvian calypso (!) of Ardiev Vas on side two.

Label: Private press

Released: 1978
Players: Rita Circene - vocals, flute
Benita Jaundāldere - vocals, guitar
Valda Upenieks - vocals, guitar, mandolin
Skarleta Berkolde - vocals
Rita Grava - vocals, flute
Ausma Līdacis - vocals, guitar

Paul Berkolds - accordion, piano, percussion

Bill Chism - guitar, bass

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Grand Canyon Suite triple post - Ferde Grofé, Eugene Ormandy, Tomita (19??, 1958, 1982)

And from Antarctica, we conclude our geographonic tour in the northern hemisphere, specifically, America’s Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon Suite composed by Ferde Grofé from 1929 to 1931, is a majestic, colourful and above all accessible piece of music which to a modern listener evokes elements from soundtracks, classical music and jazz. The Grand Canyon Suite covers a huge amount of dynamic range, transitioning from quiet shimmerings of celesta, strings and reeds depicting the canyon sunset to galloping trumpets so manic they intersect somewhere near Gershwin at his liveliest and Carl Stalling. This piece is probably the most well-known of the symphonic works I’ve looked at over the last few posts and has been played by many, many ensembles over the years. I’d like to look at three such LPs that I have happened upon in op-shops and a record fair.

Ferde Grofé and The Capital Orchestra. This is an old, scratched Capital 10” record I found in an op-shop in Northcote. I haven’t been able to find any information on this particular release in any of the usual places. Although the sound quality is pretty bad due to the condition of the record, I include it for historical relevance of this version being conducted by the composer.

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Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra. This is a beautifully recorded performance of the suite released sometime in the sixties (I think - the recording has no date anywhere on it*). This is the LP I probably listen to the most of these three as it is very faithful to Grofé’s own interpretation but with a far superior sound quality (and the disc is in much better condition, which doesn’t hurt). This LP was my first exposure to this piece - I was going through a phase of obsessively consuming nature documentary soundtracks and found this in an op-shop in Healesville. I saw the title and the lovely photo of the Grand Canyon on the front and thought it might give me a similar buzz.

*EDIT 4/05/2016 - According to Discogs it's probably 1958. 

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Tomita. Finally we have Japanese electronic artist Isao Tomita translating this piece with the Plasma Symphony Orchestra ie. numerous Rolands, Moogs, Synclaviers, Yamahas and a Mellotron. The electronic approach works well in the hands of Tomita and his “orchestra” and this 1982 version is surprisingly faithful to Grofé’s original composition. Tomita does bring in some interesting new interpretations of particular instruments from the traditional orchestra however and introduces some great vintage synth tones in their place. The incongruity of an all electronic version of the Grand Canyon Suite was obviously not lost on the cover artist who attempts to naturalise the concept by depicting a canyon on a distant planet in space! Which planet this is supposed to be is unclear, but it is somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn (or a Saturn-like planet) and has some sort of high-tech transparent pyramid in the canyon which appears to be topped by the disembodied head of Strong Bad. This LP is concluded with an electronic rendition of Syncopated Clock, a playful jazzy tune composed by Leroy Anderson.

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Sinfonia Antartica - Vaughan Williams (195?)

From New Zealand, we move slightly further south, for a musical examination of Antarctica - Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica. This piece was adapted from the incidental music Williams’ wrote for the 1948 film Scott Of The Antarctic. The first performance of this sinfonia was in 1953 by the Hallé Orchestra under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli. There is no date anywhere on this LP, but as it is performed by the same ensemble, I’m assuming it was recorded not long after its debut.

Sinfonia Antartica is broken into five movements, all combining elements of soundtrack and modern classical music. The first section (Prelude) starts slowly, with a sense of our team embarking on their great adventure into the unknown. At around the 3:00 mark, things get interesting; we hear the appearance of what the composer referred to as ‘antarctic shimmerings’ of xylophone, piano and harp and an eerie female soprano - sounding as if lifted from a seventies horror movie score - enters the scene. A trumpet fanfare announces the coda, and the orchestra turns its attention to the main melody for the remainder of the section.

The second movement (Scherzo) opens with a whirl of woodwinds and tuned percussion over slightly ominous chords and follows this pattern for the rest of the section. The liner notes inform us that in this section ‘there is the unmistakable sound of penguins’. I’ve listened to this LP a lot and I studied a colony of penguins for my thesis, yet I’ve never been able to discern them on this record. I reckon Scott Goddard is talking nonsense. 

