Allee Willis, Childstar, by request (1974)

I would love to thank that anon. user way back when who brought my attention to this tiny perfect gem, which I had never heard of.  It was released as a CD in Japan and for this reason will have a brief appearance only here.  It reminds me a lot of Phoebe Snow's SSW stuff though the songwriting is most similar to Lauro Nyro's insistent diatonic chord changes, upbeat tempos, and bridges making use of the IIminor and IIIminor chords (i.e. most often Dm and Em in the key of C).  Some sparse info here.  I would note that her voice is very hard to get accustomed to, perhaps impossible for some less lenient than myself.  Particularly difficult is the manner in which it changes from song to song from a nasally Bette Midler to a more Laura Nyro-like sensibleness.  On the back there is a cute little blurb written by the artist:

"Allee Willis was a writer for the stars at Columbia Records. She rubbed shoulders and whatnot with the great, the near-great and the lame-- writing ads and album jacket notes for people like Eubie Blake, BST, Streisand, Lauro Nyro, etc.  One day Allee decided that making wonderful discoveries about the stars' toilet habits was no longer where it's at, so she bought a piano and a month later took "Ain't no man worth it," etc. to a friend who knew his beans... etc...."

You might be interested to read the remainder, showing her acumen at English writing (vs. composing, perhaps).  A good sample of her style of composition is the track called "What Kind of Shoes does September Wear?"  [ --note that the name of the month was misrepresented by the guy who did this rip-- oops that would be me]:

The lyrics are highly entertaining to the point where I would declare that the idea of Sept. running away in shoes so quickly made vividly concrete here really not only aspires to but achieves the level of poetry.  A subsequent song about a children's parade in Milwaukee, however, completely shatters my admiration with the rhyme of "walkie-talkie" for the aforementioned city.

Bear in mind that the title track is by far the most entertaining and hummable ditty, so, enjoy it!

Gianni Marchetti's stunning work Solstitium from 1978

Wow, wow, wow... again thanks to my library collector friend for these incredible goodies and it's by his permission I can post an mp3 rip here.

Marchetti was another prolific composer in this era for Italian film as per discogs:  born 7 September 1933 in Rome, Italy, died 11 April 2012 in Rome.  The missing RCA April Orchestra, no. 15, is from him.  Notice he made three records in this fabulous year 1978 (at the ripe age of 45!) including Iris and Gimmick.  I'm assuming, on the strength of this one, those are well worth finding and ripping.  Anybody know anything about them?

It may be some find this record veers too much in the direction of easy listening such as became a joke in the seventies being termed elevator music or muzak, but here it's done so tastefully it's really beyond reproach.  And luckily those days are distant enough today we can judge these styles with perhaps a bit less bias.  Generally we have orchestral passages augmented by solo piano passages, much like the classic US Herb Pilhofer's Spaces.

Consider the out-of-this-world beauty of the track named "August" (each track is named after a month in keeping with the solstice concept):





Now behold the beauty of "December:"





I remember someone making a comment once long ago with regards to these seventies library LPs, "you never hear piano being played like this anymore."

That truly goes to the heart of the matter.

The Rias Orchestra Cond. by Helmuth Brandenburg's Babylon A.M.C. 197? [Library, Intersound ISST 114]

Once again, thanks to my library collector friends for these shares, and once again, thanks to someone for introducing me to something so shockingly good...  How could this music have escaped us until now, after all the collecting???  There's nothing like finding a new artist one never knew about...

A shockingly progressive fusion composition that flows together like a concept album, which it is of course when you scan the song titles, all names from ancient Babylonia, from an easy listening conductor/composer named H. Brandenburg, you can see how prolific he was back in the day.  The LP reminds me a great deal of Arif Mardin's (he of Atlantic Records fame) progressive fusion masterpiece which I mentioned before, The Journey.  (Probably this is his one and only progressive work too, it's rare that we find more than one in these artists' oeuvre, unless we are dealing with someone like Alan Hawkshaw.)

Note that most of the output of Rias Orchestra with H. Brandenburg is godawful muzak, the kind of easy listening with simple and loud strings that sound like vibrating saws that gave the genre such a dreadful reputation, unlike Gianni Marchetti's Solstitium album (soon to come).

Consider the track called Tardema:





Amazing?
Only one of many in there...

Joanne Grauer is back with the rare 1978 "Introducing Lorraine Feather"

This is more in the jazz territory.  Lorraine Feather was the producer, so it would have seemed more appropriate to reverse the title to "LF introduces JG."  From the other posted record only the Frog Child track reappears. In sound, I guess this is most similar to Joi's First Impressions which I posted earlier.  The first side is all instrumental piano, while the first three tracks on the second are sung by Lorraine. As a random example here's B1, not an original composition:






Some of the instrumentals are quite enjoyable in the typical seventies piano style way.

April Orchestra Part VI.ii: From Volume 53 to the bitter end...

There are seventeen left here after Volume 52, from 53 through till the end at 69; however, volumes unavailable thus far include 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, 66 (a percussion album). So I have 11 to present today some of which, or perhaps the majority of which, will be very disappointing.

Quickly, Vol. 53 from Morati is simple electronic and drony music such as doesn't appeal to me at all.  Rimbert's 54 is minimal synth that horrifically reminds me of the concurrent Olivia Newton-John aerobics phase of jumping up and down to ultra-basic beats.  58 is simple classical similar to the 52 I presented earlier, 59 is folk music from S. America again of no interest to me.  60 is the easiest kind of baroque classical with violin-played melodies, oddly annoying.  The series of missing volumes in the sixties from 61-63 could be interesting.  On the other hand volumes 64 and 65 are not even worthy of mention, despite the fact Milpatte reappears on the latter.

Yet I suppose it was a good idea to attempt to complete the series out as there were two mini-gems lurking hidden in this installment: Frederic Talgorn's Volume 57 with its surprisingly zeuhl-influenced progressive compositions, and the 68 Impressions de Voyage from Steve Shehan.  This was his first work released, at least in this database, yet his discography continues on for some time as you can see. The music therein is described as tribal, ambient, minimal or electronic, but here we can still detect the slight influence of more advanced compositions.

First, from Talgorn's 57, here's the oddly perhaps zeuhly titled track Ladnophaxi:





Then from Shehan's 68 consider the first track, called Fever:





Finally, appropriately enough perhaps, the series closes out with some digital keys music from Patrick Vasori that will take you straight back to those horrible casio days with fake drums and loud echoey A minor chords punctuating the choppy melodies.


In the entire series (of 85) the missing ones are twenty: the volumes 10 (Indes), 11 (Classical), 12 (Classical), 14 (baroque easy), 17 (phillie), the Czech classical ones 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, then 33 and 35 which are available already musically on other records, and in this series, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, and 66.  In the Italian RCA series there is the No. 15.  Given the descriptions, and often, samples posted on youtube, there is little desire on my part to obtain any of those missing.