Bernie Green Plays More Than You Can Stand In Hi-Fi

Hey, it's this blogs' 10th anniversary in a couple of weeks! What are we doing? Where's the party at? I have no time to plan anything, but I'll show up. Heck, I'll bring the beer.

By request I've re-upped lots more Zoogz Rift than you can stand, not necessarily in hi-fi.

Bernie Green only made a few albums as bandleader, but they are eccentric indeed. The fact that one of them was done in association with "Mad" magazine should tell you something. This release isn't really Space-Age Pop, swing, or exotica, nor are we exactly in Spike Jones novelty territory either. I don't know what to call it - big-band circus music, maybe? RIYL: orchestral Raymond Scott, or Carl Stalling. 

The exciting percussion-fest  "Railroad Train Samba" shares album space with the self-explanatory "Saxophobia," the ambitious (and quite insane) "Concerto For Calliope," and a cartoonish version of the Cuban standard "The Peanut Vendor." Perhaps fearing that this was indeed more than his listeners could stand, Green cools out with some low-key easy-listeners ("Summer," "Idyl") that aren't at all funny or eccentric, tho I do dig the noir mood of "Caesar's Soliloquy."

Big thanks to windy for this one!

Bernie Green Plays More Than You Can Stand In Hi-Fi (1957)

A1	La Sorella
A2	Mister Peepers Theme
A3	Ragging The Scale
A4	Railroad Train Samba
A5	The Virtuous Orchestra Suite
A6	Caesar's Soliloquy
A7	National Emblem March
B1	A Frangesa
B2	Saxophobia
B3	Concerto For Calliope
B4	Summer
B5	Double Blues
B6	Idyl
B7	The Peanut Vendor

The Story of the First Voice Synthesizer, The SONOVOX

By request, now back up:
- Strange novelty songs collection "Fun Music"
- Zoogz Rift "Murdering Hells Happy Cretins"

Long before Peter Frampton's talk-box, the Vocoder, or Autotune, there was the Sonovox, demonstrated here in what must surely be the strangest "pop" music of the 1940s:

Down In The Basement

JANE BIRKIN "Lolita Go Home"

Filthy Mondays? If last week's Kay Martin album whet your appetite for songstresses known more for sex appeal than singing abilities, check this 1975 product of the post-birth control pill, pre-AIDS "Sexual Revolution." Music for water beds, wife-swapping parties, and singles bars where people may have actually said things like "Your place or mine?" 

This album was released six years after France's greatest musical export Serge Gainsbourg recorded the all-time heavy-breathing classic duet "Je t'aime... moi non plus" with non-singer English actress Jane Birkin. This time out, Serge contributed original songs like the lovely disco-lite title track, and "Bebe Song," one of his catchier creations, all sung by Jane in her best French-as-a-second language come-hither voice. These are mixed with unlikely porno-funk versions of English language standards that are usually sung with a swingin' beat. Dig the fantastic take on Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" that's pure shag-carpet '70s polyester electric-piano sleaze. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't exist, but fortunately it does. 

"Lolita Go Home" 

Music by Serge Gainsbourg, words by Philippe Labro; except where indicated

1. Lolita go home 
2. What Is This Thing Called Love? (Cole Porter)
3. Bebe song 
4. Where or When (Rodgers, Hart)
5. Si ça peut te consoler
6. Love for Sale (Cole Porter)
7. Just Me and You
8. La fille aux claquettes  (Words and music by Serge Gainsbourg)
9. Rien pour rien 
10. French graffiti 
11. There's a Small Hotel (3:05) (Rodgers, Hart)

Arranged and conducted by Jean-Pierre Sabar

Thanks again to Count Otto Black!