Thursday, 12 March 2020
Marc Huard and the All Girl Orchestra in Themes and Melodies, "say it with your heart"
I would have liked to see an image of this so-called all girl orchestra, preferably somewhat lacking in clothing, to verify if the advertisement is true or just a dumb gimmick, but nothing shows up on the back leading me to the latter disappointing conclusion.
Easy listening played by orchestra (like, duh) by this artist who has appeared before in connection with the Noel Chotem arrangements LPs. There is a wide variety of themes and melodies but they boil down to the generic chord changes and sounds that are a feature of this particular genre, which never really attempted to break into progressive territory except when fusion or jazz artists approached it from their own side of the dancehall, I think for example of Joachim Kuhn on Cinemascope's great closer Black Tears. The ending to that song with its astonishing pianistic cataracts leads into a totally easy listening passage with the high-pitched string section and almost standard chord changes but thanks to the immense creativity of Joachim, soars far beyond anything from the traditional elevator muzak playlist, youtube link here. Anyways, that piece has nothing to do with today's entry. On this album, there is the very delicate and lovely song called Mystic Land:
Which reminds me a bit of the great Alan Hawkshaw's most brilliant phase in the mid-seventies, when he made his Road Forward album with Strangelands, Mystic Voyage, etc. I can't believe I never made a post dedicated purely to Alan Hawkshaw so far. I guess in a way he's just too brilliant to touch. When I mentioned to my wife how Hawkshaw is without much controversy the greatest library composer, and that there are still Hawkshaws missing, her answer was, "are they all Elvis impersonators?" Oh the joy of marriage.
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Based only on the sample, I don't know quite how to react. It’s campy and endearing all at once. Think I'll need to spend some time with it to figure out whether I like it or not, but I think I might. Thanks as always. I come across more things here that I've never heard of before...
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