Category: 1977

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1977 2012 Film Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title W Year

Wizards – music by Andrew Belling

4 min read

Order this CDIf anyone was going to put the “high” in “high fantasy” in the 1970s, it was going to be Ralph Bakshi, and that’s really seems like the most likely explanation for the 1977 animated cult classic Wizards, which attempted – successfully in places, it has to be said – to inject earthy (and earthly) elements into the fantasy genre. The movie gets a lot of help from its score, which combines ’70s synths, a funk/jazz/rock sensibility very much of its era, and the kind of instrumentation one might expect of this genre. Andrew Belling’s music for Wizard is the same kind of fearless blending of genres that the movie itself is, fittingly.

If you’re in a mood for something not a million miles removed from a funky ’70s jam, you can’t go wrong with tracks like “War Against Peace / Weehawk Disturbs The Peace / The Bubble Bursts” and “Battle & Peewhittle’s Death” – though the track titles read as very soundtrackish, they’re very listenable slices of funk/rock if you’re up for this particular vintage of those particular styles. (One listener’s dated sounds are another’s comfort food. There’s nothing wrong with a good old ’70s jam-out.)

And yet tracks like “Snow Drift / Snow Time / Assassins In The Snow” and “Moving Out” give you the more traditional vibe you’d expect from an adventure film (in synthesized form, mind you, but almost always mixed in with some live players, particularly on woodwinds, timpani, brass, and percussion. Some tracks straddle the fence between the two styles, transitioning from traditional to more funk/rock oriented in the blink of an eye. Much like the movie, the music keeps you on your toes, even if it’s purely a listening experience. Interestingly, Belling allows his small ensemble to sound sparse to great effect in “The Elves Are Coming”.

Occasionally the electronic elements of the music get a bit weird with it, as in the final portion of “Now Begins Our Final Battle / Avatar Equestrian / On The Road To Scortch”; bit of “Fairy Attack” almost sound a bit Radiophonic Workshop-esque. As dated as it may sound now, the Wizards score was actually seriously ahead of its time. The album is opened and closed with two different edits of “Time Will Tell”, both with vocals by Susan Anton, but also stylistically similar to the rest of the score.

4 out of 4The sad news is: Wizards is long out of print. Given a relatively small print run of only 2,000 copies over a decade ago, and La-La Land – which is normally very good about keeping the original pages for its extinct titles archived in an out-of-print section – has scrubbed any mention of it from their site, and there is no digital edition. It’s like the soundtrack is as much of a fever dream as the movie itself was. A pity it’s now hard to get hold of, because it’s a very effective case study in combining traditional and non-traditional instrumentation and styles, from an era where it truly was a revolutionary experiment. This might just be one of those cases where the score outclasses its film.

  1. Time Will Tell (Full Version) featuring Susan Anton (2:11)
  2. The Story Begins / Scortch 3000 Years Later / Fairy Hookers / Peace Goes Forth / Peace In The Valley Of Montagar (7:03)
  3. War Against Peace / Weehawk Disturbs The Peace / The Bubble Bursts (2:45)
  4. Jukebox Junky Blues (1:26)
  5. Blackwolf Finds The Record / War & Frog / We Can’t Lose (1:37)
  6. Moving Out (1:54)
  7. Battle & Peewhittle’s Death (2:05)
  8. Now Begins Our Final Battle / Avatar Equestrian / On The Road To Scortch (1:27)
  9. Fairy Attack (1:43)
  10. Fairy Drums / Jungle Drums / Gargoyle Once A Day (1:42)
  11. Snow Drift / Snow Time / Assassins In The Snow (2:22)
  12. Tanks Again & Betrayal / Peace Isn’t, Elinore Doesn’t (1:20)
  13. To All Our Ships / Larry Gets Weehawk (0:52)
  14. The Elves Are Coming (1:30)
  15. Gathering Of The Heavies / The Charge Of The Heavy Brigade / The Battle Picks Up Tempo / The Punchup / The Elves Lose (6:36)
  16. Weehawk Finds Elinore / Elinore’s OK / Blackwolf Bites It / Final History / Bye (3:29)
  17. Time Will Tell (Film Version) featuring Susan Anton (2:00)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: October 23, 2012
Total running time: 42:36

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1977 2022 C Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Children Of The Stones – music by Sidney Sager

4 min read

Order this CDI discovered that there was a soundtrack for this 1977 children’s fantasy/horror series almost by accident, and when I recovered from the shock that it existed, it was an instant purchase. The opening theme of Children Of The Stones by itself is a classic of TV/film scoring in the horror genre: just the music is scary as hell, starting out with a hush of pleasant but eerie choral voices that becomes disharmonious, breaks up into chanting instead of singing, and then crescendoes in a massed scream before resuming singing something more akin to what most people would think as music. If you’re not ready for it, it’ll scare the piss out of you. That single piece of music is responsible for about 80% of the effectiveness of the show as a piece of scary television.

