replacing Hardly Baked whose feed is broken for reasons unknown. Original Hardly Baked + archive are here http://hardlybaked.blogspot.com/
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"Really awful is more interesting to listen to than pretty good" - Eno
Monday, September 25, 2023
RIP David McCallum
I have faint memories of watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as a kid and enjoying it.
But the bloggerati's real reason for a David McCallum RIP is K-punk's belovedSapphire & Steel.
Which I never watched back at the time of its original showing, oddly - it would have been right up my street and I was the right age too.
RereadingGhosts of My Life a year or two back spurred me to watch it finally. And it does live up to Mark's praise. Especially considering it was targeted at children, and made on a modest budget on a studio set, it's an eerie, unsettling, ideas-laden program, with excellently icy performances from McCallum and Joanna Lumley as the interdimensional agents assigned to deal with anomalies and glitchy rifts in timespace.
Now there is another branch of David McCallum's career that makes him blogworthy, or at least a curio fit for Hardly Baked - and that is his peak-of-stardom foray into being a recording artist.
McCallum releasedFOUR albums between 1966 and 1967! Mostly contemporary 'beat' numbers that had already been successful in the hit parade for their creators, here conducted by Mr. McCallum himself in an easy-listening but boppable mode fit to soundtrack those archetypal Sixties-movie scenes of people jiving in a nightclub.
It wasn't a complete folly or cash-in conceit - McCallum had studied at the Royal Academy of Music before deciding on acting as his true vocation. But his role seems to have been largely limited to conducting - the arrangements are by H.P. Barnum, who I think is the guy in the middle of the clinch in the big photo above. The other guy is Dave Axelrod, as in Electric Prunes producer and solo creator of concept albums. But apparently McCallum did write a few originals, including (I believe) the non-album single below.
My friend Paul Oldfield had this single "Communication" with its amusing period-piece voiceover from McCallum. It's a bit Austin Powers, dolly birds clustered round his motorbike and then he drives off like Mr. Cool.
Paul also pulled this LP out of a jumble sale or junkshop pile. I don't remember us deriving an immense amount of pleasure from it though. In some ways it files alongside another cover version oriented psychedelic easy-listening outfit that we found going cheap, The Rotary Connection.
He looks like a handsome seagull.
Don't know what impact these records had at the time.
But there was one lasting repercussion that counts as a kind of low-key musical legacy. You will recognise the intro here of "The Edge" as a famous sample to a famous song by a very famous producer - a tune still heard quite often on the radio here in Los Angeles.
The Cleaners from Venus pay tribute to David McCallum's most famous character - along with a host of other echt-Sixties names
Bonus bit on McCallum's deep musical background, borrowed from Wallace Wylie
"His father was David McCallum Sr.... was, at various times, the leader of the Scottish National Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also one of the violinists who played on the famous orchestral climax passage of A Day In The Life by The Beatles."
Hasn't everyone forgot about Dre nowadays? He did that awful comeback single, I Need a Doctor, where he tries to resurrect the epithet "faggots", and then disappeared like piss into soil.
I'm quite drunk, and someone I care about is quite ill. Sorry to ask this, but a post on the Happy Mondays would be a welcome relief from my current malaise.
I don't really do requests unfortunately - the prompting has to come from within, or without (i.e. something that I come across randomly that kindles a thought).
I'm sure Dre hasn't done anything of note in a couple of decades apart from make over-rated, over-bassy headphones but the old jams - they still get play here. It's local patriotism I'm sure, or even a climate thing. Bit like how Sublime sounded shit to me until I moved here.
A friend of mine got me a signed Faber and Faber edition of Shaun Ryder's collected lyrics for my birthday. Surely you can do something on the appropriation of lyricism by poetry, with special regard to Our Shaun?
And isn't there a point to make about how your favourite band settles? Mine did. The Mondays were my favourite band aged 20, and they're still my favourite band as I nudge 40.
Neither theme really exercises me I'm afraid. There's a bit of an "exam question" feeling. Whereas blogging only works if it's completely a form of truancy.
I'm not sure I agree about the settle thing. In my experience, favorites keep shifting and jostling around. Some of my faves went away for long interval, or dipped quite a long way down "The Charts". But then they came back.
I suppose the thing to hope for is that new favorites will keep coming along and competing with the old ones, pushing them down a bit.
They come less often - the 100 Greatest starts to stabilize - but still there'll be new entries, and consequently things that get relegated to Division 2.
The Velvet Underground had Warhol's lackeys miming whipcracking and shooting up with the appropriate songs. The Sex Pistols had Sue Catwoman giving Nazi salutes during performances. And Hawkwind had Stacia
Is there any wonder Bez is considered the best of the bunch?
The VU thing was only the Plastic Inevitable phase, right? And I don't think Sue Catwoman was a fixture. So really it's Stacia that clinches it as the non-musical, non-vocal but enduring key element of a band in performance mode, such that she was de facto a member of the group. The proto-Bez.
