I grew up between the two golden ages of Disney animation, when less-loved creations like ‘The Rescuers’ (’77) and ‘The Fox and the Hound’ (’81) portended a protracted slump from which the studio wouldn’t emerge until ‘The Little Mermaid’ leapt ashore at the end of ’89.
I know what at least four or five of you are likely muttering to yourselves right now: ‘Man oh man, is she ever gonna stop with these damn Tijuana Brass albums?!? It’ll be Christmas 2024 by the time this #TuesdaysWithJerry series finally gets to the Police!’
Some years ago, not long after we met, @kajigger and I started collecting these limited picture-disc pressings of soundtracks from classic Disney animated films alongside Pixar treasures and a few recordings related to Disneyland attractions (see my third post in this series, from Nov 26, for evidence of that). Our tally of titles is pushing two dozen; they’d make an eye-grabbing display if we ever framed ‘em.
Contrary to the impression I might have given with the sixth post in this ongoing series surveying past glories of A&M Records — I spend #TuesdaysWithJerry to remember late great mogul Jerry Moss — Joe Cocker was not in fact the first rock act signed to the rapidly rising label.
My #SoundtrackSunday timing with this one has proven fortuitous. Not long after I discovered Elmer Bernstein’s richly detailed classicist score finally had been pressed as a 2LP gatefold package — which I immediately acquired — I then realized Martin Scorsese’s sumptuous adaptation of Edith Wharton’s tragic romance is streaming until the end of this month on the Criterion Channel. (Gift idea for film friends: a yearlong subscription.)
If anyone was entitled to craft New Age-y yacht-rock with a dash of disco by the dawn of 1979, it was the Beach Boys. Except that’s giving them way too much credit, as if they’d planned to do exactly that — when in fact L.A. (Light Album), perhaps the group’s most forgettable collection, is nothing but a hodgepodge of solo material patched together to keep CBS Records from suing them for breach of contract, lest they turn in zero music two years after signing to that label.
File this one under Soundtracks to Shows I’m Unlikely to Ever See alongside David Byrne’s backdrop for ‘The Catherine Wheel’ and his interludes dubbed ‘The Knee Plays’ and probably any quality productions of Sondheim’s ‘Pacific Overtures’ or ‘Chess,’ the musical composed by Tim Rice and the men of ABBA that gave the world ‘One Night in Bangkok.’
Hate sounding like skipping wax when I yet again insist I’m as eager as anyone to hurl my #TuesdaysWithJerry survey of A&M Records firmly into the era of Cat Stevens and Peter Frampton, to say nothing of the Police and Squeeze and scads more who arrived toward the end of that decade.
This once-buried treasure from August ‘77 is the very definition of a cult classic, like Skip Spence’s Oar or Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos. The sole solo album from the least significant (yet still considerably talented) Wilson brother, Pacific Ocean Blue has been expounded upon aplenty. Much of that revisionist praise hits the mark, but boasts of ‘you must hear this before you die’ strike me as overinflated.
We’re still inching our way toward the ‘70s, a stylistically packed decade that will see A&M Records (the focus of this #TuesdaysWithJerry offshoot of #VinylTwosDays) swing from soft pop to hard rock to new wave by the time that era’s glittering New Year’s Eve ball dropped into 1980.
