Sunday, January 19, 2020

Die 3 Lauser: Guten Abend, Die Damen Und Herren...

Here it is, folks, the first German comedy album in my collection. I have no idea what’s going on, but I guarantee that the pipes contain no strudel

Es Gibt So Viel Blödes (Manana)
Der Halbbikini (Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Honolulu Strand Bikini)
Favoriten Spiritual
Der Verkehrskavalier (Fiakerlied)
Lausers Radioprogramm
Der Wasserrohrbruch
Der Vampir Von Zeiselmauer
O Mein Papa
Humtä Tätärä
Allah Ist Gross
Russische Ballade
Schlagercocktail
Ich Geh Noch Zur Schule
Ein Schiff Wird Kommen
Der Platz Neben Mir
O My Darling Caroline
Die Bänkelsänger

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Annie M.G. Schmidt / Leidse Sleuteltjes / Paul Christian van Westering: Dikkertje Dap en Vijftien Andere Liedjes

Annie M.G. Schmidt (1911-1995) was an author and radio and TV writer and is beloved to the Dutch for her many children’s books. Starting in 1956 and continuing through at least 1963, conductor Henk Franke and his children’s choir the Leidse Sleuteltjes released singles and EPs on the Telefunken and CNR labels containing song versions of Schmidt’s nursery rhymes with music by Paul Christian van Westering. They’ve been collected on LP many, many times; CNR released this long-player in 1966. English speakers will need to do a little work to find translations of her poems, but it’s worth it; just start with “Het Fluitketeltje”, a story of a pan and a casserole dish on a stove left alone at home and going slowly insane next to a kettle that won’t stop whistling.

Dikkertje Dap
De Mooiste Bloemen
Beertje Pippeloentje
De Poedelman
Het Fluitketeltje
De Kippetjes Van De Koning
De Koning Gaat Verhuizen
Het Prinsesje Tierlantijn
Beertje Pippeloentje Op Reis
De Slaapwandelende Vorst
In De Wei Staan Populieren
Stekelvarkentje Wiegelied
Tante En Oom In Laren
Sprinkhaan Op Urk
Het Kindje Kangeroe
De Kraai In De Zilveren Kooi


DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Friday, January 10, 2020

Easy Going: Casanova

Every Day, Every Night
A Gay Time Latin Lover
Day By Day
Casanova
You're All I'll Ever Need
Shine

LP audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Easy Going: Fear

I Strip You
Fear
To Simonetti
Put Me in the Deal

Album audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Easy Going: Easy Going

In 1975 Claudio Simonetti’s group Goblin created the soundtrack to Dario Argento’s movie Deep Red; the soundtrack sold 3 million copies. Goblin released the album Roller in 1976, then the soundtrack to Dario Argento’s Suspiria in 1977, then the concept album The Fantastic Journey of Mark the Cockroach and the soundtrack to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead in 1978. That year Simonetti, clearly poised to take over the world, left Goblin. 

Producer/songwriter Giancarlo Meo asked Simonetti to create a disco product for him. By then disco had been seeping into Italy for several years and was quickly becoming the biggest mass-market musical product in two decades; and in Italy, as in America, this presented the music industry with a conundrum. Big-time music producers whose interests were above all to grab and maintain their share of the mainstream music market suddenly found that in order to stay on top, they had to get down with a genre of dance music that wasn’t just happy and danceable and toujours gai but also gay as a gay guy from Gaytown. Like everyone else in Italy, Siomonetti had seen the Village People and Sylvester on Italian TV, so he knew the score; quite reasonably he decided to build his new group from the ground up from three gay DJs.

Simonetti had seen Paolo Micioni driving the wheels of steel at the Rome club Easy Going (in Via della Purificazione 9, behind the Piazza Barberini); it was a crowded underground joint with a mosaic on the wall depicting a naked cop wrestling a sailor. Simonetti recruited Micioni to be the frontman for the new group, which would be named after the club. To perform alongside Micioni, Simonetti recruited two dancers who were also DJs for another local club, Il Mais: Francesco Bonanno and Ottavio Siniscalchi, who was also a lighting designer. (In group photos, Micioni is the moustachioed one; between Bonanno and Sinischalchi, I’m not sure who is who—sorry.)

The group’s debut album, Easy Going (1978), became the first release on Banana Records, which Meo and Simonetti co-founded. (My copy digitized here is the German version on the imprint Ariola.) Meo and Simonetti co-wrote all the songs, except the cover of “Suzie Q”. Meo produced; Simonetti played keyboards and sang the Vocodered lyrics to the opening track “Baby I Love You”, which became a worldwide Hi-NRG dance hit. Session musicians provided the rest of the disco orchestra backing. All the songs were performed in English, more or less. The notorious mosaic from the club became the album cover.

Like their first LP, the second Easy Going album, Fear (1979), contained just four tracks at the default extended club length of eight-plus minutes. Basic tracks were recorded in New York; the orchestra was recorded in Philadelphia. After Fear was released, Micioni left the group; for the third album Casanova (1980), the group’s new frontman was New Yorker Russell Spellman, aka Russell Russell. There was a single, “Go Away Little Girl”, released in 1982; a best-of compilation was released in 1983; and that was it.

And so, in Fear and hot water—Italo Disco is born! Sort of. These three albums definitely form the genesis of the genre that infiltrated pop music in the 1980s and eventually took over Euro-disco as we know it. Banana Records lasted through 1989 and became the home of disco songstress Vivien Vee, as well as Simonetti’s eponymous solo releases and side projects including Kasso and Capricorn.

(A big hat tip to Luca Locati Luciani; I gleaned most of the information in this post from the chapter “Macho, I’m a Man” from his book Crisco Disco: Disco Music & Clubbing Gay Negli Anni ’70—’80, published in 2013 by Vololibero Edizioni, Milano.)

Baby I Love You
Little Fairy
Suzie Q
Do It Again


DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Duke and His Jamaica Five: Kalypso and Ska

From 1960. Bandleader Duke Harris also released records under his own name (“Jump And Sway Jamaica Way”, 1965; “Fun Under Jamaica Sun”, year unknown).

Land of the Sea and Sun
Blood Shot Eyes
When the Saints
Hungry Woman
Sammy Dead
Wings of a Dove
Tomato
One Time
Yes, Yes
Chi-Chi Bud
Chinese Children
Shame and Scandal

LP audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.

Dolly Manuel: Sings No Kayatmo’t Agdarepdep

This record arrived on my doorstep as yet another random challenge from the universe screaming “Hello! I am a brightly colored thing and you must uncover my original context!” It comes from a country too far away for me to do primary research on the artist or label, so I’ll just have to rely on Dr. Internet when I say this is an LP of folk songs with vocals by Dolly Manuel, singing in Ilocano (language spoken by the nine million or so members of the ethnicity of the same name, living mostly in the northwest region of Luzon, Philippines). The date is 1974 or earlier, and the label is KB Records; I don’t know where they were based but they worked often with A&J Recording System and Audio Empire studio, and released records by Bobby Gutierrez, another young Ilocano singer who was a Luzon radio favorite in the mid-1970s.

No Cayatmo’t Agdarepdep
Pangliklikak
Panagkakabsat
Ni Ayat No Panunotem
Bagik Ti Manglaylayen
Ni Ayat No Kumarayo
Irarasuk
Naipabituen Kaniak
Ayat Awan Pinnilitan
Diak Mabalin Kenka
Lagip Ni Ayat
O Masetas
Nasudi A Babbai
Inton Agkasarak
Tiempo A Nalinak

LP audio & artwork

DISCLAIMER: To the best of my knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.