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Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Story Of Dracula

The Story Of Dracula
Kid Stuff Records KS118
By The Kid Stuff Repertory Company
1978

Horrible album cover art and the worst Dracula impersonation ever.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Indian Marimba


The Indian Marimba
Music from Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela
Recorded by Arion-Paris
The Musical Heritage Society MHS 3238
1975

From the back cover: The musical research necessary for the production of this recording was undertaken by Hector Miranda who directs the Los Calchakis Ensemble.

Palmeras (Bolivia)
Nieve Viento Y Sol (Argentina)
El Toro Robon (Mexico)
Sumak Yurak (Ecuador)
Bachue (Columbia)
Sombras (Ecuador)
La Reeler (Mexico)
El Rascapetate (Mexico)
Asomate A La Ventana (Columbia)
My Chiriguare (Venezuela)
Antigua Serenata (Agentina)
Huambra Amoroas (Ecuador)
La Zandunga (Mexico)
Joropeando (Venezuela)

Silver Apples Of The Moon

Silver Apples Of The Moon

Silver Apples Of The Moon
For Electronic Music Synthesizer
A Nonsuch Records commission composed specifically for the LP record by
Morton Subotnick
Cover Art: Anthony Martin
Cover Design: William S. Harvey
Coordinator: Teresa Sterne
Nonesuch Records H-71174
1967

From the back cover: Morton Subotnick was born in 1933 in Los Angeles, California. He earned his undergraduate degree in English literature from the University of Denver and his Master of Arts in composition from Mills College, where he studied with Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. A professional clarinetist, he was a member of the Denver and San Francisco Symphonies and has given chamber music and solo performances.

While in California, Subotnick co-founded the Mills College Performing Group (a chamber ensemble), and the San Francisco Tape Center. Through the efforts of the composer, the Center was awarded a $200,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and subsequently the Tape Music Center and the Mills Performing Group were combined. At this time Subotnick also held a post as Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College. He then became Musical Director of the Repertory Theater at Lincoln Center and since Fall, 1966, has been involved with the Intermedia Program at the School of Arts at New York University. The purpose of this program is to bring together artists who specialize in various media – film, theater, tape, etc.

Subotnick has been working with tape since 1960; his present involvement with mixed media employs the theatrical. The following are excerpts of a recent work, "Play!" – illustrative of the technique Subotnick has evolved.

The dimensions of Morton Subotnick's Play No. 4 embrace not only music, but also theater and cinema and game-playing and light-shows and assorted ritualistic phenomena suggestive of contemporary society and its institutions. The work combines all these factors into an essentially new total-arts form, and the experience it creates is similar to that of happenings, although it has more point and structure – even though it is based on chance and indeterminacy...

And beneath, underneath and through all these sights and sounds is the scream and whine and slurp and krontch of some of the most affecting electronic music I've ever heard. – The Seattle Times

A total concept in music that integrates theatrical media and destroys audience inertia... – Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Margaret Plays The Musical Saw

Green Leaves Of Summer
Margaret Plays The Musical Saw
Audiocraft Recording Co. Cincinnati, OH

Today's offering is a great local private press recording. Minty fresh vinyl and autographed!

The Musical Saw is the next best thing to the Theremin when it comes to "strange" music instruments. And it may be that Musical Saw recordings are rather more rare than Theremin.

There is a lot of information on the back cover. But one paragraph stands out. Margaret carries her saw in a gun case, which causes problems with security when she boards a plane for Burbank, California, to visit her daughter. Sometimes she must demonstrate that it really is a musical instrument.

That's why you do not see many traveling Saw players these days. They would all be pegged for terrorists, knocked to the ground and stripped search everywhere they went.

LIMBO! - The Caribbeanas

Santa Manite
LIMBO!
The Caribbeanas
Diplomat 2277
1962

Limbo Like Me
Arima Tonight
Gounod's Waltz
Gaza
Melodious Overtones
Santa Manite
Melody De Amour
Whirling 'Round
Claire Is Where
The Heat

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The Goldman Band

The Goldman Band

The Goldman Band
Marching On!
Vocalion VL 73838 (enhanced or stereo)

Manhattan Beach March
Bluejackets On Parade
2nd Regiment Connecticut National Guard March
The Gold Bug March
Bugles And Drums
His Honor
The Billboard March
Wisconsin
The Goldman Band
Indian March

Ping Pong Percussion - Lerner & Loewe

I Talk To The Trees
Ping Pong Percussion
Lerner & Loewe
By The Famous Stradivari Strings
Cover designed by Harry and Marion Zelenko, Inc.
Spinorama Records S-33

Pointless "ping-pong" effects tacked on to "Stradivari Strings" tracks.

They Call The Wind Maria
Thank Heaven For Little Girls
I Could Have Danced All Night
I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face
Waltz At Maxim's
I Talk To The Trees
Wouldn't It Be Lovely
On The Street Where You Live
Gigi
The Night They Invented Champagne

To The Tables Down At Mory's

To The Tables Down At Mory's
Songs for getting together, beer drinking and raising hell!!!
Lee Gotch's Ivy Barflies
Somerset SF-7600

I have another great cover to post today. I'm not kidding. I did not make this up. Yes, these gentlemen are drinking beer, raising hell and singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Raising Hell? This music is so white bread it's almost barbershop quartet.

Gene Tracy Truckstop 11

Gene Tracy
Cleans Up His Act
Truckstop 11
Koala Record Company 1980
KOA 14878

Interesting cheesecake cover for this reissue of Tracy material which was released the year after he died at the age of 52.

Love this cover. The model is curiously "old" and I don't have any idea why Koala went with this image over any other cheesecake image as there is no connection between the cover and the material. The album contains some adult references, some off-color and politically incorrect jokes, but no bad language what-so-ever.  It is not "XXX" by any means.

So it interesting to note the disclaimer on the back cover: The illustrations are a commercial concept for this album. Therefore we are unable to say that the illustrations represent a completely accurate presentation of the recording artist as he has or does now appear.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Jesse Crawford At The Organ

Villa

Jesse Crawford At The Organ
Crown Records
CST 486

Don't be fooled by the hip 60s chick who graces the cover of this Crown release… Featured on this set is the completely non-hip organ music produced by Jesse Crawford who was a well known silent movie and gramophone recording artist who passed away several years before this LP was released.

Tales From The Vienna Woods
Gypsy Love Song
Merry Widow Waltz
Villa
A Wandering Minstrel
Buttercup
To A Wild Rose
Blue Danube
Emperor's Waltz
Artist's Life
Voices Of Spring
Treasure Waltz

Swingin' Sounds For Secret Agents

Swingin' Sounds For Secret Agents
Columbia Special Products
CSM 444

Here is a rare collection that was released by Columbia as a "Limited Edition – Not Available In Record Stores" I'm do not know how the album was distributed