Thanks to the Pharelly Bros’ movie Me, Myself & Irene I discovered Orpheus. What a fantastic group!
The above video is the whole of their 1968 debut album. And the video directly below is Can’t Find The Time Tell You, the song that started me on an Orpheus jag! But this is the Orpheus original, and not the (very good, and very ‘smooth’) Hootie & The Blowfish cover, as used in the Farelly Bros’ movie, Me, Myself & Irene.
Utterly gorgeous!
Despite the very recent passing of head honcho, Bruce Arnold, they have had (and may still?) a second life, as Orpheus Reborn. I also discovered this website, where there are tons of archival Orpheus recordings. Fab!
I’m currently really digging this album.
These cats are really something special! As I listen to each of their albums, I come to appreciate that they had a rich treasury of great tunes. And if proof – beyond the obvious charms of the music itself – were needed, in the latter part of their early history they had the great Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie on drums!*
The video below doesn’t really do justice to the track. But it’s nice to see the group, even if they’re clearly miming! This is the non-Purdie lineup, with Harry Sandler on drums.
* Purdie is the drummer on both their debut and – according to Orpheus’ own website – their final album, both of which are self titled. So, that’s the the 1978 record, Orpheus, and the 1971 disc, also Orpheus! And more recently he rejoined the group for some reunion concerts.
I’m not a big fan of musicals. But this one is bonkers. Based on a film made by Roger Corman, which in turn was made into a musical, and directed by Muppeteer Frank Oz, it’s truly gonzo.
Audrey II is an amazing piece of work (requiring a team of twenty-two puppeteers!), voiced wonderfully by head honcho of The Four Tops, Levi Stubbs.
Levi Stubbs, bottom left.Audrey II menaces his namesake, Audrey.
And not only is Audrey II a mighty (pre-CGI) achievement, so too is the entire Skid Row set, which was constructed as an indoor studio environment, at Pinewood Studios, in England.
There are some terrific cameos. My favourites being Steve Martin’s sadistic rockabilly biker dentist, Orin Scrivello (DDS!), addicted to laughing gas, and his Planes Trains & Automobiles co-star, John Candy, as manic DJ ‘Weird’ Wink Wilkinson.
Steve Martin as Orin Scrivello, DDS.
The movie was produced by music mogul David Geffen, subject of Joni Mitchell’s terrific song Free Man Paris.
A bonkers thing, and one of the few musicals I can bear – though enduring the ‘numbers’ is an issue – to watch all the way through.
Of course I’ve seen this movie before. It’s one of those they put on every Xmas. But you can really see why. It’s a lovely film. Schmaltzy? Hell, yes!
The moment the odd couple first meet.
Steve Martin is city slicker ad exec Neal Page, who winds up sharing an adventurous road trip with larger than life curtain-ring salesman Del Griffith, played by John Candy. Director John Hughes is very good at this sort of thing. And Martin and Candy are perfect in their roles.
Travelling by bus…
Themes that it touches upon are friendship, family, and coping with adversity. What relation it has to any form of reality, who knows? But it’s a pitch-perfect Holiday Season movie, a Hollywood dream-machine confection par excellence.
With the recent passing of Dino Danelli, and the icy frosted fingers of winter gripping us in their cold embrace, Death is in the air!
That made me think of the amazing talent of Michael Hedges. The above-linked YouTube video is a 1998 docu-bio, featuring interview footage, and music from a 1996 concert.
Right between this concert performance, and the release of the Artist Profile doc’ dedicated to him, Hedges died in an auto accident. It was 1997, and Hedges was only 43. What a loss to the world of art and music! Thank goodness for his recorded legacy.
I nearly called him ‘the incomparable’, but was then going to follow that up be saying ‘like a collision between Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and, er… Well, anyway, comparisons, or at least influences, can be heard. But his remains a now widely imitated style, that is, at its core, his unique extension of guitar-based music.