The third and fourth movement (Landscape and Intermezzo) share a band on side two. More antarctic shimmerings can be heard in these movements before building up to a dramatic peak of brass and woodwind. From the liner notes: ‘This is the illusory region of atmospheric and visionary impressions[...] Slowly the landscape reveals itself through the mist and huge outlines appear.’ At around 5:00 (in what I assume is the beginning of the fourth movement) a lovely section of harp, reeds and bass strings is introduced. — At just before 7:00 an organ blasts out of nowhere! Things eventually quiet down and the pace slows; this is the appropriately sombre music which accompanied Oate’s death in the original film score.

The final movement (Epilogue) alludes to all the preceding themes and attempts to wrap them up in a satisfying conclusion. The Epilogue turns the bombast and tragedy up a notch depicting the ultimate fate of our embattled heroes. A wind machine can be heard and the melody from the first movement is repeated. In the final couple of minutes the female soprano reemerges, accompanied by a chorus and more wind machine and nicely evokes the bleakness of the Antarctic landscape.

For other great pieces of music which attempt to evoke the Antarctic, check out Vangelis’s soundtrack to the 1983 film Antarctica and Benjamin Bartlett’s Antarctic Spring and Spirits Of The Ice Forest from the excellent Walking With Dinosaurs soundtrack.

Label: HMV

Released: Mid-fifties

Players: Sir John Barbirolli - conductor

Margaret Ritchie - solo soprano

Hallé Orchestra and choir

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Landfall In Unknown Seas - Lindsay String Orchestra of Wellington (1960)

I’m very interested in the ways that Australasian musicians and composers attempt to recreate their natural surroundings with music. In some cases, as in last post’s Rainforest or John Sangster’s work, this is done in a literal sense with field recordings, bird calls and occasionally abstract evocations of ‘otherness’. These are old continents, but new to the Europeans whose musical traditions we inherited. This lovely recording by the Lindsay String Orchestra of Wellington takes a very different approach; this is the discovery of New Zealand by white men interpreted in modern verse and orchestral strings.

The A side is taken up entirely by the titular track - a combination of original poetry and music by Allen Curnow and Douglass Lilburn respectively. Curnow was commissioned to write a poem for the 300th anniversary of Abel Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand. Lilburn, one of New Zealand’s most prominent composers of the time and a student of Vaughan Williams, was approached to create music to accompany the verse. The poem, read by the author, is interspersed by three movements of a pastoral, modern classical feel. The second movement is my favourite, ‘a dramatic lyric, in rapid short metre and strict pattern recounting the Landfall in New Zealand, the bloody clash with the islanders, and Tasman’s departure.’

Landfall In Unknown Seas is followed up with three pieces by other New Zealand composers. All three are modern classical interpretations of folk music. Cindy: A Square Dance For Strings and Turkey In The Straw are both from the American folk tradition, while Dances Of Brittany was inspired by ‘a suite of Breton popular tunes.’

I have no idea when this recording was produced, but I’d say it was sometime in the early sixties, based on the dates mentioned in the various composers’ bios*. Also, this record is the first I’ve seen on the Kiwi label. According to a blurb on the sleeve, this label used to release ‘New Zealand composers, New Zealand bird song, leading Maori concert groups, records for children and for educational purposes, folk song, language instruction’ - it all sounds very appealing! If you have any interesting records on this label please let me know in the comments.

*EDIT 4/05/2016: I have found a review of this record in the December 1960 edition of Te Ao Hou, from the National Library of New Zealand: 

Te Ao Hou was published from 1952 to 1976 by the Māori Affairs Department in New Zealand Aotearoa. According to its first editorial, Te Ao Hou aimed "to provide interesting and informative reading for Maori homes … like a marae on paper, where all questions of interest to the Maori can be discussed."

Although the release date of this LP was originally unknown to me, I can now assume it was 1960. 

