Laurie Johnson Orchestra – Theme From ‘the Avengers’

Laurie Johnson

Listen – Laurie Johnson Orchestra – Theme From ‘The Avengers’- MP3

Greetings all.

My apologies for the absence of a second post last week, but (as you’ll see described in today’s Funky16Corners post) I was indisposed.
The tune I bring you today is one of the greatest pieces of TV theme music ever written, courtesy of Mr. Laurie Johnson.
Though it seems unlikely I was exposed to the Avengers when the series was first broadcast here in the US – I was but a tot – I did see them repeated in syndication.
Aside from the fact that ‘The Avengers’ especially the Steed/Emma Peel era (1965-1968) is an iconic representation of a stylish variety of UK small-“m” mod, the theme from the show is evocative of the same cultural signifiers and then some.
The little of the 1960s I remember first-hand, is generally represented by things colorful, slick and modernist, i.e. cartoons and the kind of white-plastic, colored vinyl Op-Art world that got its start in early-60s Swinging London and lasted well beyond its due date as far forward as the early 70s.
‘The Avengers’, which combined the old-school bespoke look of John Steed and the jet age futurism of Mrs. Peel, boiled down the vibe of the pre-hippie 60s to its Pan Am heliport essence, i.e. urban, urbane yet swinging, restrained yet ready to explode at any moment.
Laurie Johnson (Laurence Reginald Ward Johnson) got his start writing theatrical music in the 50s, moving on to TV and the movies in the 60s. Johnson’s ‘Theme From the Avengers’, with its opening Bond-like fanfare, quickly switches gears layering lush strings over a propulsive horn section, using harp and glockenspiel filigree around the edges. As 60s TV show themes go, ‘Theme From the Avengers’ stands along as both utilitarian (i.e. a great representation of the show itself) and as a stylish piece of music all on its own.
Oddly enough, the soundtrack album was released in the US on the storied HBR label.
Johnson, who still tours today went on to write the theme to the ‘New Avengers’ (a show he co-produced) in 1976.
I hope you dig the tune and I’ll be back later in the week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some organ funk.

The Monkees – Porpoise Song

The Head-era Monkees

Listen – The Monkees – Porpoise Song – MP3

Greetings all.
I’ve decided to close out the week with something that might be a little bit obvious for some, but so good, that even jaded record collector types will take the time to listen.
Though the Monkees were a big part of my childhood – albeit a few years after their peak, when the TV show was being rerun on Saturday mornings after CBS ran out of cartoons (but just before Kukla, Fran and Ollie) – I probably didn’t see their movie ‘Head’, or hear any of the music from the soundtrack until I was deep into the garage/psyche revival thing in the mid-80s.
By then, ‘Head’ was a regular feature of the bootleg video underground, and the Monkees TV show was being rerun (I think) on MTV.
‘Head’ was – pun fully intended – a trip, with the Monkees on the far side of their anti-Kirshner rebellion, pumping up their underground cred with Frank Zappa,  explicit anti-war messages and unapologetic psychedelic overtures to an audience still packed solidly with 13 year old girls.
Naturally, the movie – though a well-intentioned artifact of the psychedelic era – was a failure. It was disjointed, self-indulgent (though that pejorative could be used to describe about 80% of all music and film of the era), and while not with out charm or a surplus of good intentions, far too boring to sustain the interest of a drug addled audience.
Fortunately for all involved, the best song on the soundtrack, and one of the trippiest parts of the movie comes very close to the beginning.
‘Porpoise Song’, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin comes right after the Monkees charge through a bridge dedication, eventually jumping over the railing and diving into the water. The tune is an absolutely remarkable example of west coast psychedelia, dreamy (yet not diffuse), trippy (yet coherent) and arranged to perfection by one of the great unsung heroes of that particular time and place, Jack Nitzsche (who also worked on the Buffalo Springfield’s* ‘Expecting To Fly’.
Though the film has several interesting sections (and some other excellent music, i.e. ‘Circle Sky’), had they just edited it down to the ‘Porpoise Song’ sequence, I doubt anyone would have missed the rest.
It’s a fantastic record and I hope you dig it.

Peace

Larry

*Both Neil Young and the recently deceased Dewey Martin of the Buffalo Springfield played on the ‘Head’ soundtrack

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for something from the early days of George Clinton!

PSS Check out Paperback Rider which has actually been updated!

