Stereos across America, in the late '60s and early '70s, went a little haywire with the introduction of the Moog Synthesizer. Walter (now Wendy) Carlos' Switched-On Bach was a huge hit, and that led record labels scrambling to cash in on this confusing new trend.
There are two different kinds of Moog albums: pure and partial. Pure Moog albums feature only the synthesizer, while partial ones use the Moog as a kind of gimmicky icing on otherwise conventional instrumentation. The latter can be every bit as bizarre as the former.
Genuine Electric Latin Love Machine, from 1969, is one of those partial Moog albums, and it's one of my favorites. This is as high-concept as it gets: a Moog exploitation item with a quasi-south-of-the-border theme (although I can't for the life of me figure out how Burt Bacharach or the Hare Krishna chant from Hair fit into that). Command Records was a high-end outfit, though, known for their excellence in recording and engineering, so it shouldn't be surprising that they snagged a top-drawer arranger/orchestrator like Richard Hayman to make sense of the mess.
Tbe result is a bizarre, imaginative and fun hybrid; a weird, short-lived anomaly in pop music history. I swiped the excellent cover scan from 317x.com's excellent album cover gallery, but these sound files are taken from my own vinyl copy (forgive the pops). As far as I know, this record has never been released on CD, and vintage vinyl goes for a pretty penny, so I really don't feel guilty about sharing these.
Right-click or Control-click the below to save the link to your desktop and enjoy on the player of your choice:
The Peanut Vendor (3:41, 4.3MB MP3)
The Look of Love (2:38 3.1MB MP3)
Hare Krishna (2:48 3.3MB MP3)
UPDATE: One commentor said something like, "OMG, this is so bad", while another said, "OMG, I love this!" For the record, I love this album. I think it's great!
8 comments:
Yikes, Princess! I am a fan of the Moog but this guy is truly inept. Thanks for sharing.
Oh, and Happy 2006 too with many SEVERE Condi hair alerts.
That album cover makes my boy parts go up and down!
Oh, man...what does it say about me if I *like* 'The Peanut Vendor'? Like, bouncing around the kitchen, like it. Never mind, I don't want to think about it.
No, I agree with you, taj... The Peanut Vendor rocks.
The Look of Love sounds like the soundtrack from a very poorly done lesbian soft porn movie--you know, the kind where they use fake lesbians who aren't doing it the right way.
i must have more! 3 songs is not enough....love it!
I was just thinking about this album earlier today. I'm hoping to get my parents to find their copy for me. In the meantime, I wonder if you might post other songs from this album which I loved as a kid and still do today. The cover art and sound of the music are hard to forget. I'd be unbelievably happy if I could get the other songs in mp3 format, since I don't have an easy way to transfer the songs and it does make it easy to listen to on the go. I'm especially interested in hearing "Windmills of your Mind" and "Girl from Ipanema" again. I remember the funny wolf whistle (at the end, I believe) of "Girl from Ipanema". Thanks for this post and the songs you did post, it brought back great memories from my youth listening to these with my siblings.
Take care,
Pete
email me at:
petebullock AT hotmail.com
OMG!! I have been searching for this album forever. Could you please post the rest of the tracks. As a kid, I remember listening to this with my grandma and it brings back all of those memories.
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