The soundtrack album then turns into a horror of its own for completely different reasons.

As was often the case with this particular genre of television – at which regional UK broadcaster Harlech Television (shortened to HTV) excelled – the composer behind the music was Sidney Sager, ho also contributed music with choral elements to such HTV children’s series as King Of The Castle and Into The Labyrinth, both utilizing the Ambrosian Singers, who are front-and-center in the Children Of The Stones score. With the story’s heavy reliance on druid lore, the singers spend as much time chanting as they do singing, and yes, the opening titles are not the only place that they reach a fever-pitched shriek. It’s amazingly unnerving music. (And this show was for kids?)

That’s the good horror. The bad horror began to set in with only the second track. At the end of “Mrs. Crabtree Views The Painting”, as the singers again reach an unnerving climax, there’s the sound of broken glass. Because in the show, Mrs. Crabtree drops an entire tea tray as the creepy painting that sets off the story gets into her head. But…that would mean…

Oh no. Yes. It means what you think it does. Later tracks include footsteps, doors opening/closing, rustling graas, rushing wind, even occasional non-musical voices. Yes, they just took the sound from the DVD, did some EQ, and released that as a download and a pricey limited-edition vinyl album with a poster of the aforementioned painting.

I could’ve pulled the DVD off the shelf and done that myself. And since I already bought the DVD, it wouldn’t have cost me seven-and-a-half quid for the privilege. Hell, I probably could’ve run it through some demixing software to at least attempt to remove the extraneous sounds from the show.

It’s not too much to expect that the original scoring tapes might still exist from a show of this vintage; look at the numerous releases of Doctor Who music from the ’60s and early ’70s, or even the BBC’s release, several years ago, of the complete score from the 1975 children’s fantasy series The Changes, also presented without the rest of the show’s sound mix intruding. There may be some notes about the production process of this album in the liner notes of the LP; I don’t know, I only got the download, and there was no warning that this was what the soundtrack collecting world refers to as “archival sound” – dialogue or effects stems that were part of the only available source media for the music. Yes, that is a thing that happens, on official releases, but I’m accustomed to labels warning me about that being the case.

2 out of 4Sidney Sager’s music is stunning, scary work – it’s the only reason this release gets as much as a two-star rating. But the lack of warning that this is basically an audio presentation of the musical moments of the show as-aired is infuriating. Let the buyer/listener beware.

  1. Children of the Stones (Opening Title) (1:15)
  2. Mrs Crabtree Views the Painting (0:06)
  3. Someone Who Is Happy (0:11)
  4. Matthew and Dai (0:35)
  5. Adam Touches the Stones (0:27)
  6. Circle of Fear (I Can’t Wait) (0:17)
  7. Nobody Ever Leaves (0:12)
  8. Being Alone (0:32)
  9. Within the Painting (0:33)
  10. Matthew’s Accident (1:29)
  11. Serpent in the Circle (0:46)
  12. Tom Browning (0:30)
  13. Looks, It’s Jimmo (0:16)
  14. Narrowing Circle (1:14)
  15. Premonition of Dr Lyle (0:22)
  16. Dai Casts the Bones (1:55)
  17. The Barber Surgeon’s Amulet (1:17)
  18. Never, It’s Mine (0:20)
  19. He’s Not There (0:35)
  20. Anger the Fire (0:27)
  21. Such Power (0:23)
  22. It Is Time (0:43)
  23. Squaring the Circle (1:16)
  24. We’ve Lost Them (0:18)
  25. Go Now and Be Happy (0:29)
  26. I’ll Return This at the Same Time (0:34)
  27. We’re Trapped (0:07)
  28. The Circle Is Complete (0:34)
  29. The Circle Is Broken (1:19)
  30. Children of the Stones (End Titles) (0:31)

Released by: Trunk Records
Release date: October 20, 2022
Total running time: 19:33

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1977 2020 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Doctor Who: The Sun Makers – music by Dudley Simpson

