Out of Print Gems: David Hentschel - "Startling Music"

Ringo Starr made his name as the odd Beatle out, pushing through only 2¼ songwriting credits on Beatle albums and playing the lovable loser in all four of the band's non-documentary films. Yet it was Ringo who burst out of the gates to commercial success following the band's dissolution. Armed with a bevy of songs co-written with (or ghostwritten by) his former bandmates – all of whom he alone remained more or less friends with – Ringo routinely charted both albums and singles in the US and UK Top 10 through the end of 1974. In 1975, at the height of his commercial success, Starr followed George Harrison's lead and founded his own record label, Ring O'Records. The label persisted through 1978 but suffered from distribution problems throughout, with releases being handled by Capitol, Polydor, or no one at all. Coupled with Starr's worsening substance abuse and declining commercial prospects, these logistical hurdles meant that only 11 artists would ever record for Ring O'Records, producing a total of 7 LPs and 17 singles.

The label's first release, an LP by British recording engineer David Hentschel, stands as the most meta release in the notably self-referential Beatle universe: a complete instrumental cover of Ringo's most successful album (Ringo), released as Ring O'Records 2320 101 under the punny title Startling Music. Recorded after (but released before) Paul McCartney's instrumental Thrillington, Startling Music is otherwise a unique entry in the extended Beatle discography. Hentschel himself, in addition to having engineered such albums as All Things Must Pass, was a talented synth artist with playing credits including the overture to "Funeral for a Friend" and parts on five Genesis albums. While his friendship with Harrison led him to Starr's record label, his other connections within the industry enabled guest drumming from future bandmate Phil Collins and other instrumental work by session insider Ronnie Caryl.

Startling Music is described in the album credits as an "interpretation of the album Ringo," which may be understatement. Where Thrillington was a fairly straight ahead, semi-classical cover, Startling Music is in fits jazzy and funky, but first and foremost, a prog album worthy of its Genesis pedigree. Even the most faithful cover – Ringo's signature solo hit, "Photograph" – is preceded by a Baroque toccata lasting 3:20. Collins is credited with drums/percussion on 6 of the 11 tracks and is tight throughout, while Caryl's guitarwork amplifies the already bombastic arrangements to impressive heights. Ringo himself contributed little to the album and is only credited with finger snaps on "Step Lightly." Nonetheless, thanks largely to the strong melodies inherited from him, Startling Music holds up nicely, even for those unfamiliar with the original album.

Following the collapse of Ring O'Records, the entire catalog fell out of print, dragging Startling Music down with it. Today it stands (along with the first four Splinter albums) as one of the rare projects tied directly to a Beatle to be commercially unavailable. Like Splinter's rich discography, Startling Music deserves and would benefit from a remaster and rerelease; until then, you can download it here.

When the Daisy, At Long Last, Opens Her Eyes

A previous post detailed my search for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes," an obscure recording by the once-famous violinist Albert Sandler used in the delightful 1973 documentary Metro-Land. Since November 2014, I had been regularly checking eBay for the record in question, and occasionally searching for more clues elsewhere on the internet. On March 10, I came across the website of the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), once operated by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council [1]. Their database included listings for several Albert Sandler recordings that had eluded me, including one disc (Columbia DX 961) comprising a medley of tunes by the composer of "Daisy," Haydn Wood. It was an encouraging discovery: though it fell short of naming the tune I was looking for, it was my first ever indication of which disc to chase. Soon after, I found an advertisement for the record in the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times, published about 8 months after the recording session. So the record existed - it would just be a matter of finding it.

Five weeks of dead ends later, I received an email from a UK record dealer who had found a friend willing to part with his copy of "Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs." I still had no confirmation that this disc included the tune. However, having identified 136 Albert Sandler 78s that did not contain "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes," I felt assured my time had come and made the purchase. Thankfully, I was right: Sandler included "Daisy" in his Haydn Wood medley, closing the circle on my Search for Metro-Land. The record's details are as follows:

Albert Sandler - Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs (Columbia DX 961)

Side 1 (Matrix CAX-8713-1)
Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs - Part 1: Fleurette, I Shall Never Forget/Silver Clouds/It Is Only a Tiny Garden/Love's Garden of Roses

Side 2 (Matrix CAX-8714-2)
Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs - Part 2: When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes/I Love Your Eyes of Grey/Roses of Picardy

Both selections recorded January 21, 1940. Columbia DX 961 was released in March 1940 and deleted from the catalog in March 1949.