Label: Kiwi

Released: 1960

Players: Alex Lindsay - conductor

Allen Curnow - poet

Douglas Lilburn - composer (Landfall In Unknown Seas)

Ashley Heenan - composer (Cindy: A Square Dance For Strings)

Larry Prudent - composer (Dances Of Brittany)

John Ritchie - composer (Turkey In The Straw)

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Rainforest - Andrew Richardson (1985)

Here is another recording from Victorian flautist Andrew Richardson, the man responsible for Expanse and the Sally/Dive single. Rainforest is an ambient, fairly free-form piece which couples solo flute performances with Australian field recordings and a few other accompaniments. It’s a very sparse record and I must admit that I would like to have heard more structure and rhythmic flow. On the few occasions on Rainforest where Richardson does augment his solo flute playing it lifts the material considerably, such as the distant rhythmic rumbling percussion on Dense and the unexpected and brief appearance of a choir section in Shady Rill.

I am always interested in Australian recordings which incorporate field recordings and Rainforest uses this technique well - the fusion between these sounds and the flute playing feels very natural. The recordings are predominantly birds calling, the most obvious species being Rufous Whistler (Pachycephala rufiventris), White-throated Treecreeper (Cormobates leucophaea), Grey Fantail (Rhipidura albiscapa) and the Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen). This particular combination of species suggests that these recordings were made in dry temperate woodland in the southeast of Australia - which is actually a very different habitat type to the tropical rainforests that Richardson alludes to on the LP cover.

On the back of the sleeve Andrew writes: Australia is blessed with some of the world’s most magnificent rainforests. This recording represents a journey through one of these beautiful rainforests; and an attempt to make people conscious of these areas of rare and fragile beauty. As mankind is propelled into the Twenty-first Century these regions are unique, and must be saved in their entirety - not destroyed for short-term profit. One of Australia’s dedicated rainforest ecologists, CAROLE HELMAN, describes the Daintree Rainforest in north east Queensland as “one of the world’s most important tropical rainforests, because it is the home of the world’s most primitive tropical rainforest plant families.” The distinguished naturalist, DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, described Queensland’s rainforests as “one of the most breathtaking wild areas in the world, unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably interesting. There are birds, mammals and plants there that are unique. Beyond any dispute it is a treasure.”

Label: A.R.M. Digital

Released: 1985

Players: Andrew Richardson - flutes

Tapes - Jim Moginie

Tapes - Michael Gissing

Bells - Adrienne Overall

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Making It Happen - Eric Jupp And His Music (1969?)

Although they show up with some regularity, I’ve stopped buying Eric Jupp albums when I find them in op-shops these days. I’ve listened to a few, and Jupp’s LPs are typically schmaltzy lounge-room jazz firmly ensconced in an old-school, conservative musical mindset. It's pleasant enough stuff and features some great players, but not really my thing. I bought Making It Happen from the Salvos because it features an original composition by John Sangster, and due to the presence of some of my favourite sixties/seventies Oz jazz players (John Sangster, Don Burrows, George Golla, Derek Fairbrass, Warren Daly). 

This feels like an album where the young turks have dragged old fart Jupp into a more hip, modern set of songs. It’s not that hip though; there are still a number of soundtrack numbers and standards that are ever-present on these sorts of LPs - Theme From Exodus, Tara’s Theme from Gone With The Wind, Live For Life theme, Nino Rota’s A Time For Us from Romeo & Juliet and Hava Nagila. Most of these are pretty nice, if forgettable. 

The bulk of the set however is made up of instrumental arrangements of contemporary pop songs such as Puppet On A String (Sandie Shaw, 1967), Sounds of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel, 1966), The Other Man’s Grass Is Always Greener (Petula Clark, 1967), When I’m 64 (The Beatles, 1967), Help Yourself (Tom Jones, 1968) and Spinning Wheel (Blood, Sweat and Tears, 1969). A lot of these tracks are pretty great and the playing is always top-notch - for example, check out Burrow's echoey clarinet solo in the impossibly jaunty rendition of When I’m 64. 

The highlight is unquestionably Kaffir Song written by John Sangster. Most people would be familiar with this song from The Jazz Sound of The Don Burrows Quartet. In my opinion, the version on Making It Happen is superior. It’s a more fast-paced, less conspicuously ‘jazzy’ version and the interplay between the percussion and the bass is far more complex and interesting. (As amazing as the bass work is, the bassist is not credited in the liner notes - I’m guessing it’s Ed Gaston, but who knows?) It’s a looping, hypnotic trip into faux-exotica highlighted by Burrows high-pitched Bb school flute.