4 min read

This is a Doctor Who soundtrack release I never expected to be holding in my hands or hearing. Composer Dudley Simpson was as close as classic Doctor Who had to the kind of singular composer-in-residence that seems to be the norm for the modern series; other composers were occasionally employed at the whim of individual directors, but from 1964 through 1979, Dudley Simpson was Doctor Who’s default musical “setting”, composing for and conducting a small ensemble occasionally augmented with synthesizers by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. But despite his music gracing most of the series across that fifteen-year span, most of the original session tapes of Simpson’s Doctor Who music have been lost. The only remaining specimens, in fact, can be traced to the Radiophonic Workshop – if they added their wobbly analog synths to Simpson’s music, a copy of that was retained in their archives. And that’s where the score from The Sun Makers, a 1977 Tom Baker four-part story, comes in – it’s one of only two Simpson scores that still exist in their entirety, both of them thanks to the Workshop’s involvement. (The other, still unreleased, is 1971’s The Mind Of Evil, a Jon Pertwee adventure that was the second-ever appearance of Roger Delgado as the Master, and as such heavily feature’s Simpson’s sinister theme for that character.) To have a complete Simpson score is a gift; for that score to hail from a fondly-remembered story featuring the fourth Doctor, Leela, and K-9 toppling a regime embracing capitalism-to-the-point-of-ridiculousness is just gravy.

Tracks like “Mahogany”, which starts out with a somewhat plaintive bassoon before bringing the rest of the ensemble in to create a rich, warm harmony, exemplify what Simpson was best at. The same goes for “One Thousand Metres” and its interesting keyboard arpeggios floating over the acoustic instruments. Let’s be clear – a lot of people probably wouldn’t have chosen The Sun Makers to be one of the only complete surviving examples of Simpson’s work; they probably would’ve chosen City Of Death or Genesis Of The Daleks or a more “obvious” entry in Simpson’s canon, but The Sun Makers didn’t exactly burn itself into everyone’s memory the way those stories did. That’s actually what makes it a canny choice for a release: it’s a bit of a surprise because you probably don’t remember the score that well.

“Six Suns”, “The Others”, and “K-9, Bite!” remind me a lot of Blake’s 7, of which nearly every episode was also scored by Simpson. (The Sun Makers has a Blake’s 7 connection too – it’s where director Pennant Roberts met actor Michael Keating, giving Keating a hearty recommendation for the role of Vila.) “Subway 13” is a bit more menacing, and, at less than a minute in length, it’s a reminder some Doctor Who stories lent themselves to lengthier musical travelogues, and The Sun Makers wasn’t one of those stories. It’s comprised of shorter, punchier vignettes without the opportunity for the kind of extended musical interludes that, say, City Of Death afforded the composer. In that regard, The Sun Makers is absolutely a straight-down-the-line typical bit of Doctor Who scoring from the ’70s.

A word about the sound quality: The Sun Makers was remastered extensively by Mark Ayres, himself a Doctor Who composer of a later era (but also a die-hard Dudley Simpson fan, as he himself admitted to when he was interviewed for this site quite a few years back). Ayres is also behind the audio remastering of Doctor Who’s DVD and Blu-Ray releases, so it goes without saying 4 out of 4that this entire disc is as crisply, lovingly listenable as if the tape had just been recorded last week.

As a whole listening experience, The Sun Makers is a time capsule that may find an audience only among completist collectors, and the older generation of Doctor Who fans who were there for this story the first time around (he said, addressing the mirror). It may not appeal to everyone. But it’s a lovely little slice of the past where, rather than striving to be epic or futuristic, the sound of Doctor Who was quietly, politely going for baroque.

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  1. Doctor Who Opening Title Theme (0:46)
  2. Death And Taxes (0:28)
  3. Mahogany (0:51)
  4. One Thousand Metres (2:12)
  5. Six Suns (1:53)
  6. The Others (1:29)
  7. Subway 13 (0:36)
  8. Subway 13 (continued) (1:07)
  9. A Heart As Big As Your Mouth (0:30)
  10. A Little Hop (0:23)
  11. Jelly Babies (0:31)
  12. Something In The Air (0:24)
  13. K-9, Bite! (0:54)
  14. Humbug (1:25)
  15. The P45 Return Route (1:08)
  16. The P45 Return Route (reprise) (0:55)
  17. Morton’s Fork (1:09)
  18. I’ve Heard That One, Too (1:05)
  19. The Rebellion Begins (0:46)
  20. Static Loop (3:20)
  21. The Steaming (1:18)
  22. The Steaming (continued) (1:10)
  23. Gentlemen, Good Luck (0:40)
  24. Nobody Works Today (2:11)
  25. The Gatherer Excised (0:43)
  26. Doctor Who Closing Title Theme (0:55)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: May 8, 2020
Total running time: 28:49