Download by clicking the arrow button beneath the Soundcloud logo.

* * *

Finding the record suggested answers to a number of questions. The dealer addressed the disc's scarcity, reasonably surmising that compositions by Wood (whose most popular song was published in 1916) would have viewed as hopelessly old-fashioned by 1940 and sold very few copies. Furthermore, the use of "Daisy" as merely part of a subtitle explained why I had found so little information on the song. For one thing, Albert Sandler's records had never been explicitly linked to the "Daisy" title on the internet: the internet ostensibly contains 3 prior references [2] to the Albert Sandler record "Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs," none of which list the subtitle. For another, even in general, "Daisy" is more often referenced as a part of Haydn Wood medleys than it is standing alone. One such fascinating artifact – part of the Australian Library of Congress' digital holdings – is a copy of sheet music bearing the same title as my record, copyrighted 1920. In keeping with "Daisy's" obscurity (apparently even at the time), it is not advertised on the front cover, but is included on page 10. It would seem likely that this arrangement of Wood's music actually served as the basis for Sandler's: though 6 of the sheet music's 13 songs were excised (almost certainly for time [3]), the remaining 7 are all found on the record, in order. At least one bit of evidence suggests the medley, truncated or otherwise, remained part of his repertoire after recording it: he performed it as the last program of the day for BBC Radio at 11:30pm on February 28, 1943.

* * *

My quest for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" has been the most obscure pursuit of a life already full of them. The year and a half between first seeing Metro-Land and completing the search for "Daisy" included the hardest 18 months of medical school and multiple other unforeseen challenges - sporadically interspersed with new information on a man I was unlikely to ever have heard about. It's been a pleasure to discover the gems populating his enormous discography. In this transitional period, it's also been touching to uncover the details of a life that it's felt time is on the verge of passing by. I decided to use what I've been able cobble together as the basis of a short biodiscography, which I've published online here. I hope it'll serve in a modest way to preserve his memory, and provide some interest to anyone else that should stumble upon Albert Sandler as haphazardly as I did.

Out of Print Gems: Paul Simon - "The Boy in the Bubble (Extended Version)"

Obsolete technology is always a source of curiosity. Some examples were replaced by superior versions of essentially the same idea; others never got off the ground; for still others, it's hard to understand how they ever existed at all. One example of the lattermost is the CD single, which willfully sacrificed more for less. The format succeeded 7" vinyl and was roughly contemporaneous with the cassette single. All 3 formats were cheaper than their album counterparts and featured correspondingly less music. However, where the record contained less vinyl and the cassette less tape, the CD was unapologetically placed onto the market partially empty. It's hardly a surprise, therefore, that to whatever extent any market for CDs can still be said to exist, the CD single has officially become thing of the past.

The first CD single was released in 1985. Not long thereafter, with record companies still experimenting with the format, Warner Brothers released a promotional CD single of "The Boy in the Bubble" (the opening track from Paul Simon's landmark album Graceland) for distribution to radio stations. The single was officially released around the world only on vinyl. The 7" versions featured a "Single Remix" on the A side and either Graceland album track "Crazy Love, Vol. II" or the title track to Simon's previous album, Hearts + Bones, as the B side. 12" versions featured an "Extended Version" of the single, one of those two B sides, and (sometimes) the 7" remix.

An otherwise extensive 25th anniversary reissue of Graceland has come and gone, but the single-exclusive tracks remain officially unreleased outside of those original vinyl copies. It's too bad. Though the 7" mix is identical other than fading out 12 seconds sooner, the Extended Version is dramatically different from the familiar mix, or anything else on Graceland. Many of the African-inspired tracks on the album were, in fact, born from extended jams, which were pared down later to best suit the sensibilities of Simon's radio-listening audience. For historical interest alone, it's worthwhile to hear some of what a Get Back-style Graceland might have sounded like. It also helps that the Extended Version of "The Boy in the Bubble" is an outstanding jam, with thunderous drums and a self-harmonized ending that mirrors the ethereal ending of "Under African Skies" (which ultimately made the cut and is heard on the album).

