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Great Liner Notes Prose
One of the great pleasures of listening to exotica and space age pop music is sitting back on the couch and savoring a great LP cover along with the music. In this spirit, we present the following samples of great liner note prose.
One calm spring night, having wined and dined, having wandered to the terrace of his apartment from which point the city of London seems to rest easily on a bed of soft lights and sounds, and having found in the air a slight fragrance of jasmine and a touch of romance, a man closed his eyes and dreamed of Woman: incessantly captivating, eternal, without beginning or end, unspeakably beautiful. And she came to him twelve times, and each time she was changed, each time she appeared she wore a new face, a new dress, a new personality; but he loved her each time she came to him: he loved her when she appeared personified as "temptation," with dark eyes flashing and bright red lips bent on passion, committed to sensual provocation, destined to rule by desire and ruin by annulment; ... and of Chloe, what of Chloe? Lost, never to be found? What of Chloe? Do we weep or do we laugh and turn away? ... and Jezebel, the temptress, her beauty matched only by her thirst and passion for evil--and he watched her. And, as with all the others, he felt he knew them: they moved him and they tempted him--all of them, all twelve. The man came out of his reverie to put it down on paper, to breathe into the music the character essence of each siren, to make them live in the music as they had lived in his dream.--from Temptation, The John Keating Orchestra and Singers, London Phase 4 SP44019That's when John Keating created this special and superb LP.
Here the maestro is in a mod, mod, mod, mod whirl inspired by the rocking rhythms and swinging songs--the hit songs--of the "now" generation ... the Junioration.
Warning: Keep in a cool place.--Faith Whitehall
S p a c e A g e P o p M u s i c
Shut off that old transistor, mister, Anita's in another world. Purge thy soul of ching-ching-a-ching-ching. Concentrate on taking one lovely musical line and turning it into one classic-all-time-championship-top-ten-doodle. DoodDdDdle went her arrangements ... arrangements that would be almost heretical in the revved up Hollywood-hip studios where she was to record. (Violinists, gazing over the charts, would weep--"Glissandos, Herbie, glissandos!") (And there was to be one frightened looking sideman, shoved to one corner, sitting at--can it be??--a harpsichord!)
--from Slightly Baroque, The Anita Kerr Singers, Warner Brothers W-1665
The mood is mod ... Morton Gould a la mod.
--from Morton Gould Makes the Scene, RCA Victor LSP-3771
New musical aggregations are certainly nothing unusual, so when one arrives on the scene it had better have something to say or its tenure in a recording studio will be very short-lived. For Trombones Unlimited, the door will remain open....
--from Big Boss Bones, Liberty LST-7494
In his many personal appearances, the romantic and personable Lyman has had particular appeal for feminine listeners of all ages. This charm is a sort of personal magnetism accented by a movie idol appearance, but without any particular intent, and unaccompanied by the twisting and carrying on of the many popular purposeful charmers. Obviously Arthur Lyman gets through to girls young and old; in fact to everyone, with much natural personal appeal and sensual sounds.
--from I Wish You Love, Hi-Fi Records L1009
Warning: Check with physician before using. Do not play in
automobile or similar type vehicles. Use in quiet surroundings.
--from Lose Weight Through Self-Hypnosis
... am dispatching a new agent, April Dancer, to work separately from
'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' in the fight against T.H.R.U.S.H. This
'Girl From U.N.C.L.E.' will be accompanied by Mark Slate and she shall
have music wherever she goes.--Stan Levine
--from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Teddy Randazzo
The semantics of keeping track of the sound from a book-keeping point
of view were kind of testy in that many of the sounds have no natural
counterparts, so we coined neo-names to enable communication: e.g.,
the Gworgan, which is a Gwirped organ. ... The Pagwipe sounds like a
ferocious, leaky bagpipe. The Jivehive sounds like a gegaton of bees
all swarming in tune. And there is the dread Moogoboe. And the
Sweetswoop...--Norman Dolph
--from Switched-On Rock, The Moog Machine
What you see is a panel of a Moog Synthesizer and small pretty
colored lights looking soft against the hard black surface and the
computer like dials. You see also a 960 program sequencer which has
rhythm waiting in its circuits. ...but where is the sheet music?
There is none, for this is a new music and so it is a spontaneous
happening.--Jacques Wilson
--from The Wozard Of Iz, Mort Garson
This is a today album that will be around tomorrow and quite a few
days after.--Dom Cerulli
--from Switched-On Bacharach, Christopher Scott
This unusual package is designed to create excitement, stir emotions
and kindle your imagination - so put the record on the turntable, turn
up the volume, and control yourself.
--from Fever and Smoke, The Three Suns
Not long ago, a lady walked past a tall building in New York City,
looked up and, forgetting her ladylike composure, did a quick
double-take. What she saw was a huge grand piano scampering up the
side of the building, quickly followed by another. Any
self-respecting hi-fi or stereo fan could have told her that Ferrante
and Teicher were in town.--Rick Ward
--from Blast Off!, Ferrante and Teicher
April has introduced a new style of sexy singing to the music world,
but her natural naivete prevents her from understanding the excitement
over it. 'Everybody tells me my singing sounds sexy,' she said. 'I
really don't know why. I've been singing like that all my life, since
I was seven.' But a comment from one of her many fan letters explains
her appeal best. 'Your voice sounds as though you had a throat full
of angora sweaters,' the letter reads. 'Other girl vocalists sing,
but you actually talk to a guy and boy, the things you say!
--from Teach Me Tiger!, April Stevens
Listening to the music of Elsa Popping and her Pixieland Band is, to
be truthful, an unnerving experience. It is not unlike watching a 3-D
movie without the special spectacles, or carrying on a conversation
under water.
--from Delirium In Hi-Fi, Andre Popp
Still can find the Land of the 1000 Guitars? Baby, you're out of your bird. You've been there for the last 26:16 minutes while Buddy's been socking it to you with wild guitar sounds. Maybe you haven't covered much ground, but you've been moving a lot, right? This trips's a groove ... you'll want to go again, so just flip.
--from Land of a Thousand Guitars, Buddy Merrill
Bach is a groove on this instrument, but it's got other colors in its
electronic palette of sound. The world needs love, and this Moog
Synthesizer can get with the heart and flowers scene like crazy. This
Is The Happy Moog!
--from The Happy Moog, Breuer/Perrey
Here are a dozen electronic pop tunes. They are the electrifying
good-time music of the coming age, the switched-on dance music that
will soon be it. This is the lively answer to the question that
puzzles - and who knows, even frightens - people who have heard the
serious electronic compositions of recent years and wonder, is this
the music of the future? As for that avant-garde wing, we say more
power to it. But there are other things in the future, such as
pleasure. And so presented here is the electronic 'Au Go Go' that
might be heard soon from the juke boxes at the interplanetary way
stations where space ships make their rest stops. The idiom is
strange and yet familiar; here a touch of rock, there a touch of bosa
nova, a whiff of the blues in on piece and a whiff of Tchaikowsky in
another. But these atoms of pop music are exploded into fresh
patterns. They outline a strange new sound world, yet one in which we
can feel at home. The future is upon us, they say, and the future is
fun."
--from The In Sound From Way Out, Perrey-Kingsley
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