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1977 Artists (by group or surname) H Non-Soundtrack Music

Annie Haslam – Annie In Wonderland

Annie Haslam - Annie In WonderlandTaking a break from her “day job” as the lead female vocalist of ’70s prog rock outfit Renaissance, Annie Haslam set out to record a solo debut that was an outlet for her self-penned tunes that just didn’t fit the Renaissance house style – but that doesn’t mean it sounds like anything else released in 1977. Haslam recruited former Move, ELO and Wizzard frontman Roy Wood to produce the album, and Wood was already known for his own distinctive style. He also didn’t exactly have a long list of production credits for projects that weren’t The Move, ELO or Wizzard.

The result is a quirky and eminently listenable album that showcases Annie Haslam somewhere between her Carole King-esque singer/songwriter mode and something closer to Kate Bush territory, and also gives multi-instrumental whiz kid Wood full reign. A blast of brass opens the album with “If I Was Made Of Music”, but the production work never overshadows Haslam’s voice, which always has center stage. “I Never Believed In Love” is one of three songs actually written by Wood, and it bears the hallmarks of his vaguely-Beatlesque oddball Move-era songwriting.

It’s the next song, however, that can blow your hair back – Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “If I Loved You” (from the musical Carousel) gives Haslam’s considerably vocal range a real chance to shine, accompanied by an ocean of multi-tracked balalaikas. It’s not like any other rendition of this particular song or, indeed, like anything else you’ve heard before. (It’s not for nothing that, of all the songs on Annie In Wonderland, this song was chosen to be dissected and analyzed in detail on a BBC Radio special celebrating Roy Wood’s career.)

Almost as mind-blowing for its sheer display of Haslam’s near-operatic range is the soaring, wordless vocal of the otherwise-instrumental “Rockalise”. Drastic key/octave changes are also central to “Inside My Life”, which is as close as thiis album comes to typical ’70s singer/songwriter stylings – and in the capable hands of Haslam and Wood, it’s still not terribly close to typical.

What’s most surprising here is that this was the first and final collaboration between Annie Haslam and Roy Wood, but there’s another story there: they got engaged as Annie In Wonderland was being recorded, and never married over what’s said to have been a four-year relationship. Annie In Wonderland was a career-making album in the UK (and sadly overlooked elsewhere), and by all rights should have kick-started Wood’s career as well as Annie Haslam’s. 4 out of 4That it didn’t is truly sad; this album’s inventiveness and willingness to overstep the usual bounds of pop music are off-the-scale. Future collaborations could have been beneficial to all involved, but alas, it wasn’t to be, leaving Annie In Wonderland as a singular achievement that launched Haslam on a whole new career trajectory away from Renaissaince. Very highly recommended.

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  1. Introlise / If I Were Made Of Music (4:46)
  2. I Never Believed In Love (3:40)
  3. If I Loved You (4:39)
  4. Hunioco (7:33)
  5. Rockalise (6:09)
  6. Nature Boy (4:56)
  7. Discuss it!Inside My Life (4:51)
  8. Going Home (5:01)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1977
Total running time: 41:35

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Categories
1977 2010 B Film Soundtracks

Black Sunday – music by John Williams

3 min read

Order this CDLet’s say it’s the 1970s, and you’re doing a movie about a plot to kill a lot of people at the Super Bowl – a movie that won’t wind up on MST3K. A disaster movie, a well-worn and dying breed at the time, one that requires a big, dramatic orchestral score. Who do you call? You’ve probably got one John Williams – the man best known at the time as the maestro behind Jaws – on speed dial. (This is really more of a figure of speech than anything – you probably call the switchboard operator downstairs from your posh office on the studio lot and have her call Williams for you, because speed dial hasn’t been invented yet. Damned inconvenient.) That seems to have been the case for Black Sunday, which has just been released by Film Score Monthly.

Black Sunday is an oddity in Williams’ repertoire – aside from diehard Williams fans, not a lot of people know it’s even there. The movie was released early in 1977 by Paramount, and as is well known by now, another movie hit theaters in May 1977 which all but erased Black Sunday from the public film-going consciousness, a movie that also had a John Williams score. As such, Black Sunday has the odd distinction of being the only post-Jaws Williams soundtrack that has never been released – not even on vinyl or any other medium – until now.