While it's a shame that this mix has never been officially revisited, we're lucky that it was ever released on CD. The only other track on Graceland to be released in a less-edited incarnation was "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," released as a 12" mix only in the UK and Germany, and only on vinyl. The rest may never be heard - at the very least, not until Graceland's next round-number anniversary rolls around. Until then, you can download a 320kbps copy of the extended "Boy in the Bubble" (and the useless "remix," for good measure) here.

Out of Print Gems: Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Odessa File

Hip-hop producer J Dilla died in 2006 of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a blood clotting disorder, after an extended illness that left him wheelchair-bound for his final European tour. Though only 32 years old at the time of his death, Dilla's career had already featured collaborations with De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Roots (to name a few), in addition to a handful of solo releases. His final album, Donuts, was a universally acclaimed collection of instrumentals built on an emblematically eclectic group of samples, ranging from standbys like James Brown and Stevie Wonder to electronic music pioneers Raymond Scott and Bruce Haack. In creating tracks for himself and others, Dilla relied on a personal record collection numbering in the vicinity of 10,000 LPs. In the years following his death, most of these records traced a circuitous path back to the MC's mother, Maureen "Ma Dukes" Yancey. Ma Dukes subsequently has put many of these records up for sale on eBay, with proceeds going towards paying off debt incurred during the course of Dilla's treatment, providing income for his two daughters, and establishing a charitable organization for musically-inclined children.

J Dilla Collection sales are a grab bag, with each buyer being sent a record picked at random from the collection. Enticed by the lottery system (in addition to the obvious allure of potentially receiving a record actually sampled in one of Dilla's many hundreds of productions), I purchased an album last week and received - unsurprisingly - an obscurity: an Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtrack to a 1974 Nazi hunting film called The Odessa File.

The film was directed by Ronald Neame, fresh off the man-vs.-tidal wave cult classic The Poseidon Adventure, and starred Jon Voight as a reporter who uses information from a Holocaust survivor's diary to track down the SS commandant of the Jewish ghetto in Riga. Reception of the film online is in general highly positive, with the occasional critique often reserved for the film's score by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

By 1974, Webber had already begun his monumentally successful career as a Broadway composer with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar; he would famously go on to make boatloads of money by inexplicably anthropomorphizing cats (to unsettling ends) and earning the perpetual enmity of Roger Waters (to hilarious ones). In the meantime, The Odessa File was the 3rd and final soundtrack composed by Webber, following Gumshoe in 1971 and an adaptation of his score of Jesus Christ Superstar for the filmed version in 1973. Standing on its own, the album is an interesting piece of work, featuring funky interludes juxtaposed in a vaguely jarring way with a Perry Como-sung Christmas theme and German beer hall music. The entire experience is well summed-up by the video below, which begins with "Miller's Theme," a cello workout featuring Webber's brother Julian, and segues into a marching band polka number.

Surprisingly, despite the merits of the music and the stature of Andrew Lloyd Webber in American popular music, The Odessa File soundtrack was never released on CD, and in fact, has been out of print since its initial release 40 years ago. Interested parties can download the album here.

Out of Print Gems: Sidney Bechet - Days Beyond Recall

Sidney Bechet led a remarkable life. Like many other turn-of-the-century New Orleans Creoles, he was born into a family that considered music a reprehensible profession (outside the opera) but a highly respectable vocation. Sidney played in his brother Leonard's band during his youth and quickly proved his superior; while his brother would settle down, Sidney continued playing full-time, eventually becoming perhaps the most famous of Dixieland clarinetists and a pioneering jazz saxophonist. Bechet's musical career spanned five decades, the last of which he lived as a celebrity in France - a country he adored as much for its relaxed attitude on race as for its appreciation of hot jazz. He played, among others, with Louis Armstrong and Freddie Keppard, and tutored future Ellington standout Johnny Hodges. Among these notable career highlights, an often overlooked landmark was a series of recordings Bechet made in the late 1940s and early 50s for Blue Note. Though the label would shortly become legendary as the preeminent home of hard bop, Bechet's recordings for Lion, Wolff, and co. were, if somewhat out of place in retrospect, nonetheless among the finest of his career.

