Tuesday, July 07, 2020

groove

howdy pop pickers


just another sort of impulse purchase thing, look you see, but one motivated more by "actually that will be quite class" rather than accumulating shiny objects to feel good, if only for moments.

recently it was so that i was in Poundland, doing some "essential shopping", of a nature which was quite similar to everyone else in there at the time. it is with good, or mis, fortune that "essential" is not a phrase the government cared to clarify when imposing all this "lockdown" business on we, the people, as the invisible war against the new plague was waged.

during this most essential of essential shopping trips, i had very good (indeed essential) reason to look at the selection of CDs what Poundland had for sale. well, if they have not cleared them from the shelf then it must be that they are both essential and that we are allowed to buy them. well, were, i suppose. it does seem all and sundry are now quite bored of it all, and are just going about doing whatever it is we jolly well wish.



the decision to purchase the above after spotting it on the shelf after seeing it was made in considerably faster time than it has just taken you to read this. and that does indeed allow for any potential "speed readers" out there. if you are one of them, just what is the rush, by the way?

what is it? as the cover (and disc below) states, Tunes From The Toons. or rather The Best Of The Tunes From The Toons, so as to save any unnecessary pedantic complaints that not all songs from such a source are concluded. but, that said, to be more specific, this disc features a selection of tracks curated from the finer moments of the Hanna-Barbera stable of cartoons, or if you like "toons". although i am not quite certain that the main one which drew me in was actually a cartoon.

in terms of value for money, one really could not go wrong here. there are 48 tracks on the disc, so with a price for it requested of £1, you are in effect paying (approx) 2.08p per song. it may not seem like a lot, but them twats what do streaming would need to have people stream a song over one million times before they earned that money for the tune. probably.



of the 48 songs, it is the 48th which secure procurement. that would be what they call, on the track listing, the Tra La La Song, but what i know as "the song out of Banana Splits". an absolutely f*****g mental concept, show and song, from what i remember of it. my memory of it all was it being four people (a mix of dudes and ladies, maybe), very clearly ripped to the tits on drugs, resplendent in costumes patently designed (and created) by people who had minds totally mashed on drugs. google away.

yes, it very much is worth your time seeking out this particular song. a masterpiece of trippy hippy feel good psychedelia, in truth. whilst it is possible and indeed probable that the song would sound even more better if you were to listen to it whilst absolutely trollied on some form of mind bending substance, i of course cannot responsibly suggest such experimentation.

from the very same plain of altered states awareness in vibes comes another tune on the disc, the so-called "main title" from Hair Bear Bunch. often there is a school of thought which prevails that states the height of American psychedelic recordings are to be found in Shatner's The Transformed Man. aspects of this disc say that Shatner was simply the prominent tip of one colossal iceberg, man.



variety is indeed key to this selection of tunes, though. a rather unexpectedly sombre (if my understanding of the word is correct) moment comes in around track ten, which is the "underscore" for The Flintstones. the complexities of the score for this piece of music are somewhat challenging to the listener, compelling them to question whether they really grasped the concept of the show.

many will, of course, always argue that American television shows generally lacked the nuances and perfections in theme tunes which British shows thrived on. no American composer, for instance, really ever came close to holding a candle to Ronnie Hazelhurst, or even Geoff Love. but often it is in appreciation of limitations that one strives to their greatest success, and that can certainly be said of some (not quite all) of the music here.

the only real issue i have with this disc is the quality of it, be it the poor or simply lack of proper mastering. whilst a lot of music getting issued on CD benefits from some intense production work, getting it "digitally remastered" so it sounds perfect, most of the songs here (in particular the theme off of Hong Kong Phooey) sound like they have been taped off of the tele, with someone holding a microphone close to the speaker.

by no means is this CD set for everyone, but it is most decidedly so that all who buy it will very much enjoy what they hear. except for the parts that they do not like.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





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