And it was definitely worth the wait: there’s little in the Black Sunday soundtrack that sounds dated; only one distinctively ’70s-style source cue and the end credit suite, played over a gentle, mid-tempo ’70s-style soft rock beat, give the game away (and in any case, the typically extensive Film Score Monthly liner notes reveal that this version wasn’t used in the final edit of the film; another mix, minus the pop elements, is presented here but also went unused). The vast majority of the music sits nicely between Jaws and Star Wars, with menacing, brooding themes for the building suspense, and Williams’ signature style of action music, though it takes on a more worried tone than his often 4 out of 4celebratory style.

The Black Sunday soundtrack is a lost gem from the Williams repertoire, and fans of his music from this era won’t be let down – even if the music comes from a movie that isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath as Williams’ more, ahem, super efforts.

  1. Beirut (0:37)
  2. Commandos Arrive (1:14)
  3. Commandos Raid (5:30)
  4. It Was Good / Dahlia Arrives / The Unloading (3:12)
  5. Speed Boat Chase (1:51)
  6. The Telephone Man / The Captain Returns (2:13)
  7. Nurse Dahlia / Kabakov’s Card / The Hypodermic (3:30)
  8. Moshevsky’s Dead (1:56)
  9. The Test (1:56)
  10. Building The Bomb (1:53)
  11. Miami / Dahlia’s Call (2:26)
  12. The Last Night (1:28)
  13. Preparations (2:43)
  14. Passed (0:31)
  15. The Flight Check (1:50)
  16. Airborne / Bomb Passes Stadium (1:45)
  17. Farley’s Dead (1:33)
  18. The Blimp and the Bomb (3:12)
  19. The Take Off (1:43)
  20. Underway (0:39)
  21. Air Chase, Part 1 (1:12)
  22. Air Chase, Parts 2 & 3 – The Blimp Hits (7:19)
  23. The Explosion (2:36)
  24. The End (2:19)
  25. Hotel Lobby (source) (1:47)
  26. Fight Song #1 (0:50)
  27. Fight Song #2 (1:48)
  28. The End (Alternate) (2:17)
  29. The Explosion (Revised Ending) (2:11)

Released by: Film Score Monthly
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 64:01

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Categories
1973 1977 2003 D Film S Soundtracks

Soylent Green / Demon Seed

3 min read

This disc brings together the sparse scores for two futuristic ’70s techno-dystopia flicks for their first official release, complete with the usual wealth of knowledge that’s packed into the CD booklet on any of Film Score Monthly’s releases.

In the past, Soylent Green has been mentioned on this site as “a great place to see a pristine Computer Space machine,” but it turns out that, away from the dialogue of this Charlton Heston hand-wringer, the music is another oustanding feature of Soylent Green that stands up over time. Fred Myrow’s music for the movie’s introductory montage is an absolute revelation, blending rhapsodic strings, experimental electric guitars, and an honest-to-God hip-hop shuffle, years before anyone was calling it that. It starts out quiet and rather relaxing, and then builds to a busy, bustling peak about 2/3 of the way in, a musical illustration of the movie’s overpopulation problem. It’s just a great little piece of underscore – I think I listened to that track five times in a row when I first listened to this CD, because it’s just so stunning.

The various themes the run throughout the rest of the score are established in those opening titles as well, though in slightly different forms. It all adds up to a very cohesive score, and quite an impressive musical feat overall. I like the movie itself as a guilty pleasure, but I have no qualms about saying that the music is better than the movie, and I’m glad it can be heard here.

In a completely different vein musically is the 1977 techno-horror thriller Demon Seed, whose score was composed by original Star Trek veteran Jerry Fielding. If you’re expecting it to sound even vaguely like a classic Trek score, think again – Fielding goes largely electronic here, befitting the movie’s theme of a rapacious supercomputer that decides it needs to reproduce (with Julie Christie, no less). Rather like Soylent Green, Demon Seed hasn’t really aged very gracefully, though its sometimes abstract music was ahead of its time. Fans of early ’70s analog synth music should give this one a shot. Heard without dialogue or effects, it’s some very interesting music.

Rating: 4 out of 4Though one might not normally think of these two films at the same time, this album is one of the best (and naturally, one of the more obscure) gems in Film Score Monthly’s library, and I highly recommend it.