Among the many Bechet Blue Note titles sadly languishing out of print was Days Beyond Recall, a collaboration with New Orleans contemporary Bunk Johnson. Johnson - a colorful character whose life was little documented, but whose trumpet prowess had been advertised by Armstrong and others - had been rescued from obscurity only three years earlier, when donations had enabled him to purchase the new dentures and horn required to resume playing and begin recording. Days Beyond Recall also included bassist Pops Foster, and the three Dixieland greats are in terrific form throughout. The band sounds lively as they stomp through "Blame It on the Blue" and album opener "Milenberg Joys" (written by Jelly Roll Morton, whose last recording session Bechet had already contributed to), while allowing themselves ample time to stretch out on the title track and "Weary Way Blues." The carefully-controlled vibrato that had made Bechet famous is on full display, and his interaction with Johnson suggests more familiarity with his musical personality than should have been allowed for by this (lamentably) one-off recording. With any luck, Blue Note will someday compile and reissue the many 10" records Bechet recorded for them, as they're truly deserving of reevaluation. Until then, Days Beyond Recall can be downloaded here.

(A) Man on the Moon

On August 25, the world lost one of its titans, Neil Armstrong - a man singular in his defining accomplishment, as well as his refusal to live his life on anyone else's terms. His stark refusal to be caught in the spotlight for most of the last three decades of his life seems especially striking in an era of internet-driven overexposure of erstwhile celebrities. (It should be noted that refusing to take credit for his feats in space hardly set him apart as an astronaut: one would be hard pressed to find one who doesn't automatically credit his accomplishments primarily to countless engineers, mission control, and the other members of his crew.) Yet to call his list of accomplishments staggering would, if anything, be an understatement. Needless to say, he was the first man to set foot on the moon, and his deeply touching (if erratically delivered) "one small step for (a) man" quotation was heard live by 450 million people - more than 12% of the population of a world that was still widely devoid of radios and television sets. Often forgotten following what he did once on the moon, though, was his manual landing of the module on a site he had deemed safe on the spot while flying with less than 30 seconds' worth of fuel remaining in the tank. His legendary eight days aboard Apollo 11 also overshadowed a career in which he logged nearly 2500 hours in experimental aircraft for the Air Force and flew in both the Gemini 8 and 11 missions to space.

More recently, two years nearly to the day before his death, Armstrong made a rare decision to broadcast his feelings when he criticized the Obama administration for its decision to surrender the forefront of American space exploration to private firms. Speaking before the Senate, he described the contemporary state of NASA funding as one that "presents no challenges, has no focus, and in fact is a blueprint for a mission to nowhere." It is curious that spaceflight has been so thoroughly neglected over the past (precisely) forty years. For a government so long committed to profligate spending - the best record of any American president over the last 70 years in providing balanced budgets was Dwight Eisenhower, at 3 years out of 8 - what was once perceived as a tenet of national (and indeed, earthly) pride has been reduced to only 0.5% of our larger-than-ever national budget. I hope that Neil Armstrong's greatest legacy may one day be his having taken part in the resumption of American predominance in manned space exploration. For now, as a small tribute to a man I admire as much for his few, well-chosen words as his grace under fire, I have digitized the long out-of-print CBS LP Man on the Moon, which was narrated by Walter Cronkite and documents the history and journey of Apollo 11. It's a beautiful reminder of man's all-too-fleeting capacity for genuine, transcendent accomplishment. You can download it here.

Out of Print Gems: The Genius of Ravi Shankar

Though Ravi Shankar's recording career in the West began in the mid-1950s, it wasn't until after his introduction to George Harrison in the mid-60s that his fame (and the profile of Indian classical music as a whole) transcended the fringes of Western cultural consciousness. Within three years of Harrison's inclusion of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood," Indian instrumentation on pop records had already become something of a successful cliche, used to lend psychedelic ambience to the work of derivative songwriters unable to create something genuinely trippy on their own. An unintended consequence - and an unwelcome one for Harrison, whose obsessed admiration for the music was genuine - was that sitar music began to sell, primarily as an exotic soundtrack for journeys to altered states of consciousness. Record labels proved shameless in their exploitation of their unexpected target audience for music previously considered genuinely unmarketable, and though their classically trained musicians declined to adapt their art to contemporary tastes, their marketing departments showed no such compunction. Predictably, the anonymous liner notes to The Genius of Ravi Shankar describe the music the album contains as "more of [Shankar's] enthralling psychedelicacies," "as fresh and impelling and new as tomorrow night's dreams." Luckily, as the era in which record labels lost the audacity to publicly suggest that their customers "tune in and turn on" faded, the music endured, meaning large discographies, especially for Shankar and his most frequent collaborators. Liner notes aside, The Genius is something of an anomaly in that it's faded from print. Though most of Shankar's albums have been multiply reissued, and though Genius was issued on Columbia - perhaps the king among labels of quality rereleases of its back catalog - it has appeared only once on CD as it was originally issued. The music itself, if perhaps not quite as memorable as some of his astounding duets with Ali Akbar Khan, is nonetheless up to Shankar's formidable technical standard, and the album also features an excellent tabla solo from an uncredited Alla Rakha. It's a worthy addition to his legendary discography, one that deserves to be detached from its historical pigeonhole and enjoyed on its own terms. Interested parties can download it here.

