The Andrew Oldham Orchestra - Plays Lionel Bart’s Maggie May

The Andrew Oldham Orchestra - Plays Lionel Bart’s Maggie May

CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Japan, 2013

Decca

I didn’t even know that Plays Lionel Bart’s Maggie May existed, when some years back I walked into a small Shinjuku record shop, and there it was!  It was close to $50, and way too much for me to buy at the time.  Of course, I thought of that record whenever I closed my eyes at beddy-time.  So there was at least five years of regrets about passing up on this album, and very few people knew of it.  The most famous Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra album was their first one, which was Rolling Stones’ covers.  The Lionel Bart album was a weird one for me, because it was devoted to one songwriter, Lionel Bart, and one of his shows, who for most Americans, would be king obscure.   Which makes this album fascinating on a lot of levels.  Oldham was a friend and someone who looked up to Bart as both a music businessman as well as a music hustler of sorts.  He played the game, but I think the game won in the end.  Nevertheless he was a key figure in British rock before The Beatles broke big.  He wrote songs for Cliff Richard and most famously the musical “Oliver.”  

Here Oldham, John Paul Jones, and others, turns on their magic to the tunes from “Maggie May.” I don’t think there is an official OST of this musical or if it is, disappeared into vinyl heaven.  So this is what we take into existence, and thank god for the Japanese, they re-leased it with not only mono mixes, but stereo as well.  Plus 11 bonus cuts.  

The mono version of this album is the one to hear over and over again.  It’s classic Oldham vibe.  For instance, “It’s Yourself” has a killer lead bass sound, very Jet Harris.  But the stereo version, the bass is practically gone!  Nevertheless it’s a cool album, and this CD collection is incredible, mostly for the bonus cuts, which to be honest, are the highlights of this set.   

The rest of the album is recordings from around this time (1964) from the Andrew Oldham and Immediate Records world.  Totally essential songs like “Each and Every Day of the Year” (Jagger & Richards) and “All I Want Is My Baby” (Oldham & Richards) sung by Bobby Jameson and simply incredible recordings.   Not sure if the purpose was for the publishing end of the music business, but Jagger and Keith came up with wonderful tunes.  The other stand out by them is “(Walking Thru’ the) Sleepy City”, performed by The Mighty Avengers, but gawd, what a fantastic song.  The best $28 spent on a CD in my lifetime!

The Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra & Chorus - 16 Hip Hits (cd reissue, Japan)

The Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra & Chorus - 16 Hip Hits

CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Japan, 2013

Decca

To step into a fantastic record store like Pet Sounds in Tokyo and seeing the entire Andrew Loog Oldham catalog reissued as CD, was something that almost forced me to cry, but I held my tears back and purchased all of them.  They were $28 a piece and for sure worth every yen and cent.  The first one I played was “16 Hip Hits.”  To be honest I have a lot of these songs in a collection that was put together in the 90s, but for me, to hear it in its natural order - plus the additional 16 bonus cuts, well it was like being put in a time machine in 1966.  Except I was in Tokyo not London.

Paul John Jones did a lot of the arrangements for this album, and the selection is mostly from the obsessive taste of Oldham.  It was songs that were hits at the time, and Oldham at that time, didn’t look back or reflect on his past.  This was music made to be carried out at that point and time.  So one got a snapshot view of his world at the time, and the beauty of him is that he’s an artist, but I suspect that he was thinking about himself as more as a hustler than anything else.  Music was another part of the hustle, and this is what makes this album such a sweet listening experience. 

The arrangements appear to be slower, then the original recording hits, and there is a looseness of the arrangements that almost feel like it would fall apart any moment.  So that adds a certain amount of tension in the work.  For me, it gives a sense of charm, and with the additional good taste from Oldham makes these recordings essential for anyone who is interested in 60’s British pop.  Most of the songs, if not all, are American orientated.   They hanker back to almost an imaginary state of mind of the original recordings - but re-imagined by Oldham and perhaps Jones.  But I suspect that Jones was just following Oldham’s lead, and Andrew it is all about image, and that image, is really beautiful.

Bryan Ferry - "Let's Stick Together" CD Album

Bryan Ferry - Let’s Stick Together

CD, Album, U.S.,  1990 (Released 1976)

Reprise Records

A very odd record.  In the same year, at least in the U.K. Bryan Ferry released an EP that was sort of perfection in format and music.  Let’s Stick Together is a full album including that EP, but still, the album feels like a b-side to various singles.   In fact, I believe that most of this material were b-sides.   On this album he does or re-do’s five Roxy Music songs.   All decent covers, but not as good as the Roxy originals.   So one wonders,  perhaps he re-recorded them for financial reasons? 

The one thing that Ferry never fails to do is do a great version of an American Songbook classic.  Here he does “You Go To My Head” which is superb.   The voice, the image, and his stance backs the greatness of this song.  It’s a natural fit.  Also his take on “Let’s Stick Together” works because he has that sheen of the surface and when it is attached to a gritty R&B song, it adds a new dimension to the work.   So yeah, enjoyable package, but what is the thought behind it?