    Order this CD in the StoreSoylent Green
  1. Prologue / Opening City Music (4:20)
  2. Can I Do Something For You? (1:47)
  3. Out For A Walk / Nothing Like This / Assassin Approaches / Necessary To God / New Tenant (5:29)
  4. Stalking The Pad (1:41)
  5. Tab’s Pad / Furniture Party (3:43)
  6. Shirl And Thorn (2:08)
  7. Home Lobby Source (2:58)
  8. Sol’s Music (6:29)
  9. Symphony Music (Tchiakovsky / Beethoven / Grieg) (6:17)
  10. Infernal Machine / Thorn In Danger / Are You With Us? / Alternate City Opening / End Credits (5:13)

    Demon Seed

  11. Birth Scene / Speaking Room / Elk Herd (3:17)
  12. Proteus Requests / Light On / Your Phone Is Out (8:25)
  13. Visiting Hours / Probed And Put To Bed (3:24)
  14. The Gaz Chamber / Rape Of The Earth / How? / Hypnosis / Chimes (8:23)
  15. Pre-Trip / Big Wind / Sperm / Spirograph / Tetra Waltz (7:18)
  16. Last Voyage (2:35)
  17. Closing Crawl (2:03)
  18. End Credits (3:59)

Released by: Film Score Monthly
Release date: 2003
Total running time: 79:49

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Categories
1977 2007 A Alan Parsons Project Non-Soundtrack Music

Alan Parsons Project – I Robot (remaster)

4 min read

Order this CD in the StoreIf someone was deliberately trying to drain my wallet, one could hardly concoct a more diabolical scheme than releasing remastered CDs of classic ELO and Alan Parsons Project albums, with extra tracks and bonus material, at the same time. This is indeed happening, and all under the watchful eye (in the sky?) of Sony, no less. As a preamble, I’ve always felt that if you’re already a fan of either ELO or Alan Parsons Project, you’re primed to be a fan of the other. Musically, they’re miles apart, with the lyrical and thematic gloominess of Parsons and Project partner Eric Woolfson counterpointing Jeff Lynne’s “Mr. Blue Sky” cheer. But stylistically, these two very different groups are in the same ball park: lush orchestration, banging against the walls of what constitutes rock and threatening to leave a hole big enough for classical to seep into the room – to say nothing of mesmerizing overdubbed harmonies and widescreen production. I’ve always loved both.

Released in 1977, I, Robot is the Project’s second album, but its first for the Arista label, which would release the rest of the group’s output until it disbanded in 1990. (Sony’s acquisition of Arista and its back catalog is what brought these remastered editions about; the rights to the groundbreaking first album are held by Mercury, which will capitalize on remaster fever by reissuing that album as a double-CD set later this year.) While at times this album seems to be trying a little more self-consciously to “fit in with the times” (“The Voice”‘s brief dive into disco territory, “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”‘s funky rhythm section), it’s also surprisingly forward-looking for relatively mainstream ’70s prog rock.

In addition to the outstanding original album, presented in crystal clear remastered sound (coincidentally, with the help of Jeff Magid and Tim Fraser-Harding, who oversaw the recent ELO remasters), which upon more recent listening has withstood the test of time better than I think I’ve previously given it credit for (despite elements that clearly mark it as a creation of the 1970s), there are a few early demo recordings and instrumental mixes. There’s a fantastic instrumental of “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”, missing only the vocals and Ian Bairnson’s ferocious guitar solo, as well as demos of “Day After Day”, “Breakdown” (sounding almost like a soulful ballad) and “I Robot” itself, the latter being a weird experiment using the sound of metal balls bouncing. “The Naked Robot” is a medley gathering instrumental bits, pieces and snippets from several of the songs, including a great many elements and ideas left on the cutting room floor, never to be heard in the final album.

The booklet itself is a wealth of information, revealing that Parsons and Woolfson actually approached Isaac Asimov to sound him out on the idea of basing a prog rock opera on “I, Robot”, but since any adaptation rights were tied to the long-stalled film rights, they had to knock the comma out of the title and adjust their thematic Rating: 4 out of 4approach every so slightly. The book also pins a lot of the group’s success on the coincidence that I Robot arrived in record stores immediately on the heels of Star Wars with a robot on the cover and a futuristic theme in its music. It might be true, who knows? But it certainly didn’t hurt that it was a great album to begin with.