Out of Print Gems: Beethoven

London Records - most widely known for having issued the Rolling Stones' albums through Sticky Fingers - was a pioneering classical label throughout the 1950s and 60s, whose output helped to standardize the 12" 33⅓ RPM format and remains remarkable to this day for its consistently outstanding quality. The 1966 recording of Beethoven's immortal Ninth symphony done by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt for London fits the template perfectly. The engineering is immaculate, and the music is warm and clear. The performances, featuring the famous soprano Joan Sutherland, are terrific across the board; the vocal soloists in particular are strong, managing to be expressive without succumbing to the vaguely strained frenzy that often characterizes the last movement. The recording was issued once on CD (in 1988) but has since fallen sadly out of print. It's nonetheless a worthy candidate in the eternal search for the best recording of one of history's most famous pieces of music. Interested parties can download it here.

Out of Print Gems: The Four Lads - "Dry Bones"

The 1950s and early 60s constituted an era of vocal quartets, and the only thing separating The Four Lads from any other group whose name began with The Four - Freshmen, Tops, what have you - was the ensemble's Canadian citizenship and the hit it scored with "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." In early 1968, an obscure spiritual adaptation the group had recorded for a 1961 Dixieland-inspired album served as a memorable leitmotif in the final episode of the landmark TV series The Prisoner ("Fall Out" - see video below), and was thus ensured unlikely immortality.

The spiritual itself is "Dem Bones," one familiar for its "knee bone's connected to your thigh bone" refrain, but whose biblical content tends to be overlooked. In fact, the opening line, "Ezekiel cried dem dry bones," refers to Ezekiel 37, where the prophet, set down by god in a valley of full of long-dry bones, causes them to reanimate and form a vast army. Given series creator and star Patrick McGoohan's attention to detail, it's safe to assume the choice was intentional, meant to reflect his character's struggle to rouse his fellow prisoners against their repressive captors - and, presumably, McGoohan's own desire to rally support against a world he saw as repressive, soulless, and dangerously overautomated. Of course, the woozy effect of the song's modulating structure also perfectly mirrored his intentionally confusing and open-ended finale to the series. Interestingly, the liner notes to Dixieland Doin's indicate that the album's songs were meant to demonstrate the "happy, humor side of the Four Lads," and indeed, the song's effect is radically different when it's enjoyed outside the context of "Fall Out." This makes it all the more unfortunate that the track is almost impossible to find, having been omitted (possibly for copyright reasons) from the otherwise extensive 3 volume soundtrack to The Prisoner, as well the various Four Lads compilations on the market (for no discernable reason). Used vinyl copies of Dixieland Doin's are said to appear on eBay every few months. Meanwhile, the mp3 of "Dry Bones" is available here.

Out of Print Gems: "For a Few Dollars More"

Ennio Morricone is one of the all-time greatest film composers, and one of the few to have composed pieces as instantly identifiable as any by John Williams or Bernard Hermann. He managed to score an indirect hit in 1966 when Hugo Montenegro's cover of the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was held out the number one spot on the charts only by Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson"; Morricone's own soundtrack to the album hit as high as #4 on the album charts and hung around for more than a year. Previously, though, Morricone had also been instrumental in the success (and quality) of the film's kickass predecessors, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. Ugly's soundtrack had, in fact, been built pretty neatly upon the scores to the other two films, centered around ringing Stratocasters and echoing, nonlingual vocals. Both scores are outstanding yet hard to find. Fistful has been rereleased relatively recently in Europe and can be had at reasonable cost. More, however, is hopelessly hard to find, and so, enormously expensive - particularly given that the album is only 17 minutes long! Despite its brevity, the soundtrack packs an incredible punch: "La resa dei conti" is every bit as stirring as its more famous Ugly cousin "The Ecstasy of Gold," and the haunting pocket watch theme "Carillon" resounds long after the dwarf soundtrack (or the epic film) has finished. "Carillon" can be heard below; the whole soundtrack can be downloaded here.