Hearing his soulful rendition of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower, channelled through Hendrix’s reading, and played in a Joni-esque wide and deep tuning, is really something. And then there’s all his original instrumental stuff.
I’m out doing some Amazon deliveries for a few hours later today, to top up my meagre teaching earnings. I shall be digging Aerial Boundaries and Breakfast In The Field. Even the album titles (and cover art, etc) are fab. And then there’s the music!
Great near 40 minutes of Herbie and co on Danish TV, from 1976.
Personnel Herbie - Keys Bennie Maupin - Sax, etc ‘Wah Wah’ Watson - Guitar Paul Jackson - Bass James Levi - Drums
What terrific music. Such a great combination of funky groove, and jazz, with the perfect balance of instrumental prowess and structure, creating instrumental sounds that absorb and uplift. Truly music that is both high art and tasty home-cooking.
Setlist (taken from the YouTube post)
Herbie Hancock and his band perform cuts from the albums “Man-Child” and “Secrets”:
1. Hang Up Your Hang Ups (from Man-Child, 1975) 2. Gentle Thoughts (from Secrets, 1976) 3. Spider (from Secrets, 1976)
When I was running my own jazz funk group, I had all three of these tunes on my setlist wish-list. We did occasionally play some of the usual suspects: Watermelon Man, Canteloupe Island, Chameleon. And one or two less frequently covered numbers, such as Wiggle Waggle, and that one Dee-Lite sampled (I forget the title!).
Others that I really wanted to do include Actual Proof and Tell Me A Bedtime Story. Oh, Herbie! What a talent. And surrounding himself with folk like Paul Jackson, Bennie Maupin, Bill Summers, and a parade of drummers and guitarists that include the likes of Harvey Mason, Mike Clark, and of course Watson and Levi.
Wah Wah Watson’s Gentle Thoughts epitomises an era for me. I may have ‘golden age syndrome’* when it comes to stuff like this? And who knows, perhaps actually now is the golden age? Inasmuch as I can enjoy this Danish TV show that, at the time, I had no idea about.
Ah, the sheer bliss, of watching and hearing the joyous melodic grooving of Gentle Thoughts, in an expanded live version. These righteous dudes both recreate the magic of the album version, and transcend it, with the live improv’ aspects of the performance.
So, I’d like to thank Herbie and co for the music, Tim Berners-Lee for the internet, and YouTube and ‘Phazers’ for hosting/posting this. Thanks for making an everyday Saturdsy magical.
* I get this phrase from Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris.
Wow! This is a pretty amazing animated film. The quality of animation is terrific. Especially for its (pre CGI) era. Whilst the visual aesthetic is not immediately to my own tastes, it’s so singular and powerful it kind of sucks one in. Well, me at least, at any rate.
I discovered the existence of this movie thanks to the inclusion of some music from it on the vinyl compilation Mindbending Nuggets, which a friend had bought. This latter is a great collection of slightly obscure music, with a good selection of odd and unusual but groovily funky tracks (released in ‘97).
The basic premise of the film (itself based on a book*) is that humans, called Oms, are kept as pets by Draags, big blue red-eyed and web-eared humanoid characters. These Draags spend most their time meditating and being a bit weird.
They live on a planet, Ygam, whose look reminds one of both surrealism generally, and in particular the paintings of scientist (and surrealist painter) Desmond Morris. All organic blobbiness, but with an appropriately ‘sauvage’ spikiness.
Tiva plays with Terr.
Apparently the movie was marketed as a stoner experience, best watched in an altered state. And I can see that that might well be a good way to see it. Although personally those days are, for the most part, very much behind me now.
The music, by Alain Goraguer is terrific. It’s often compared to Atom Heart Mother era Floyd. Although, to my mind/ears, it’s far more complex, focussed and funky than the Brit-proggers.
Funky keys, wah-guitar, and lush strings and vocals create the perfect aural companion to the visuals. It’s one of those rare instances where the music stands in its own right, and is as strong as the film it accompanies.