There was this dancer chappie in the Blue Aeroplanes though.
In latter days, there was / is a guy in Brian Jonestown Massacre whose primary function seemed to be to look period-appropriate and time-travelly with his massive sideburns. He mainly shakes a tambourine, right? Maybe I'm being unfair and he contributes a lot to the creative mix. Seems to be a much-loved element in the group's visual presentation / vibe / gestalt.
https://1001albumsgenerator.com/shares/6155fc1fc124054d99d507b5 These are my album reviews, from a website sending the participant the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. My reviews get better as they go on.
David McCallum had a right ol Mondays / Inspirals haircut on him in ‘The Invisible Man’. I remember it being one of the first things I watched on BBC as a child as the three British channels started being piped through to the south east of Ireland from Wales in 1974/75.
It only ran for one season and then the later American version was ‘Gemini Man’ with Ben Murphy where he used his watch to go invisible. Seem to recall that he couldn’t stay invisible for more than a few minutes at a time with each watch click or else risk permanent invisibility. Also only ran for one season!
Hasn't everyone forgot about Dre nowadays? He did that awful comeback single, I Need a Doctor, where he tries to resurrect the epithet "faggots", and then disappeared like piss into soil.
ReplyDeleteI'm quite drunk, and someone I care about is quite ill. Sorry to ask this, but a post on the Happy Mondays would be a welcome relief from my current malaise.
Sorry to hear that.
DeleteI don't really do requests unfortunately - the prompting has to come from within, or without (i.e. something that I come across randomly that kindles a thought).
I'm sure Dre hasn't done anything of note in a couple of decades apart from make over-rated, over-bassy headphones but the old jams - they still get play here. It's local patriotism I'm sure, or even a climate thing. Bit like how Sublime sounded shit to me until I moved here.
A friend of mine got me a signed Faber and Faber edition of Shaun Ryder's collected lyrics for my birthday. Surely you can do something on the appropriation of lyricism by poetry, with special regard to Our Shaun?
DeleteAnd isn't there a point to make about how your favourite band settles? Mine did. The Mondays were my favourite band aged 20, and they're still my favourite band as I nudge 40.
DeleteNeither theme really exercises me I'm afraid. There's a bit of an "exam question" feeling. Whereas blogging only works if it's completely a form of truancy.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I agree about the settle thing. In my experience, favorites keep shifting and jostling around. Some of my faves went away for long interval, or dipped quite a long way down "The Charts". But then they came back.
I suppose the thing to hope for is that new favorites will keep coming along and competing with the old ones, pushing them down a bit.
They come less often - the 100 Greatest starts to stabilize - but still there'll be new entries, and consequently things that get relegated to Division 2.
At the very least, you could do something on non-musical members of bands.
ReplyDeleteThere's the dude in Blue Aeroplanes. Who else is there?
DeleteThe feller in Flowered Up with giant petals round his face?
DeleteThe Velvet Underground had Warhol's lackeys miming whipcracking and shooting up with the appropriate songs. The Sex Pistols had Sue Catwoman giving Nazi salutes during performances. And Hawkwind had Stacia
DeleteIs there any wonder Bez is considered the best of the bunch?
The VU thing was only the Plastic Inevitable phase, right? And I don't think Sue Catwoman was a fixture. So really it's Stacia that clinches it as the non-musical, non-vocal but enduring key element of a band in performance mode, such that she was de facto a member of the group. The proto-Bez.
DeleteThere was this dancer chappie in the Blue Aeroplanes though.
In latter days, there was / is a guy in Brian Jonestown Massacre whose primary function seemed to be to look period-appropriate and time-travelly with his massive sideburns. He mainly shakes a tambourine, right? Maybe I'm being unfair and he contributes a lot to the creative mix. Seems to be a much-loved element in the group's visual presentation / vibe / gestalt.
You should start your own blog. I'd sidebar it. Rebuild the old blog archipelago. Get some interblog back and forth going.
ReplyDeleteYou seem like you have pent-up bloggability in you.
Anyway, I hope they get better and try not to worry.
ReplyDeletehttps://1001albumsgenerator.com/shares/6155fc1fc124054d99d507b5 These are my album reviews, from a website sending the participant the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. My reviews get better as they go on.
ReplyDeleteDavid McCallum had a right ol Mondays / Inspirals haircut on him in ‘The Invisible Man’. I remember it being one of the first things I watched on BBC as a child as the three British channels started being piped through to the south east of Ireland from Wales in 1974/75.
ReplyDeleteIt only ran for one season and then the later American version was ‘Gemini Man’ with Ben Murphy where he used his watch to go invisible. Seem to recall that he couldn’t stay invisible for more than a few minutes at a time with each watch click or else risk permanent invisibility. Also only ran for one season!