The other track which I really like is the Live For Life theme. From what I can tell, the original recording of this theme was a slow waltz - here Jupp reimagines the piece as a frantic whirlwind of exotic strings and horns, with the same picked bass tone as featured on Kaffir Song. It sounds like the kind of song that would played in a sixties movie over a montage of people doing important things very quickly. 

Label: Columbia

Released: 1969? (There is no date listed, but the latest of the cover songs was released in 1969). 

Players: Eric Jupp - piano, arrangements and musical direction.

Don Burrows - flutes, clarinet

Billy Burton - trumpet

George Golla - guitar

John Sangster - percussion, vibraphone

Derek Fairbrass - drums

Warren Daly - drums

Mediafire. 

Seasons Of Love - Gerard Kennedy/Sven Libaek (1972)

I first saw this album on the old Votary Records trades page, listed as ‘for Libaek completists only’. It’s a fair assessment of this LP - Libaek merely provides accompaniment for Australian seventies television star Gerard Kennedy as he recites Rod McKuen-style poetry over a smooth jazz backing. It may be instructive to focus on the music and the poetry separately:

THE MUSIC, BY SVEN LIBAEK. Sven’s compositions on the LP are quite good, if a little innocuous (it is intended as background music after all). There are some great moments though, which is not surprising as this was recorded right in the middle of Libaek’s golden era - he would go on to record the soundtrack for Inner Space a year after this release. None of the musicians are credited, but I am pretty confident that the usual suspects are playing on this record: George Golla on guitar, Don Burrows on flutes, John Sangster on vibes and percussion and so on. Many tracks also feature the addition of string sections which tends to bring out great stuff from Sven. The frustrating thing is that there are very few moments on the LP where the music is brought to the forefront and given a chance to be heard. Autumn is one such track, where we get a chance to hear haunting flute lines cycle over orchestral strings with a cool jazz underpinning from the rhythm players. The twin, harmonising sax lines bookending Spring are another lovely touch. A few themes are repeated and developed over a couple of tracks which adds some depth, and was not something that Sven usually did. But unfortunately, any moments of Libaek goodness invariably get interrupted by Gerard Kennedy’s awkward, artless spoken word.

THE POETRY, BY GERARD KENNEDY. Let me be blunt; the poetry on this record is bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. I think I could state without risk of hyperbole that this is the worst poetry I have ever heard. Gerard affects a bad boy, outsider persona for the poetry, but also injects a strange sort of cutesiness that, while not necessarily at odds with the material, fills me with an intense sort of simultaneous rage and embarrassment. Embarragement?

Throughout Seasons Of Love, Kennedy’s turn of phrase is embarrassingly unselfconscious and pretentious - I could pick almost any line from the album to illustrate this, here’s a random sample: ‘[Let’s] put up a maze of love with walls a thousand thoughts thick’ from I Think I’ll Build A Wall or “You moved [...] proud and graceful like a young gazelle picking her way through the forest.” from The Quiet Time Of Reason. There are really only two themes that are touched upon in the poems (if I was being kind, I’d call it consistency): Gerard describing how he is an outsider (Travel Broadens The Mind, I Am An Island) or musings on wanting to find love, but being too much of a free-thinking bohemian to be able to love just one woman (all the other tracks). Gerard is always alone, even in a crowd. The rain is his brother, and the wind is his friend.

Of course, Kennedy can’t be blamed for the abysmal standard of the poetry because despite the strongly personal nature of the verse, he didn’t actually write it. The poetry itself is credited to one Warwick Randall. One website I read even suggested that ‘Warwick Randall’ was a pseudonym for Kennedy, but from what I can ascertain, Randall is a real person. He has a couple of books of poetry to his name, is credited as working with Kennedy on a number of television shows and wrote for Melbourne broadsheet The Age in the early eighties. 

The fact that Kennedy didn’t even write the words that he delivers with such hammy enthusiasm only adds to the weirdness of this record. Did Kennedy recognise his limitations as a poet and outsource the job? Did he think that his friend was a criminally under appreciated poet and wanted to bring his work to a wider audience? Perhaps Gerard just wanted to portray himself as a tough yet arty nonconformist but didn’t actually have the poetic skills required for an LP of this nature and so turned to a lesser known, but confident poet whom he happened to know through work? I have so many questions about the execution and production of this LP, but I suspect that everyone involved with Seasons Of Love instantly forgot about it soon after it was released.