Bryan Ferry - "Extended Play" Vinyl 7" EP

I purchased the original copy of this EP at Moby Disc record store when they were located on Ventura Bouvelard.   At the time, I loved the compactness of having an EP with four new songs.  The year being 1976, the height of the punk era, and yet, Bryan Ferry totally ignored that world for his own private-like cell of luxury and his version of recorded history.  The design and even the liner notes expresses a time gone past.  I imagine that Ferry still has all of his old original vinyl EP’s in some room in his house.  So this selection is perhaps a tribute to that era, but the music, at least on the surface, is all over the map.

We have a classic Beatle tune from “Rubber Soul,” and in theory Ferry could do a whole re-make of that album, and it would fit into his aesthetic.  It is quite straight forward with a heart on the sleeve sentiment - which ironically enough there is another track with that very title.  “Heart On My Sleeve” is totally nice but also unnecessary.  What comes off the strongest is his version of Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” and The Everly Brothers “The Pice Of Love.” That is totally superb, with an intensity that is powerful and then going right into “Shame…” is a great series of moments.  The b-side is all reflection, as I noted above.  But the real star of this package is the idea of the EP.

Bryan Ferry "Another Time, Another Place"

Bryan Ferry - Another Time, Another Place

CD, Album, Remastered

Virgin

The second Bryan Ferry album, and on the surface, it appears to follow the first, in that it is mostly all covers, except the title song “Another Time, Another Place.” The album opens with “The ‘In’ Crowd” and this mod soul classic is re-imagined by Ferry.  Here in Ferry’s hands the song becomes a manifesto.  In other words, it is pretty much what the listener imagines the world of Bryan Ferry is like.  “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” is another totally suitable piece of work, due that Ferry has a real understanding of the Great American Songbook.  He knows how to be subversive with the mixture of effortless elegance, with his much studied approach to that subject.  The beauty of this song sounds like Ferry wrote it.   The lyrics are genius.  The image of a heart in flames, which in turn causes the eyes to burn from the smoke, is a great visual ‘romantic’ image.

Sadly the rest of the album doesn’t match the two songs above.  The thing is I think he sees these songs as irony-free, but the enjoyment of a Bryan Ferry project is the projection of his pop aesthetic on a song form.  At least with his solo projects.   By no means is this a failure of an album, but compared to his initial solo, and of course Roxy Music, it is minor stuff.   Well, that’s true till  we get to the end of the album, when all of a sudden we get an original song by Ferry.  Not only an original, but a masterpiece by Ferry.  “Another Time, Another Place” is the iconic Ferry subject matter of time standing still, which is woebegone island for him.

Ferry doing covers as a solo project makes complete sense to me, but I am surprised that he put an original song on this album.   Even though it is the best thing cut, why not save this song for a Roxy project?  

Bryan Ferry - "These Foolish Things" Virgin CD

Bryan Ferry - These Foolish Things

CD, Album, Remastered, 1999 (original recording 1973

Virgin

For me personally, the year 1973 was a major time for new music.  Glam reached its peak, and David Bowie and the Spiders were non-stoppable.  But also the dark mirror image of Bowie, Roxy Music was making revolutionary music.   It was virtually a shock that around the time of the second Roxy album, Bryan Ferry released a solo album.  An album of song covers on top of that.  At the time, I thought of These Foolish Things as a creative notebook for Ferry.  Perhaps influences, both iconic and sonic wise.  The majority of the songs were taken from the 60’s with a touch of the 50’s and even something from the classic American songbook.

When I first heard the album, I was shocked by Ferry singing a Bob Dylan song for some reason.  Even more surprise by his glam/experimental arrangement of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” An incredible version of the song that first rendered this protest song into a camp level.  Now hearing it many years later it seems to me to be more of a poetic approach to this iconic piece of work.  On one level the album sounds like a collection of b-sides, but that is a part of its great charm.  Ferry’s focus on turning these pieces into something more personal for him, yet the distance between his voice and the material is quite a distance.  It is, and still is, a very strange album.

Antonin Artaud - Pour en finir avec le Judgement du dieu" Internet recording

Antonin Artaud - Pour en finir avec le Judgement du dieu

Download

I have this incredible joy of listening to Poets reading their works in their native language, and the fact that I don’t understand that language is an additional plus for me.  But I think people in my category would have no trouble listening to and enjoying the voice of Antonin Artaud reading his works.  This piece was recorded for a radio broadcast, but was banned before it even got on the air.  There are very few recordings of Artaud, so each one has to be treasured in the sense it is a voice lost with the noise out there.  Nevertheless there have been numerous recordings of this piece floating on Earth as well as on the Internet.  

This work is very musical, and keeps one on their toes, because you don’t know what is going to happen.  There are percussion affects as well as ambient noise affects through out the work.  Even though I don’t know the language it is pretty intense stuff.