  1. I Robot (6:02)
  2. I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You (3:23)
  3. Some Other Time (4:05)
  4. Breakdown (3:53)
  5. Don’t Let It Show (4:25)
  6. The Voice (5:23)
  7. Nucleus (3:22)
  8. Day After Day (The Show Must Go On) (3:57)
  9. Total Eclipse (3:12)
  10. Genesis Ch.1 V.32 (3:30)
  11. Boules (I Robot Experiment) (1:59)
  12. Breakdown (early demo) (2:11)
  13. I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You (backing track rough mix) (3:29)
  14. Day After Day (early stage rough mix) (3:41)
  15. The Naked Robot (10:19)

Released by: Legacy / Arista
Release date: 2007 (originally released in 1977)
Total running time: 62:51

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Categories
1977 2007 E ELO Non-Soundtrack Music

Electric Light Orchesta – Out Of The Blue (remaster)

ELO - Out Of The BlueOut Of The Blue is, quite simply, one of the most iconic albums of the ’70s, hands-down. It seems that, despite its intricate arrangements and impeccable musicianship, this album will simply never have the rock critic cachet of, say, Dark Side Of The Moon. And yet these days, one hears more young artists coming out of the woodwork trying to achieve the sound of Jeff Lynne and company than one hears Pink Floyd sound-alikes. You can do the math there if you like.

This remastered edition adds only a handful of bonus material, largely because the original double LP takes up most of a single CD. (I would’ve been happy to go to two CDs, a la the remasters of ELO’s first two albums, but there’s not much indication that there was really enough material to go that route.) The one full bonus track that isn’t a demo or other form of outtake is the lovely “Latitude 88 North,” a song which, according to the notes, was partially written at the same time as the other Out Of The Blue tracks but just didn’t make the cut. Of the various bonus tracks that have come along since the Flashback box set ushered in this new era of “remastered with a few freshly recorded bonus tracks” activity, “Latitude 88 North” is the best one to come along since “Love Changes All” and “Helpless” (or, for that matter, Zoom). Even if it’s clearly a recent recording (at best, the song itself may be 30 years old, but the track itself is much more recent), it’s a great song that hearkens back to ELO’s glory days, and it at least sounds closer to that classic style than “Surrender” (from the remastered A New World Record) does. Bringing up the rear are an excerpt from a demo of “Wild West Hero” (which demonstrates great harmony, but lousy lyrics that were replaced in the final version) and the rousing instrumental “The Quick And The Daft”, which most certainly is a 1977 original – good material for serious fans and students of ELO’s work to chew on, but nothing that will really excite casual listeners.

Fortunately for casual listeners, one of the most iconic albums of the ’70s is still here, perfectly intact and remastered, and it’s never sounded better. The remastering isn’t so radical as to have me reassesing my favorite songs, but it’s nice to hear them cleaned up and sounding sharper than ever before. The booklet-style case is also a treat, with an extensive set of notes about the making of Out Of The Blue. There’s a standard version of this CD with a slightly pared-down version of that booklet, but the deluxe edition – bound like a little book, featuring the full liner notes and even a miniature replica of the original LP’s punch-out cardstock spaceship – is a real treat for fans of the band’s work. I’ll admit I just haven’t had the heart to punch out the spaceship and build it, though; I did that with the one that came with the LP, years and years and years ago, and lost track of that one; I think I’ll leave this one intact, and maybe when my own child is around the same age I was when I first heard this album, it’ll be punched out and put together.

Rating: 4 out of 4Not a bad package at all, celebrating an album that means a lot to quite a few people, even those who would never in a million years profess to be ELO fans. Though I’d wager that the original release of Out Of The Blue created plenty of those as well.

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  1. Turn To Stone (3:49)
  2. It’s Over (4:08)
  3. Sweet Talkin’ Woman (3:49)
  4. Across The Border (3:53)
  5. Night In The City (4:03)
  6. Starlight (4:31)
  7. Jungle (3:53)
  8. Believe Me Now (1:21)
  9. Steppin’ Out (4:40)
  10. Standin’ In The Rain (3:59)
  11. Big Wheels (5:32)
  12. Summer And Lightning (4:15)
  13. Mr. Blue Sky (5:03)
  14. Sweet Is The Night (3:27)
  15. The Whale (5:07)
  16. Birmingham Blues (4:23)
  17. Wild West Hero (4:45)
  18. Wild West Hero (alternate bridge – home demo) (0:26)
  19. The Quick And The Daft (1:50)
  20. Latitude 88 North (3:24)

Released by: Epic / Legacy
Release date: 2007 (originally released in 1977)
Total running time: 76:18

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1977 G Non-Soundtrack Music Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel I