...And yet, I keep listening to this LP. I tend to eschew the ‘so bad it’s good’ school of music appreciation (I prefer music that’s ‘so good it’s good’) but there’s something about Seasons Of Love that keeps me coming back. There’s something mesmerising about this seventies wannabe alternative pin-up boy effusing cringe-inducing poetry (that he didn’t even write) over a backdrop of sweet, smooth jazz from a composer who was at the top of his game and probably wrote this material in his sleep. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating cultural artifact - when, where, could this have ever been considered cool?

Label: Festival

Released: 1972

Players: Gerard Kennedy - spoken word

Sven Libaek - composer, arranger

Musicians uncredited.

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Wives & Lovers - George Golla (1968/70)

George Golla has played on countless records accompanying Don Burrows, Sven Libaek, John Sangster et al, but he very infrequently released LPs under his own name and own direction. This is one of those records, and it’s a nice one. Wives & Lovers is a crowd-pleasing set of standards, Beatles covers and Brazillian bossa. I recall seeing a live LP of Golla and his band which was recorded at a popular pancake eatery in Sydney - I imagine this is exactly the kind of set they would playing, one that would ensure that the punters were hearing something they were familiar with or at least something that was engaging on first listen. Only one piece, Waltz To Adelaide, is a Golla original and it’s a damn shame that there aren’t more on this record because it’s the album's standout for me - a Libaek-esque waltz with nice dynamic changes and great work from the horn section. In fact, it’s as good as Libaek’s best, and the way that it is arranged and executed as a complete, concise song actually exceeds most of Sven’s work in this regard. 

Of the two Beatles covers, Day Tripper probably wouldn’t sound out of place on an album of novelty easy-listening covers, but it’s pleasant enough. Fool On The Hill is quite an interesting interpretation of this song and reimagines it as an odd shuffle with a sort of weird sense of unease in the chorus. The standards are pretty standard, although Wives and Lovers is great, and the Brazilian stuff on side two is good, but still feeling a bit safe and diluted for a popular audience. Overall, a lovely late-sixties Oz jazz album with some unevenness in the quality, but worth it for Golla’s Waltz To Adelaide and a few others.

Label: Festival
Released: Sleeve says 1970, disc says 1968.
Players: George Golla - guitar
Don Burrows - flute, alto flute, alto sax
Errol Buddle - bassoon, tenor sax
Pete Haslum - trombone
John Sangster - vibes, percussion
Derek Fairbrass - drums
Ed Gaston - bass (credited on the back as ‘Ed Faston’ - no respect at all.)
George Thompson - bass

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Peaceful - John Sangster (1980)

This is the sort of music that ideally should be listened to while sitting on a pristine Australian beach with a beer, maybe enjoying a cheeky Winnie blue (or some of Australia's other well-loved herbal produce) while listening to the native birds calling in the coastal scrub. I'm a little surprised, in fact, that Sangster didn't incorporate field recordings of birdsong or other native bioacoustics into this LP as he has with so many of his others. (Especially with titles like 'Reed-warbler Song').

This set is quite consistent in its instrumentation, comprising acoustic guitar, vibes and other melodic percussion instruments, smooth sax and flute. Overall the LP is reminiscent of the quieter sections of Sangster's fantastic Australia And All That Jazz records. The relatively straightforward arrangements and breezy exotica feel also evoke the vibe of John Zorn pieces like The Gift.

This record is an artefact of late 20th century Oz exotica which evolved from an appreciation of Australia as something of a tropical paradise. (See Sangster's own aptly titled Paradise for an excellent example of this cultural phenomenon). And unlike the unobtainable island fantasies of the original American exotica wave of the late fifties, this was a paradise that was easily accessible to any Australian with a bit of time, a serviceable caravan and a desire to seek out their own Antipodean Eden. Sangster clearly loved to view Australia in this way. In a country that is often ashamed of celebrating it's own 'Australianess', Sangster's music stands out as an unabashed statement of what makes it worth celebrating.

Label: Rain-Forest

Released: 1980

Players: Errol Buddle - tenor saxophone

Mal Cunningham - flutes

Terry Walker - acoustic guitar

Tony Ansell - electric piano

John Sangster - vibraphone, marimba and percussion

Ian Bloxsom - percussion

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