Dick Hyman – The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Mr. Dick Hyman

Listen – The Man From U.N.C.L.E.- MP3

Greetings all.
I’m back from my mini-vacation, and I just finished refilling the Iron Leg warehouse with new sounds for the coming months.
Back in the day, when I was probably about 13 or 14, I went with my father to see a concert by a group called the Soprano Summit. The sopranos in question – lest you think I was dragged to some prehistoric version of the Three Tenors – were soprano saxophones, played by two masters of the instrument, Bob Wilber and Kenny Davern (both sadly deceased). Though I didn’t know it at the time, both concerts I saw by this group (spaced about a year apart) featured all-star jazz lineups. Though I can’t recall which time featured which mix of players, I was lucky enough to see players like bassist George Duvivier, drummers Connie Kay (who played with the Modern Jazz Quartet and on Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’) and Bobby Rosengarden (Dick Cavett’s bandleader), guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (father of the famous John) and pianists Dick Wellstood and Dick Hyman.
Though all of these players were familiar to my Dad, I had no idea who any of them were at the time.
This was of course remedied over the years, especially during the late 80’s and early 90s when I immersed myself in jazz.
Oddly enough, the name Dick Hyman wouldn’t become meaningful until years later when I started to DJ.
Hyman, who in addition to being an accomplished jazz pianist (and later composing soundtracks for Woody Allen films) was a busy studio musician, and more importantly a pioneer in playing and recording with electronic keyboards, especially the Moog synthesizer. Hyman’s Moog recordings have become sought after by DJs as sample fodder, as well as being embraced by the Easy/Now Sound crowd.
My favorite Hyman album just happens to be (no surprise here) one of his organ sessions, 1965’s ‘The Man from O.R.G.A.N.’.
Another in a long line of pop culture attempts to capitalize on the spy movie craze, the LP featured Hyman working it out on several movie and TV themes, including today’s selection, the theme from ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E’.
Largely forgotten today – except of course by people with good taste (or those old enough to have seen it the first time around)- ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E’ ran on NBC from 1964 to 1968 and featured Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as agents Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin respectively. The series (which had a spin-off in ‘The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’) was a mid-60’s pop-cult masterwork, combining international intrigue with a mod vibe and just enough humor to keep things from getting too heavy. There was even an episode (which I used to have a bootleg copy of) that featured Sonny and Cher.
The theme – for which he won an Emmy Award – was written by Jerry Goldsmith, and is one of my all-time fave “spy” themes. Hyman more than does the tune justice, with a groovy arrangement that replaces the lead guitar with organ.
I don’t know if The Man from O.R.G.A.N.’ has ever been reissued, but it’s not too hard to find out n the field, and if organ LPs, spy soundtracks or both are your bag, you ought to grab yourself a copy.
Peace
Larry

The Monkees – Papa Gene’s Blues

The Monkees

Listen – Papa Gene’s Blues – MP3

Greetings all.
I suppose I should start things out by apologizing for the long period between posts.
If you’ve been following things over at Funky16Corners you’ll already know that a dire combination of illness and borderline exhaustion kept me from the keyboard for a few days.
I’m a busy guy, and it has almost nothing to do with extracurricular activities. I did manage to squeeze in a DJ gig last week (which was a blast), but squeeze is the operative word, as I worked a full busy day, came home for chow with the fam and the strapped myself into the ride for the 90 minute trip into Brooklyn, after which I drove back to Jersey, slept a few hours and woke up sick.
I’m getting too old for this kind of stuff.
Which is not to say that I’m not having fun. I’m actually enjoying my job for the first time in a long time (which says a lot about the value of intellectual stimulation), love raising my two little boys with my lovely wife, and still dig taking a hot box of 45s just about anywhere to rock the house.
It’s just that when you get to be 45, no matter how good you think you feel, it all ends up as a kind of diminishing returns deal on the physical end of things.
When I was a kid, staying out all night was small potatoes. My body and mind would recharge rather quickly and I was up and back in the saddle before you knew it.
Nowadays, when the specter of a 20 hour day looms large I know that there will be an extended recuperative period required, and that the responsibilities of everyday life (Dad and husband stuff) will not step aside and wait patiently while I get my shit back together.
So…that’s where I’ve been.
I have been thinking about the blog, and while I was preparing for my gig last week I pulled a bunch of 45s for future appearances here at Iron Leg.
One of the things I had in the hopper already is – surprise, surprise – another delicious slice of 60’s pop, this time from that penultimate 60’s pop band, the Monkees.
Say what you like about how much prefabrication was involved in the genesis of the Monkees, but as any dyed in the wool rocksnob/crit type worth his/her salt will tell you, they made some tasty music in their day, and no matter how the disparate elements that made up “the band” were stapled, pasted or otherwise lashed together, the members were not without talent.
Of course the individual levels of talent varied wildly. You could line the various Monkees up like some kind of talent evolutionary chart, with Davy Jones on the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal end of things and Mike Nesmith at the other end, as the Homo Erectus with the enlarged brain pan.
It would seem that his talent was not unknown to his handlers, because as tightly managed an affair as the Monkees first LP was, Nesmith managed to get two of his tunes on the record, one of which is today’s selection,
Back in the day, when I was an actual kid, I first saw the Monkees on Saturday mornings around noon, right after the Lone Ranger cartoon (a lost work of genius) and just before Kukla Fran and Ollie and the Childrens Film Festival. This was the waning hours of Saturday morning kid TV, in which the powers that be were clearly aware that most kids had by this time unglued themselves from the sofa, put on their outside clothes and dragged themselves out into the sunshine and fresh air.
At that time, I had no idea that just a few years before, the Monkees had been a primetime sensation. As far as I knew, they were just another Saturday kids show, and I loved them. One of the reasons I did was the fact that in addition to their hijinks, the Monkees always took time during a show to sing a song or two.
Some of these songs were excellent, which had a lot to do with the fact that Don Kirshner had gathered some of the finest pop songwriters of the day to fill the bands records. That they happened to have an excellent songwriter in their ranks was but a happy coincidence (though not that happy for their puppet master Kirshner, especially when faced with a Nesmith-led mutiny at the height of their success).
One of the finest tunes that Mike Nesmith would write and perform with the Monkees was today’s selection, ‘Papa Gene’s Blues’. Nesmith always had a taste for Nashville flavor, and ‘Papa Gene’s Blues’ is the perfect mix of Countrypolitan and Sunset Strip pop. That James Burton was among the many guitarists on the track didn’t hurt things in that regard (he did much the same for Rick Nelson a few years before), and the chorus is pure bliss.
When I pull out that first Monkees album, aside from ‘Last Train To Clarksville’, ‘Papa Gene’s Blues’ is the only other song I need to hear, and that has a lot to do with the fact that no matter how you feel about the Monkees, that tune is a classic.
Dig it.
Peace
Larry