Out of Print Gems: "Chimes at Midnight"

Past posts have dealt with Orson Welles, and they, like most stories about him, have concerned a decline in luck and resources that, unusually for Hollywood, was not precipitated or accompanied by a decline in talent. They've also noted that by a combination of curious disinterest and copyright disputes, many of his films have been released on home video only on VHS - or in some cases, never at all.

Chimes at Midnight (also called Falstaff) falls somewhere in between. The film has been sporadically released by different companies, often at a dearth of expense that (intentionally or not) mirrors the making of the film itself. "Official" DVD copies are available in Spain, and nowhere else. Unsurprisingly, the prints of Chimes that do circulate are often pretty shoddy, further complicating the already muddy original audio, recorded four and a half decades ago on substandard equipment. Yet the film is truly outstanding. Welles' enormous familiarity with Shakespeare allowed him to condense five Shakespeare plays - Henry IV Pts. 1 & 2, Henry V, Richard II, and The Merry Wives of Windsor - into a perfectly coherent narrative with minimal added dialogue. His enormous corpus make him an even better Falstaff than he was an Othello; his naturally resonant laugh rings true to the larger-than-life lovability of the character, and his formidable acting chops really bring out a usually underemphasized sadness that makes his hard breaks all the more touching. Direction is carried out with the flair you can almost come to take for granted in his work: deep focus as characters listen in on what would otherwise have been soliloquies; seemingly cavernous palatial sets that given the budget, in reality, couldn't have been; and a similarly miraculously choreographed battle scene, making the Battle of Shrewsbury out of a handful of extras and expertly contrasting the hilarious sight of a walrus-sized man crammed into a suit of armor with shots that suggest how awful the battle must really have been. Greed and inertia may see to it that Chimes at Midnight never sees the release it deserves, but thanks to the glory of the internet, at least can never be lost. Interested parties can download the film here.

[EDIT 8/30/2016: Against nearly impossible odds, the best case scenario has played out, and the Criterion Collection has been granted access to the best of all existing elements and allowed to remaster the film to their peerless standard. Chimes at Midnight was at long last released today for the first time on American home video (and the download link consequently disabled). It's a landmark day for film.]

Out of Print Gems: Smetana, Stauss, & Stravinsky

Since the advent of recorded music, classical music has remained the hardest type to collect: after all, a popular composer is likely to have his pieces recorded by every label in the business, and the process of tracking down the definitive recording of any composition is usually as difficult as it is subjective. A further consequence of the continual rerecording and reissuing of classical music is that inevitably, as record labels change formats, switch owners, or cease to exist, some recordings fall out of print - even those once considered outstanding, or even authoritative.

Two such works are offered here. The first collection consists of the only recordings led by the famous conductor Jascha Horenstein to have fallen out of print, originally issued in 1954 on the Angel label, #35101. The A-side contains Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms; the B-side, Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings. It has been unavailable commercially since its original release. The second is from a 1965 German release, Telefunken 30237, a 10" record featuring selections from Má vlast by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, conducted by Joseph Keilberth. These recordings have been sparesely reissued on CD in Europe and Japan but are not available in the United States; these files in particular, like the Horenstein recordings, were ripped from LP. The recordings are uniformly excellent, particularly Horenstein's Psalm CL and Metamorphosen and Keilberth's Vltava. They can be downloaded here.

Out of Print Gems: Pink Floyd - "Embryo"

A previous post discussed the 8-track exclusive release of a Pink Floyd song from the band's 1977 album Animals. In 1983, as Columbia was releasing The Final Cut (Pink Floyd's last album as a 4-membered group), the band's former label, Capitol Records, put out a compilation called Works to try to cash in on the buzz. Predictably, the album was nothing more than a cash-in composed of seemingly random tracks culled from the pre-Wish You Were Here material that Capitol still owned the rights to. The only major changes made to the first 9 tracks on the 10 song album was the addition of Dark Side sound effects to the beginning of "One of These Days" and a vague remix of "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" made by flattening the quadraphonic mix of those two songs down to stereo. As contemporary advertising demonstrates (see above), Capitol seemed to understand beforehand that Works wouldn't offer any reason to Pink Floyd fans to waste their money, so they included "Embryo," a track recorded in 1968 that until then had only been available on a sampler put out by Capitol subsidiary Harvest Records known as Picnic: A Breath of Fresh Air.

