Saturday, March 18, 2023

Arghhhhhh. And Music.

 Head still hurts.  Back still hurts.  Dog stomped on my wedding tackle so that hurts (120lb dog moving at roughly the speed of light means lots of force and energy transferred.)

So, instead, back to Dad's hi-fidelity music.

Yesterday I was commenting on Anonymous' comment posted at 2:42AM (probably West Coast Time) about his comment:

My parents had a Herb Alpert album with the girl covered in whipped cream and a white blanket (to give the impression it was all cream) on the cover. Boy that sure got my pubescent hormones raging.

Reply
Replies
  1. Um, that and the album cover for Apollo 100's "Joy" album. Can neither confirm or deny same with the Sears catalog if you know what I mean.

So, yeah, I was a pervy little kid, full of raging hormones and such.  Eh, I turned out, according to Mrs. Andrew, okay, so...

Apollo 100 was a band put together (from Wiki - Apollo 100 - Wikipedia ) by Tom Parker with fellow session musicians drummer Clem Cattiniguitarist Vic Flick, guitarist Zed Jenkins, percussionist Jim Lawless, and bassist Brian Odgers, starting in 1970 and ending in 1973.  Electronic variations of classical pieces, and their first piece, "Joy," an interpretation of JS Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" hit the top 40 chart and was included in several movies.  It was, sadly, all downhill for the group.

Good song, good album, totally hot lady on the front cover.


For to compare, here's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" as Bach and God intended,
On a cathedral pipe organ.
I like both versions.  Seriously love both versions.

And then, to go strange again, Werner Müller and His Orchestra, was another of Dad's favorites. Werner was one of the big composers of space age bachelor pad music according to Werner Müller (spaceagepop.com) and from the web page "Who was/is Werner Müller? Well, he contributed numerous albums to London's Phase Four label, the longest-running of the Space Age Bachelor Pad series. But thanks to London's standard approach to liner notes, although we know exactly what channelization was used and what other Phase Four records were available, we are left knowing nothing of Werner Müller."  Nice going there, London Records.  Jerks

His (and his orchestra's) version of "Aranjuez Mon Amour" which is part of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Juaquin Rodrigo, always a very soul-stirring piece of Spanish classical music, and Werner does it proud.  The piece, played correctly, always has a wistful and somewhat sad sound to it, kind of how I imagine Spain actually is, wistful and somewhat sad. 

"Aranjuez, Mon Amour" or "Concierto de Aranjuez" 
depending on who's doing the citationing
Lovely piece of music.  
Beautiful horn work, and sad strings
with a little electronic organ added in to spice it up
Dad's copy had a bunch of mouths on it, not some corner babe.

And, well, just because Bach, JS Bach...

Geez, youtube, canna you giva a guya a breaka with the album arta?  Seriously, corner babe again?  Yeesh.
And, yes, album art in the 60's and early 70's tended to not be very arty much.


Seriously, can you imagine a 17th Century time period spy novel where the main character who's doing all the spying and killing is none other than Bach, JS Bach?  In between building pipe organs, codifying modern music notation and scales, having lusty intentions with his ever-fertile wife and pissing off his employers because they were pissing him off, he has a life of intrigue and contract murder...  Sounds like fun, no?

So.  Herb Alpert, Apollo 100, Werner and his boys, and others.  Dad had eclectic tastes.

See ya.




18 comments:

  1. Here's some viking music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnkTuHP9q3o and a couple of more without the guest singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEizKmZlUAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDMIbVFCz7A

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beans, I like your version of J.S. Bach. That right there is an alternate history sort of narrative in a nutshell.

    It always amazes me in the pre-InterWeb/download days, how many different bands had one or perhaps two records and then faded away. That would have been a fair gamble at the time financially; I wonder what the hit/miss ratio was for those approving the releases.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup. I remember going to record stores and sampling music. Mrs. Andrew was very good about it.

      Then there was the control of Top 40 stations had on the market by the mid 70's. Unless you lived in some really big city, the chance of hearing alternate music or not-top 40 music was slim to none. Especially heinous was that often the disk jockeys wouldn't tell you who the group was, they assumed you followed the top 40 list by reading some entertainment rag.

      The interwebs have opened up a whole new world.

      Nowadays a group (or often one guy in his room) can put together a complex, layered and well-engineered album and release it and get paid for it. Back in the days same guy would have to join with others to try to get a demo cut at a local studio and then try to find someone to listen to said demo, to the point of mailing demos to disk jockeys, record companies and management companies and the bar scene in order to try to find someone who would listen to them.

      I would assume the ratio was about as good as the chance of every high school basketball player making it into the NBA.

      As to "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," I have always loved the piece as written, but Apollo 100 just peps it up and makes it so bouncy and happy.

      Delete
  3. Some excellent music there.

    Our church has an old pipe organ, which has been lovingly maintained and sounds incredible when played by someone who knows there business.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "who knows their business." snerk!

      One of my high-school friends was a pretty good organist. So good that when he went to Germany and Austria on vacation after high school, he was invited to play on some of the best organs just for snits and giggles. It is he who got me completely hooked on Bach, but I've always been a fan of the pipe organ.

      Delete
    2. Argh, don't comment before coffee. New rule.

      Delete
  4. Herb Alpert album cover referenced was the album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights". It had several hits on it. And yes, the cover was quite appealing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, a very excellenty pervy cover. Ah, the good old days.

      Delete
  5. I remember that version, never knew who the musicians were though. And yes, the pipe organ version is fantastic. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, Apollo 100 was one of those "I've heard that piece before" type of groups.

      Like the BeeGees, they wrote and recorded a ton of stuff before Disco Era BeeGees, songs you'll say "I've heard that before" but would not know it was the BeeGees you were listening to.

      Delete
  6. Unfortunately my taste in music is revealed here:
    https://youtu.be/Be7O9g2sphw

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. D4,
      Explains an awful lot, D4. Funny, but explains a lot.
      ;-)

      Delete
    2. Ain't nothing wrong with a little (or a lot) of Spike Jones!

      Delete
    3. Love Spike Jones. Children today would be mortified if a modern Spike Jones was around... Wait a minute, there's Weird Al!

      Delete
    4. And then I learned more of the classics here,
      https://youtu.be/ZyLSplHi9y0

      Delete
  7. Celtic Woman's version of Jesu, Joy of Man's desiring is amazing.

    ReplyDelete

Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

NOTE: Comments on posts over 5 days old go into moderation, automatically.