Record Cover of the Week

Oscar Peterson: The Silent Partner

Those are Christopher Plummer’s sparkling, malevolent eyes on the cover of this LP. He played a nasty bank robber opposite bank clerk Elliot Gould. Quebec actress Céline Lomez played Plummer’s girlfriend and met with a memorably gruesome end involving a fish tank. The film was one of the more notable products of Canadian cinema’s tax shelter years. Oscar Peterson wrote some themes for the characters that were orchestrated by composer/arranger Ken Wannberg. This LP (never released on CD) features Peterson with an all-star septet including Benny Carter (alto sax), Zoot Sims (tenor sax) and Milt Jackson (vibes).

Record Cover of the Week

Little Fauss and Big Halsy

This week’s record is actually an 8-track tape. It’s the original soundtrack from a 1970 movie starring Michael J. Pollard and Robert Redford (guess which one is which) as motorcycle racers. Apparently Redford’s least favourite of his own films, possibly because he plays an unsympathetic character. The excellent score was written and performed by Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins (Cash also sings Bob Dylan’s Wanted Man).

Yes, I do have an 8-track player. It’s kind of crappy – some budget brand called Wynford Hall – but it plays standard and quad 8-tracks (it has 4 speakers). I have maybe a dozen quad 8-tracks (this is not one) and they sound fantastic.

The handwriting on the label says “Do not Erros”.

Record Cover of the Week

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? A fistfull of soundtracks:

Various: Brewster McCloud

Early 70’s weirdness from director Robert Altman.

Piero Piccioni: More Than A Miracle

Sophia Loren & Omar Sharif in a fairy tale for grown-ups.

Henry Mancini: Oklahoma Crude

Faye Dunaway as a proto-feminist in Stanley Kramer’s 70’s western.

Record Cover of the Week

A trio of Canuck soundtracks.

Music of the N.F.B.

Brilliant 2 LP set of electroacoustic-ish music from National Film Board of Canada films. Cover drawing by Norman McLaren.

Michael Conway Baker, The Chieftans: The Grey Fox

François Dompierre: Les portes tournantes

Record Cover of the Week

Hugo Montenegro (conductor/arranger): Original Music From The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Music by Lalo Schifrin, Jerry Goldsmith, Morton Stevens and Walter Scharf.

George Blondheim (original score): Bye Bye Blues

Record Covers of the Week

Shopping with Jessica on Saturday. Interesting selection of vinyl at a yard sale near my house – coloured vinyl, picture discs, hand-screened covers, etc.

Yard sale guy had the cutest polydactyl cat ever.

I bought:

A 7″ 45 rpm picture disk from Hong Kong of a children’s choir singing Christmas songs: Ding Dong Merrily On High, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, Adeste Fideles, Joy To The World, Silent Night, Deck The Halls.

Side 1

Side 2

and:

Label, side B

Record Cover of the Week

François Cousineau: L’initiation

I’m just not finding the records I want at the thrifts (right now I’m a little obsessed with collecting soundtracks from Canadian movies), so I’ve been forced to go to ebay. I’ve bought several CDs off the ‘bay in the last 6 months but this is my first vinyl purchase. The shipping charges are killer – in this case as much as the record. The film is a 1969 sexploitation flick from Quebec (a genre that has come to be known as “maple syrup porn”) with an excellent score by François Cousineau and vocals by Diane Dufresne and Canadian disco queen Patsy Gallant.

Links:

Radio interview (from CBC 1’s Definitely Not The Opera) with Dan Zacks about music from maple syrup porn (it runs about 11 minutes).

Canuxploitation.com article on the “maple syrup porn” genre.

Film Threat review of L’initiation

Record Cover of the Week

Les Baxter: Tamboo!

An exotica classic. 50¢ at my neighbourhood record store.

Record Cover of the Week

Diagnostic Fast: Fail Forward To Success

My Album From A Parallel Universe.

Make a yet-unheard band’s album cover:

1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. (You may ignore any parenthetical words if your random article title contains them, at your discretion.)

2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album. Or however many make a good title. (It might be nice to include the whole quote, and who said it, in the notes for your posted photo, too.)

3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. Alternately, if you’d prefer to only use Creative Commons images, this link will grab a random photo for your cover for you: http://mikelietz.org/code/flickr-ccgettr.php
We recommend noting the resulting URL when you click on that third picture (or get the random CC picure) to give the photographer credit.

4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together. Feel free to crop it square (or make it “gatefold”!) or whatever you have to do to make it ‘cover-esque’.

5 – Post it to FB (in a note) with this text in the “caption” or “comment” and TAG the friends you want to join in. We recommend also posting the URL you got in 3 above as a photo credit, so the artists can get credit for their work.

6 – Join the group Albums From a Parallel Universe and upload your masterwork and “discography” blurb! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52158212905&ref=mf

I’m not signing up for facebook, but I will tag Gary B. to make a cover.

More record covers.

Gary’s reply:

Stary Cis: It Just Unfolds Us

Record Cover of the Week

Paul Horn & The Concert Ensemble

From the cover of this record I thought it might be one of those “genre benders” where pop tunes are played baroque style or classical pieces are jazzed up. But no, the classical pieces (such as Bach’s Siciliano from Flute Sonata No. II) are done classical style without electric guitars, and everything else (Light My Fire, Look of Love, The Gentle Rain, etc.) is given a jazz reading sans harpsichord. A fine record nonetheless. In QS quadraphonic stereo.