Why the track was never released otherwise is a mystery. Though it conflicts with the "solo songs" aesthetic of the studio album that composed half of 1969's Ummagumma, it's as good as or better than any of those tracks; it also would have been perfectly at home on the excellent rarities compilation Capitol had already released, Relics. Whatever the case, the song itself is a much-truncated version of one of the band's setlist staples for much of the early 70s. It's typical of Roger Waters' tracks of the period: quiet, accompanied by gongs and swirling organs, and featuring an understated vocal (by David Gilmour) with some squeaky, manipulated vocal sounds thrown in for good measure. You can hear the song below or download it here.

Out of Print Gems: The Flowerpot Men - "Beat City"

The soundtrack to John Hughes' classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off is nearly as iconic as the film itself: Yello's "Oh Yeah" as leitmotif; Ferris' ebullient "performances" of "Danke Schoen" and "Twist and Shout" during a massive parade through downtown Chicago; and Dream Academy's hypnotic instrumental cover of the Smith's "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" helping Cameron mind meld with a pointillated child in Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte are but a few of the greatest musical moments in the movie. What's ironic is that perhaps the greatest motion picture soundtrack of the 1980s was never released, due to Hughes' concern that the eclectic mix of music offered in the movie wouldn't appeal to anyone as an album.

Prior to the advent of the internet, this meant that many of the songs were nearly impossible to find in any format. The only exception Hughes made was a limited release - 100,000 copies - of a 7" single featuring two songs from the movie that he owned the rights to, a "labor of love" that cost $30 apiece to produce. The A-side, "Beat City," is one of the more memorable songs of the movie, synced up to the high-octane escape in the 1961 Ferarri GT California. It pefectly captures the undescribable elation that comes with freedom from responsibilities, and it's easy to see why Hughes wanted it to be purchasable somewhere. The only other release of the song by the short-lived outfit Flowerpot Men came on a live EP called the Janice Long Session - it's unclear whether this is the same version heard in the movie, or whether the circulating track came from an otherwise forgotten studio session. The "soundtrack" version can be heard below and interested parties can download it here.

Out of Print Gems: The Pink Floyd Holy Grail

Simultaneously one of the most endearing and irritating aspects of the resurgently popular LP format is that (at least) once during the playing of each album, you have to get up and flip the record over to continue. The most noteworthy aspect of the persistently unpopular, defunct 8-track format is that it plays in a continuous loop until stopped. Countless bands designed their albums with the 2-sided format in mind: an easy example is Led Zeppelin IV, on which each side begins with 2 rockers, is followed by a ballad, and ends with a 7-minute+ song of absurdly epic proportions. Even at the height of the 8-track, though - and it's easy to forget that there was a time when the ridiculous tapes were enormously popular, especially in cars - few bands, popular or otherwise, tailored their albums to the format.

The most notable exception by far was Pink Floyd, who by the late 70s were riding high in the wake of The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, and were, with the possible exceptions of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, the most popular band in the world. In 1977, the Floyd released Animals, the second in a trilogy of albums which toyed with the idea of cyclical music. 1975's Wish You Were Here was bookended with two halves of an extended song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," and 1979's The Wall ended with the question fragment "Isn't this where..." and began with its completion, "...we came in?" Similarly, Animals was bookended by two short acoustic song fragments, "Pigs on the Wing," parts 1 and 2. Given the nature of the 8-track format, the band decided to record a guitar solo that would connect the 2 halves of the song and explicitly bring the album back full circle. Floyd associate Snowy White was assigned the task after David Gilmour's take was accidentally erased, and the resulting "complete" version of "Pigs on the Wing" was included exclusively on British and American pressings of the 8-track tape when the album was released.

