This month’s compilation is a bit up and down as I didn’t have a clear enough idea of what I was hoping to achieve when I started it. But I think there are some tunes of interest.
Originally broadcast on Beachy Head Radio 21st March 2024 as part of a series. If the embed doesn’t do its thing the original is here.
Atlantis
1. 00:00:00 Bebe & Louis Barron – Bells Of Atlantis
Bells Of Atlantis 1952. It’s always a good idea to draw the audience in with a crowd pleaser to start so here’s part of the soundtrack to a surreal short film. The author of the story on which its based, Anais Nin, is reading from the work at the end of this excerpt. The Barrons are best known for their soundtrack to the film Forbidden Planet.
2. 00:01:15 World Order – Hello Atlantis
From 2012 (LP Title) 2012 (Would you believe). The music by their leader Genki Sudo plays second fiddle to the chorography.
3. 00:02:55 土屋昌巳 (Masami Tsuchiya) – Hotel Atlantis
From Life In Mirrors 1987. Originally part of the same group of session players that included Ryuichi Sakamoto he formed the synth-pop band Ippu-do before a spell putting the Japanese into the sarf London band Japan. A long career of solo albums and collaborations followed. The Japanese title is more like ‘Hotel Under The Water’ but it’s near enough for me.
4. 00:05:47 Mark Knopfler – Atlantis
From Twang! (A Tribute to Hank Marvin & The Shadows) From 1996. As written by Jerry ‘Apache’ Lordan.
5. 00:07:14 Donovan – Atlantis
From Barabajagal And A Single A-Side 1969. The New Christy Minstrels used this as an introduction to their version of Hey Jude as heard as part of Loud Hailers #4 The Beatles – Dyddiau Fu
6. 00:08:55 Orchester Ulrich Sommerlatte – Atlantis
From Europhon ELP 542 Orchester Ulrich Sommerlatte 1976. An unusually ambitious piece of Library Music by a composer who started getting into electronic and prog music in his 60s.
7. 00:13:48 Donovan – Atlantis (Reprise)
From Barabajagal And A Single A-Side From 1969. I think I can see what gave the New Christy Minstrels the idea.
Ancient Greek Myths
8. 00:14:31 Cream – Tales Of Brave Ulysses
From Disraeli Gears 1967. Lyrics by the artist Martin Sharp who amongst other things edited the counter culture magazine Oz.
9. 00:16:34 Purple Bloom – Hyades
From Purple Bloom 2011. Hyades being the daughters of the Titan Atlas who fell foul of a takeover by the Olympian Gods. As the lyrics are in Japanese and a little swamped I think I can get away with this more strongly referencing the star cluster than the ladies previously mentioned.
10. 00:18:53 The Incredible String Band – The Minotaur’s Song
From The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter From 1968. Beware of Greeks bearing balls of string.
11. 00:21:47 ABBA – Cassandra
B-Side of The Day Before You Came 1982. Cassandra was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed.
12. 00:25:00 Versailles – Thanatos
From Holy Grail 2011. Versailles are a Japanese visual kei band with symphonic metal tenancies here singing about the personification of death. Not the right tune but a video may help…
13. 00:27:02 The Doors – Hyacinth House
From LA Woman 1971. Hyacinth died in a freak sporting accident when hit by a discus thrown by his lover Apollo.
14. 00:28:36 Judee Sill – The Phoenix
From Heart Food 1973. After a series of armed robberies gave her a chance to expand her musical knowledge as organist at a reform school she had a stuttering career as a singer songwriter hindered by drug addiction and finished off by outing the boss of her record boss David Geffen. She died at 35.
Gnomes
15. 00:31:07 P Gill & His Harmonica – The Laughing Gnome
Singing the David Bowie classic – after a fashion – in this instance without his harmonica.
16. 00:31:47 Ronnie Hilton – The Laughing Gnome
B-Side of If I Was A Rich Man 1967. From the tail end of the recording career of the English singer successful in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
17. 00:33:15 Psychedelic Porn Crumpets – Night Gnomes
From Night Gnomes 2022.
18. 00:35:21 The RCA Victor Orchestra – March of the Gnomes
From Listening Activities (Volume 3 For Primary Grades) From 1947. From Vladimir Rebikov’s 1917 Christmas Tree suite.
