Okay, I’m lazy this week because of some business meetings I need to attend, so I’m posting some tracks from Nana Mouskouri again. I just can’t get enough of this voice.

I bought this in the dollar vinyl bin at Amoeba Music. Its made for the French-Canadian market as the LP’s made in Canada and every song is in French. There’s something kitschy yet exotic about hearing a Greek bouzouki backing up a French voice in the track ‘Quatre Soleils.’

Nana’s version of ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ rival’s Catherine Deneuve’s starlet pipes while ‘The Girl Frolm Ipanema’ is right on-par with Astrud Gilberto’s echo-y samba.

I’ll post some videos this week since I’ll be busy, but the content will keep on coming.

Try It Yourself	Listen
La Fille D’Ipanema	Download audio file (la-fille-de-ipanema.mp3)
Les Parapluies De Cherbourg	Download audio file (les-parapluies-de-cherbourg.mp3)
Quatre Soleils	Download audio file (quatre-soleils.mp3)

Peter Sellers was a comic genius. A bit ADD at times, but more or less, a classic ahead of his time.

The first two Pink panther films (The Pink Panther and A Shot In The Dark) showcase his slapstick side, Dr. Strangelove displayed his range of characterizations, The Party was amazing improv and Being There was his coup de grace.

He also recorded music – if you could call it that. It wasn’t Grammy-winning songwriting, but the point was brilliant comic material for its time. He did an album of duets with his then crush, Sophia Loren. She does some songs herself as does Peter. There’s even some comic sketches on it with his wide array of British voices. However, its the duets that stand out the most.

Here’s a description of the songs I’ve selected from the back of the album. The songs showcase his beginning as a radio play comic:

All I can say is that if you don’t know who Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren are, then you might just as well traipse upstairs again, clamber right back in between those sheets and stay there, you poor old soul. For if you think for one solitary minute that I’m going to tell you, you’ve got another think coming.

Goodness Gracious Me! is a light-hearted ditty with cardiac references which introduces Miss Sophia Loren (brought to you, incidentally, at great expense and no small loss of life as a singer.) It is a joy to discover that her singing voice is commensurate with her physical charms, radiating a warmth and vitality almost equal to that of Vesuvius, in whose shadow she was raised. Also evident is that sparking sense of fun which was first given full rein in “The Millionairess.” The periodic injections indicative of surprise are provided by Mr. Peter Sellers, whhile the music is supplied – as is in most of the other items – by Mr. Ronald Goodwin and his Orchestra, fresh from their triumphal tour of the breakaway province of Katanga and the offshore islands of Matsu and Quemoy.

I Fell In Love With An Englishman sings Miss Loren. She keeps a remarkably straight bat in the process and we think that she will “hit you for six.”

Bangers And Mash can, perhaps, be described as a gastronomic romance in song.

One interesting thing to note, the song “Goodness Gracious Me”, where Sellers poses as an Indian doctor and Loren as his patient, was released as a single to publicise the film, The Millionairess, and became a chart hit. The song also gave its name to “Goodness Gracious Me,” a popular UK radio and television sketch show from the late 1990s, and a modernised form of the tune with bhangra elements was used as the theme for the program. The comedy sketch show explored the conflict and integration between traditional Indian culture and modern British life. Some reversed the roles to view the British from an Indian perspective while others poked fun at Indian stereotypes.

Enjoy the tracks below and then you may understand when Peter once told his daughter soon after divorcing his wife “Oh, of course I love you sweetheart. Just not as much as I love Sophia Loren.”

Try It Yourself	Listen
Bangers and Mash	Download audio file (bangers-and-mash.mp3)
Goodness Gracious Me	Download audio file (goodness-gracious-me.mp3)
I Fell In Love With An Englishman	Download audio file (i-fell-in-love-with-an-englishman.mp3)

I’ve searched far and wide for the most interesting stuff on wax, and this has to be one of my favorite recent discoveries. After several searches on every possible corner of the internet, the only place I’ve found this record is when someone’s selling it on eBay because of its “cheesecake” cover that looks like Penelope Cruz from the 1960’s. The artist isn’t listed in Allmusic.com and as far as I know, the record hasn’t been released on CD anywhere. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you Pancho Purcell and his Bambuco Players!

The back of the record describes the music as such (note the heavy-use of 60’s marketing phrases):

“Bambuco Moves In” – The exciting new Pop-Latin Sound of Pancho Purcell and His Bambuco Players

BAMBUCO, The Exciting New Pop-Latin Sound, is wild and primitive! It can be soft and tranquil, it can be fast and frenetic. It is always spontaneous and dynamic. When you hear BAMBUCO you must move – dance, or beat out the rhythm with your toes, fingertips or hips. Indifference is impossible!

Born in the Andes of South America, the BAMBUCO pulsebeat surges in distinctive and overwhelming waves of sound. Its influence is Afro-Indian, its basic rhythm is tribal, and its intensity is ritualistic, pagan and voluptuous. Although undisciplined, when BAMBUCO’s hard driving sounds are combined with the more sophisticated music of Latin America, Nashville or Anytown, U.S.A., a rhythmic and melodic blend emerges: subtle on one level, barbaric and frenetic on the other.

In this unique album, you’ll hear Pancho Purcell and his Bambuco Players transform today’s hits like Rainy Day Women #12 & #35, The Shadow Of Your Smile and Michelle into the BAMBUCO sound – a fantastic experience.

A new beat, an exciting rhythm, a new synthesis of the tribal and the sophisticated. BAMBUCO, The Exciting New Pop-Latin Sound, is here to stay!

After a few listens, its not bad. Its definitely some sort of musical foray for the bachelor pad record buyer. The cover’s obviously a given for sales, but the music itself is mostly cover songs. Its as if Columbia Records wanted to introduce the music to America with cover songs of popular hits first, then if the record sold well, we’d hear more original stuff. Alas, I’ve seen no sequel and this is all we have from Pancho’s offering.

Please enjoy these fine songs for your aural pleasure and remember, Indifference is impossible!

Bambuco on Wikipedia

What gets me about this video clip is that its obviously broadcast on live TV with a FULL orchestra, but you can sorta tell the applause afterwards is somewhat canned. My guess is the orchestra wasn’t on the full stage and performed in a separate room away from the audience.

In any case, you can’t see stuff like this anymore. So before TRL, before The Solid Gold Dancers, you had stuff like this.

Most focus on old rock and indie 45’s, but I have yet to find one that’s dedicated to that lost art of music called easy listening.

Some may call it lounge music, others call it rest-home music. I recall ilstening to alot of this stuff on the AM radio on the way to church in the early 70s in my folks Oldsmobile as we trekked thru the cornfields and headed to wherever.

The stuff faded from memory as music left the vinyl format and into CDs and tapes. I also caught the rock bug and decided that old music was bland and not for me. After alot of phases of scenes (techno, punk, goth and britpop), I got the opportunity to collect all the old records from my folks along with the ever-needed Technics Turntable.

This and a penchant for Tom Jones caught my fancy for collecting old vinyl. Soon I was hitting dollar-bins in the used record section and found countless releases with strange covers, titles and eventually got around to actually listening to the stuff on the ‘ol turntable. I discovered a world that’s slowly deteriorating as more old-releases from the past are getting lost by non-CD releases and eventually never going digital. After while I got more fascinated. Why was this album produced in the first place? Who gave the green light for the strange model on the cover?

Now I’ve got this huge collection of what I’d call “classics” that would probably go away as time progresses to the digital age. Its time for those sounds to get their grooves cleaned, digitized and recognized one more for a last shot at stardom.

A Sampling of things to come…