As time passed and the 8-track went extinct, though the Floyd remained as popular as ever well on through the beginning of the CD era, this solo slipped out of the discography as the catalog was standardized to reflect the more familiar tracklisting associated with the original LP. As time went by, Snowy White's solo took on mythic stature among the band's fanbase, particularly as reissues continued and it became the only commercially unavailable piece of music the band had ever officially released.

Spurred by a love of outmoded electronic crap and the challenge of tracking down a cartridge that included the solo (and there were 2 unsuccessful attempts), over my last year in college, I procured an 8-track deck and the original British-release tape. You can listen to the long-lost track in the video below, and until such time as the song sees an official re-release, an mp3 ripped from the tape can be downloaded here.

Out of Print Gems: "In Concert 1972"

Far and away the most successful of the Beatles' (mostly ill-fated) business ventures of the late 1960s was the foundation of Apple Records. The label would put out all Beatles releases from the White Album on, as well as solo Beatle releases (including the "fifth Beatle," Billy Preston) for some time in the wake of the band's dissolution. However, it also served - especially early on - as an arena where the Beatles could record their favorite musicians (obscure figures or their own discoveries) and give them exposure they otherwise could never have received. Paul's pet projects included Badfinger and James Taylor; Ringo brought in the British modern classical composer John Tavener. George, of course, was fixated with Indian music, which he singlehandedly popularized in the Western world. Apple's first Indian release was The Radha Krishna Temple, whose lead single, a devotional chant called "Hare Krishna Mantra," somehow managed to hit #12 in the UK and spawned an entire generation of bald, barefoot white men dancing and handing out flowers at airports.

The biggest name Harrison was to introduce to Western audiences was sitarist Ravi Shankar. The two met shortly after Harrison began exploring Indian music in 1965 and would remain friends until Harrison's death in 2001. During that span a number of Shankar's recordings were produced in part or entirely by Harrison, who would eventually record him for his own Dark Horse label in the 80s. The first of these records (and only full-length Apple release), In Concert 1972, was truly an all-star affair, featuring, in addition to Shankar, two Indian classical maestros whose mastery of their respective instruments at least matched his: Ali Akbar Khan on the sarod, and Alla Rakha on the tabla. The recording came from a concert played in October 1972, a month after the death of Allauddin Khan, the beloved guru of both Khan and Shankar. The album opens with a dedication to his memory, and the emotion of the two disciples is evident in the fire of their playing throughout. Opening with a stately, lyrical evening raga composed by Allaudin Khan, the trio gradually builds momentum over the course of the performance and finishes with an astonishing crescendo on "Sindhi Bhairavi," played at a blazing speed as impressive in its emotional power as it is in sheer dexterity.

Unfortunately, except for a brief, Europe-only CD release, In Concert has remained out of print since it was originally issued on vinyl nearly 40 years ago. 2010 saw a grand resuscitation of Apple Records as a more-than-one-artist label, with the launch of a new website and the remastering and rerelease of 14 old titles (plus a new "Best of" compilation); with any luck, in due time In Concert will receive the same treatment. Until then, interested parties can download it here.

Out of Print Gems: Orson Welles' "Julius Caesar"

Orson Welles enjoyed an ascent to fame that befitted his monumental talent. Soon after his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast of Halloween 1938, he signed a movie contract that gave him total control over films he would make for RKO; he immediately proceeded to make Citizen Kane, commonly named the greatest movie ever made. Even before then, though, Welles had already established himself as a rising star of both theater and radio - arenas he would combine with his Mercury Theater on the Air.

Welles' first work with the Mercury Theater (as a stage company) was a controversial but well-received production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which he transposed into contemporary, fascist Italy. In July 1938, Welles and his company recorded a comparatively traditional version of the play for Columbia's "Entré" division, edited only for time. Welles' familiarity with Shakespeare is evident throughout his body of work - he adapted both Macbeth and Othello and based Chimes at Midnight on five of his plays - and it shows in his reduction of Julius Caesar to its essence, leaving a version that really excites and lasts exactly an hour and a half. Welles himself narrates stage directions and plays Cassius; his inimitable voice and typically dynamic performance superbly complement those of the rest of the Mercury cast, who are every bit as great here as in Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons. It's a worthy interpretation of one of Shakespeare's great political tragedies and a wonderful, overlooked highlight of Welles' remarkable career.

Interested parties can download the recording here. [Contact me if you would like to access the file but the link doesn't work.]