19. 00:36:52 The Monkees – Kicking Stones (Teeny Tiny Gnome)
1968. Unreleased at the time.
20. 00:39:02 John Gustafson – Poem About A Gnome
From Goose Grease 1997. From the sole solo album by the Liverpudlian bassist for The Big Three, The Merseybeats, Roxy Music and the Ian Gillan Band amongst others.
Xanadu
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree’. The 1797 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge based on what he could remember from an opium fuelled dream is usually the inspiration for songs rather than any historical record of the Yuan Dynasty summer capital of Shangdu.
21. 00:41:07 Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich – The Legend Of Xanadu
From If No-One Sang and a Single A-Side 1968. A UK Number 1.
“The whip noises were created using used a pedal steel guitar, with a metal bar zooming down one string very fast producing that typical whack-sound and then just before that bit of sound they added two wooden blocks clapped together. This was mixed together with a lot of echo and then reversed onto a quarter inch reel – this then was spun into the recording during each chorus.”
(Aside: As a police cadet Dave Dee was one of the first at the scene of the crash at Rowden Hill in Chippenham that killed Eddie Cochran and seriously injured Gene Vincent).
22. 00:44:07 The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger – Xanadu
Midnight Sun 2014. Sean Lennon’s band with partner Charlotte Kemp Muhl looked promising but petered out in the mid-2010s.
23. 00:46:40 Olivia Newton-John & The Electric Light Orchestra – Xanadu
From the Xanadu Soundtrack and a Single A-Side 1980. From the film with absolutely no connection to the Chinese city or associated legends.
Mythology
24. 00:48:34 Ernest Rogers – The Mythological Blues
Single A-Side 1928. Written by the radio news broadcaster whilst at Emory University in 1919.
Ghosts & Spirits
25. 00:51:01 Vaughan Monroe – Riders In The Sky
Single A-Side 1949. An old folk tale put to music based on When Johnny Comes Marching Home. A warning to a cowboy to change his ways.
26. 00:53:53 The Charlie Daniels Band – The Legend of Wooley Swamp
From Full Moon and a Single A-Side 1980.
27. 00:58:05 Redbone – Wovoka
From Wovoka and a Single A-Side 1973. Wovoka was a Paiute religious leader who taught in the late 19th Century that proper practice of the Ghost Dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end American Westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region.
28. 01:00:51 Bob Dylan – Jokerman
From Infidels 1983 and a 1984 Single A-Side. ’The song was sorta inspired by these spirits they call jumbis’ – to quote Bob. A type of mythological spirit or demon in the West Indies, Columbia and Venezuela also known as a jumbee, jumbie, mendo, chongo or duppy.
Trolls
29. 01:03:26 Tony Joe White – Even Trolls Love Rock And Roll
From The Train I’m On 1972.
30. 01:06:13 Einar Steen-Nokleberg – March of the Trolls
Grieg: Piano Music Volume 9 1995. Lyric Pieces Book 5, op. 54 by Edvard Grieg written in 1891.
31. 01:08:42 John Sangster – The Knockabout Trolls
From The Hobbit Suite 1973. Australian jazz composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist who made a number of Tolkien inspired recordings. Speaking of which…
J.R. Tolkein
32. 01:10:15 The Electric Flag – Hobbit
The The Trip Soundtrack 1967. The rock, jazz and R&B band’s first album was the soundtrack to a film about an LSD experience by Peter Fonda, written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman.
33. 01:11:23 Leonard Nimoy – Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins
A Single A-Side in 1967 and on Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy in 1968.
34. 01:13:40 Skip Bifferty – The Hobbit
From a BBC Radio Session 1968. Late sixties unsuccessful psychedelic band. Two of the members, John Turnbull and Mick Gallagher, were later part of The Blockheads who backed Ian Dury.
35. 01:15:56 Anadûnê – Dusk In The Valley Of Tumladen
From The Rise Of Gondolin 2021. Tumladen was a flat valley in the Outlands of Gondor located to the south of the White Mountains between the Celos and Sirith rivers and east of Lebennin. Just after I started on this compilation Bandcamp daily conveniently included the Voices of the Ainur in its cassette label round up who as its name suggest specialise in Tolkien and adjacent releases.