Baby’s (Odd) First Words / Ian & the Zodiacs Reprise…

Pink Panther

Greetings.
Myself, the wife and the little Grogans are preparing to hit the road for a little mid-summer mini vacation, but I couldn’t leave without posting something.
At the risk of boring the crap out of you (“Hey! Who wants to see the slides of me cleaning out the garage?”), I must relate to you the story of my youngest son’s (he’ll be 1 net week) first words.
This isn’t some cutesy baby blog, so you know I wouldn’t recount something like this unless there was some kind of an “angle”.
Herein lies the rub.
Sean’s first words come directly from a 1969 Pink Panther cartoon.
As I’ve mentioned before, I watch a lot of old cartoons with my older son (who’s 3 ½), and one of his favorites is the old DePatie/Freleng ‘Pink Panther’. Though we watch stuff together at home, he gets to watch videos in the car as well, and the Pink Panther has been in heavy rotation for some time.
One of the funnier shorts is 1969’s ‘In the Pink of the Night’ (every single one of the scores of Pink Panther shorts has a similarly pun/pink based title). In this one, the Pink Panther – much like the rest of us – is caught between the need for more sleep and the inability to make it to the train on time. He has a couple of wake-up methods and for each one a shutdown solution (i.e. an alarm clock and a monkey wrench with which to smash it when it rings).
He finally goes out to get a cuckoo clock.
The first time it’s set to go off, the cuckoo (a live bird, as is often the case in the world of cartoons) emerges from the clock, cuckoos once, then once again louder and eventually a third time where he pretty much screams.

“Cuckoo…CUCKOO!!….CUCKOO?!???!”

Miles thought this was hilarious, and started to repeat it, even miming the Pink Panther tying the bird’s beak shut.
So…the other day we’re all sitting around, probably feeding one of the boys while the other played, and out of the blue Sean utters what sounded like ‘cuckoo!’
Neither my wife nor I paid much attention, until he did a few more times, and we realized what he was saying.
Then, after a few minutes, he did it.

“Cuckoo…CUCKOO!!….CUCKOO?!???!”

We looked at each other in disbelief and started laughing.
I’m still not sure that this is a good thing, but I have no doubt in my mind that it is funny.
I’m also filled with relief and gratitude that his first utterance was not a rehash of one of the more, how do you say ‘colorful’, elements of his fathers vocabulary (many of which are also heard in the car…).

Anyway, to add an edge to the anecdote above, I’m going to make good on my earlier promise to post the two punky Ian & the Zodiacs tracks I referenced in an earlier entry.

Listen/Download – Why Can’t It Be Me – MP3

Listen/Download – Na Na Na Na Na – MP3

See you next week.
Peace
Larry

Buy  – The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection, Vol 3: Frolics In the Pink – at Amazon.com