Peter Gabriel IPeter Gabriel’s first solo effort is an eye-opener for this kid who’d heard little of the former Genesis frontman until 1986’s So. I’ve always been impressed and inspired by the vast expanses of Gabriel’s musical style, and his 1977 album is no exception. So much has been made of Gabriel as world music spokesman and human rights activist, I sometimes think we’ve forgotten the splendor of Peter Gabriel, rock musician. The straight-ahead pop of “Solsbury Hill”, the harmonies of “Excuse Me”, and the orchestral-rock anthem “Down The Dolce Vita” speak to that oft-overlooked ability that Gabriel has to synthesize different styles, and come up with tunes that cross genre lines without sounding like cheesy attempts at crossovers. The music is also boosted by Bob Ezrin’s crisp production – I really wish Ezrin had produced the second album as well (which was instead handled by Robert Fripp). While Fripp clearly had a seminal influence on Gabriel, 3 out of 4there’s something clean and uncluttered about Ezrin’s presentation on the first album that I really liked. Rather than cloaking the vocals with layers of instrumentation – and, for the record, contrary to some reports, Peter Gabriel can sing – the vocals were crystal clear here. Come to think of it, so was everything else, and that’s something that I miss occasionally in Peter Gabriel’s thickly layered latter-day output.

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  1. Moribund the Burgermeister (4:19)
  2. Solsbury Hill (4:20)
  3. Modern Love (3:37)
  4. Excuse Me (3:20)
  5. Humdrum (3:23)
  6. Slowburn (4:34)
  7. Waiting For The Big One (7:26)
  8. Down The Dolce Vita (4:43)
  9. Here Comes The Flood (5:54)

Released by: Atco
Release date: 1977
Total running time: 42:25

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1977 1997 Film S Soundtracks Star Wars

Star Wars – music by John Williams

Star Wars soundtrackLet’s have a show of hands. How many people became soundtrack-collecting addicts after listening to the original Star Wars soundtrack on vinyl approximately seventeen gazillion times in the 1970s? Thought so. Not only is George Lucas credited with salvaging the science fiction film genre from the clutches of pretentious high-concept 2001 wanna-bes and B-movies, but John Williams is credit for reinvinting the art of scoring movies. With Star Wars, it shows – the London Symphony Orchestra is in fine form, and seldom has a composer so thoroughly (or correctly) assessed the dramatic and emotional needs of the movie’s score.

This is the 1997 re-re-re-release, which was unleashed not only to cash in on the premiere of the Special Editions of the original trilogy, but to put the complete score, every note of music recorded for the entire movie, on the record for soundtrack fans. There’s even music that wasn’t heard in the movie:4 out of 4 stars some bonus archival material is included at the end of disc one’s final cut, with several alternate takes of the main theme – but after hearing the umpteenth take on this track, one’s ready to skip to disc two and leave the endless alternate takes to the music students.

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  1. 20th Century Fox Fanfare (0:23)
  2. Main Title / Rebel Blockade Runner (2:14)
  3. Imperial Attack (6:43)
  4. The Dune Sea of Tatooine / Jawa Sandcrawler (5:01)
  5. The Moisture Farm (2:25)
  6. The Hologram / Binary Sunset (4:10)
  7. Landspeeder Search / Attack Of The Sand People (3:20)
  8. Tales Of A Jedi Knight / Learn The Ways Of The Force (4:29)
  9. Burning Homestead (2:50)
  10. Mos Eisley Spaceport (2:16)
  11. Cantina Band (2:47)
  12. Cantina Band #2 (3:56)
  13. Binary Sunset – alternate version (2:19)
    Star Wars soundtrack - 2004 editionDisc two:
  1. Princess Leia’s Theme (4:27)
  2. The Millennium Falcon / Imperial Cruiser Pursuit (3:51)
  3. Destruction Of Alderaan (1:32)
  4. The Death Star / The Stormtroopers (3:35)
  5. Wookiee Prisoner / Detention Block Ambush (4:10)
  6. Shootout In The Cell / Dianoga (3:48)
  7. The Trash Compactor (3:07)
  8. The Tractor Beam / Chasm Crossfire (5:18)
  9. Ben Kenobi’s Death / TIE Fighter Attack (3:51)
  10. The Battle Of Yavin (9:07)
  11. The Throne Room / End Title (5:38)

Released by: RCA/Victor
Release date: 1997
Disc one total running time: 57:33
Disc two total running time: 48:15

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