36. 01:18:02 Hank Marvin & John Farrar – Galadriel (Spirit Of Starlight)
From Marvin & Farrar 1973. Hank Marvin and John Farrar soldiered on for one more album after Bruce Welch dropped out of their post Shadows vocal group influence by Crosby Stills and Nash but could never overcome fans wanting to hear the old instrumental hits. Farrar later had success as the producer of fellow antipodean Olivia Newton-John as well as writing several of her hits such as ‘Physical’ and ‘You’re The One That I Want’ from the film Grease.
37. 01:21:30 Led Zeppelin – Ramble On
From Led Zeppelin II 1969. A ditty from the popular combo’s second album with echoes of Lord Of The Rings.
38. 01:23:55 Bo Hansson – The Horns of Rohan & the Battle of the Pelennor Fields
From Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings 1972. When his partner in the jazz fusion duo Hansson & Karlsson decided to concentrate on a burgeoning career as a comedian and TV host Bo’s engineer managed to get use of the only eight track tape recorder in Sweden at the time on the pretext of thinking of buying one. This album resulted.
39. 01:25:05 Bo Hansson – The Grey Havens
From Music Inspired by Lord of the Ring 1972.
Dragons
40. 01:26:40 Peter, Paul & Mary – Puff The Magic Dragon
Single 1963. Based on a poem Lenny Lipton left in the borrowed typewriter of a fellow Cornell University student which the author completely forgot about until he was tracked down four years later by the owner of the machine, Peter Yarrow, who wanted to credit him on the US number two hit.
41. 01:30:11 Luan Moe – Elephant Dragon
From what was then known as Burma, now Myanmar. I know no more than that.
42. 01:33:02 Toxic Chicken – Tiny Red Dragon (Radio Edit)
From Radio Reveries 2023.
43. 01:34:48 Stan Freberg – St. George & The Dragonet
Single A-Side 1953. A spoof of the TV detective series Dragnet as spoofed in turn by Aphex on the demonstration recorded for their Aural Exciter – as heard in Loud Hailers #7 Selected Themes No.1.
44. 01:37:48 The P.T.S – Dragon Rock
B-Side of Chinese Samba 1968. PTS being Paul Thatcher Smith who was Ella Fitzgerald’s Conductor and pianist for over twenty years amongst other things.
45. 01:39:29 The Noblemen – Dragonwalk
B-Side of Thunder Wagon 1959. One of only two single releases and appearing on a thousand surf compilations.
46. 01:40:40 The Caroleers – Dipsy Doodle Dragon
From Puff the Magic Dragon 1960s. Sessions singers for the Synthetic Plastics Company’s Peter Pan Records releases. This was from an EP released in the 1970s using earlier recordings.
47. 01:41:42 The Turtles – Umbassa and the Dragon
B-Side of Sound Asleep 1967. Regular listeners may recognise the voice of the Purple Pie Man from the track ‘I Was Born To Disco’ which opened Loud Hailers #5 Two Hour Disco Dance Party. That was from the Strawberry Shortcake – Let’s Dance album as written and performed by former Turtles Mark Volman And Howard Kaylan.
48. 01:42:58 篠崎正嗣 (Masatsugu Shinozaki) – Dragon’s Egg (龍の卵)
虎の咆哮 (A Roar Of The Tiger) From 1992. Another 70s Japanese session player who later had his own career as a composer in addition to his arranging and violin playing. Later a member of Yoko Kanno’s Seatbelts who were brought together to play the music from the cartoon series Cowboy BeBop.
49. 01:44:49 Manfred Mann ‘06 – Demons and Dragons
From the album 2006 2004 (Yes, I know. But it’s correct). A combination of Super Furry Animals’ ‘Demons’ and Prefab Sprout’s ‘Dragons’ both from 1997. With Thomas D rapping at the end.
Myth
50. 01:46:55 Dory Previn – Mythical Kings And Iguanas
From Mythical Kings And Iguanas 1971. Originally a lyricist for film songs, often with later husband Andre Previn, she first recorded an album as Dory Langdon in 1958 but only resumed her recording career in the early 1970s after a mental breakdown when she found out Andrew Preview* was having an affair with her friend Mia Farrow. (See ‘Beware Of Young Girls’).
Note: Andrew Preview – as he was called by British comedy duo Morecombe & Wise and with whom he appeared in a quite famous sketch.