Mmm… sexy jazz!
Above, a bit more of Goraguer’s work. I’ll prob do a post on him at some point. But for this one, let’s get back to the animated film. Which is, frankly, visually stunning.
* Based on this book:
All told, there’s something a bit odd, and slightly limp or disappointing, in the ideas or the narrative. The visual imagination and invention is terrific, but the conceptual side occasionally feels a little lame.
There’s a definite hangover of both WWII and the hippy era. The ‘de-Om’ing’, or culling of humans, clearly resembles the Nazi ‘final solution’. Most obviously so when gas releasing pellets – Zyklon B springs to mind – are used to kill Oms en masse. But in the end, and rather quickly, it’s determined that peaceful co-existence is the only way forward. And, rather abruptly (and dissatisfyingly), boom, the film ends.
It almost feels like they just ran out of either budget or ideas! Maybe not? Who knows. Either way, it’s a bit of a damp squib way to end.
Nevertheless, the sheer visual richness, and the soundtrack, make this essential viewing, in my opinion.
What a strange film! Strange, that is, by modern standards, rather than those of the day. Filmed in ‘glorious Technicolor’ – it was the first Ealing comedy filmed in the new format – it’s a picture postcard fantasy of a certain time in and idea of England.
In essence it’s a comedy about the beginnings of ‘heritage’ railways; as The State withdrew from steam locomotion, the public stepped in. Apparently it’s even based on a real Welsh example, which was allegedly the very first such heritage line. It’s noteworthy that this is a whole decade before the infamous Beeching axe would fall.
Stanley Holloway as Walter Valentine.
Visually it’s beautiful, a celluloid time-capsule. And it’s also quite sweet in how it portrays the era. There’s a just-post-WWII ‘Blitz spirit’, as when the passengers of the train all pitch in to get water, after the dastardly bus crew get Harry Hawkins (Sid James) to sabotage the water supply.
There are some thumping great ironies in there, as well; witness, for example, when there’s a joke about how, if the railway makes too much profit, it’ll be nationalised!
Modern history has demonstrated, over and over again, particularly under Toryism, that losses are usually nationalised (i.e. passed on to the public purse), whilst profit is privatised.
The Vicar and the drunk, crewing the train.
There are also all sorts of moments – for example at the public meeting, when Squire Chesterford (John Gregson) makes the case for the railway (as opposed to bus/road developments), on the basis of how it’ll change the nature of Titfield – that reflect what was considered, at the time, to make for a ‘good old fashioned’ British Utopia.
In this instance that revolves around the fear, also present in George Orwell’s very different 1984 (‘I am a name, not a number’!) that old country lanes will be tarmac’ed, and houses be numbered, rather than named.
Of course the quaint old trains were themselves, at one time, the harbingers of a modern industrialised doom. But now they are – and evidently even back in ‘53 they were – the stuff of ‘olde England’! There are many other little interesting insights into certain visions of how life was then (the squire and the poacher!), what constituted progress, and what makes for the ideal life.
Lovely old Bedford bus.
One of the things I like most about this film is the saturated slightly gaudy colour, AKA Technicolor. It’s very like the intense colouring of some design and illustration of that era. And so many things, from the clothes, to furniture, cars, trucks, etc, are, or rather were, so much more aesthetically pleasing than the vast bulk of modern mass-produced tat we are surrounded by now.
For example, the old Bedford bus, of the villainous rivals of the loco’ lovers, Pearce & Crump, is gorgeous. I absolutely adore the upholstery fabric inside the bus:
Dig that old fabric!
It has to be admitted I was only half watching this delightful old film, whilst Teresa and I played our Sunday afternoon Scrabble game, in between World Cup match viewing. I, or we, really ought to watch it again and give it my/our full attention.
It seems to me a good solid old-fashioned dose of ‘50s period fun. Balcon-era Ealing film at its cosily British best. I’d definitely recommend it.
