I bought three albums for this year’s Record Store Day, but they weren’t special releases or expensive. Nor were they rare, but kind of hard to find. Sometimes, I feel I’m the only one who loves these records, especially since my technique is to go to a record store on Record Store Day, not early but in the late afternoon. I’m more interested in finding records that people didn’t pick up. I don’t say this with great pride, but I’m a naturally inclined snob. There is something pretentious about someone who goes out of their way to dislike other’s taste in their music, but this is a natural response for me. I have spent decades curating and obtaining music and spent much time studying its history and placement in a specific time and place. Both music and books define location for me. If you take books and music/art out of the picture, then the city is just buildings, empty with a shallowness that would be painful. It is a civic duty to support the local bookstore or music business because it is an identity to a landscape essential for location and yours truly.
On Saturday, April 20th, I purchased Rockin’ In The 25th Century by a band called The Spacemen. I had never heard of this group, but I know its record label, Roulette, which the notorious Morris Levy owned. Levy had gangster connections and was known to rule his Roulette label with a certain amount of fear, violence, and trickery. One of the exciting things about the Spacemen album is that the only information listed is the songs. Still, no information about the group, who was/is in the group, nor who the Producer/Engineer was. The songwriting credits to all the songs are Gallo/Levy on the record label. I have to presume that Levy is Morris, but I haven’t the foggiest idea who Gallo is. So, Rockin’ In The 25th Century is a mystery, and since I can’t find the map to this, I have a new map of a new territory.
This album came out in 1964, and I think it is the last of those albums that looked toward the future as a new imaginary horizon. Numerous exotica recordings have been made to test your hi-fi or make you a tourist in one’s living room. The Rock n’ Roll instrumental has always had its teenage cash-in marketable approach, but this album by the Spacemen is the strangest release of this sort. It’s the closest type of sound to Joe Meek possible without Meek being in the studio. In some incidences, it is even more radical in its dial-twisting, dub-like effects on basic sleaze instrumentals. The Spacemen (whoever they are) are truly futuristic, more than they realized.
Glenda Collins came from the world of Joe Meek, perhaps one of the most fascinating figures in 20th-century pop music. Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes are what remained after Meek’s suicide in 1967. The chest is the furniture where one puts one's past, and like Raymond Roussel's chest of writings, we have Meek's chest of unheard tapes. Cherry Red Records in the U.K. have been restoring and putting out these tapes in a timely matter, either as multi-CD sets or so far as 10” vinyl releases, such as Glenda Collins’ It’s A Riot, Performed with The Riot Squad. It is a remarkable six-song selection of Collins's work with Meek, and what strikes me at the first hearing is how conservative the Meek production is, considering he was the wild man of the recording studio. Theoretically, it should be more like The Spacemen, but we don’t know much about these recordings. Were they demos or to do live shows? We don’t know. Still, beyond that, Glenda had that Dusty Springfield drama, and she is perfectly matched with the Meek aesthetic and imagination. It’s a landscape of a pop music world as Joe and his company imagined. Glenda is still an excellent selection of recordings, especially with the dramatic I Who Have Nothing. The Riot Squad is interesting in that it started in the Meek world and, for a short time, had David Bowie among its lineup. I recommend that the listener investigate more of the Meek/Glenda recordings.
One would think by now that the Ennio Morricone compilations have done everything, but alas, no! Morricone Segreto Songbook is a collection of theme songs Morricone wrote and performed for the films for which he composed the music. This compilation covers from 1962 to 1973, and one can arguably claim that they were Morricone's golden years concerning the excellence of his music during that decade. I have about forty Morricone albums on vinyl or CD, yet I have never heard most of the songs on this collection. It goes from Exotica Ennio to avant-garde Morricone, and songs like Luce Chiara Per Vergine "Curve Oscure” with vocals by the legendary Edda dell'Orso, it sounds like an early Public Image Ltd tune. This Morricone double-Lp is a must-have.
I've been avidly buying all the Meek Tea Chest stuff, and it's such a rich vein of scholarship for studio craft.