Podcast Episode Summary
For the Liberal Democrats:
Wendy Carlos – Title Music From A Clockwork Orange
I was stuck for one to put up for the Lib Dems for some time: possible candidates included Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck In The Middle With You” (Nick Clegg would particularly like the line “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right”) and anything by Yellow Magic Orchestra.
But the Lib Dem posters I’ve been seeing around (zilcho in my constituency of Witham, but squillions in Colchester, where they are defending the seat) look more orange than yellow. They have a very 1974 feel about them (and more to come from 1974 tomorrow, as I post up a special boot-sale find) and the seventies seems in retrospect to have been a very orange decade. Orange and Brown. (but not Gordon).
Anyway this is an absolute classic. The soundtrack album for the Stanley Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange, banned for several decades in this country on orders from Kubrick himself after a couple of dweebs in boiler suits started beating people up (the ban has since been lifted and not a boiler suit in sight – Burberry, yes, but that’s not in the film I don’t think) was performed by Wendy Carlos on her gigantic modular Moog synth.
Carlos first came to prominence with the Switched-On Bach LP in 1968 which featured painstakingly assembled multitracked renditions of Bach chamber and small orchestra pieces on the Moog. The Clockwork Orange soundtrack mixes her renditions of pieces by Beethoven and Rossini with original compositions.
The track I’ve posted here is the title music, which is based on a theme by the English composer Purcell but sets the scene for the film perfectly – dark and moody. Overall it’s a great album, ranging from the avantgarde stylings of “Timesteps” to the ludicrous Benny-Hill style speeded up version of the “William Tell Overture”.
If only most of today’s film composers were allowed to demonstrate 1% of the ingenuity on display here.
Note that although I’ve provided a link to a reissued expanded CD version of this soundtrack, the vinyl, like all early Carlos, is not hard to come by – these were the most successful of all the “Moog” records of the “electronic easy listening” boom of the late 60s through to mid-70s (even though Carlos’s output was much more highbrow than your average easy listening fodder), and so they probably turn up in vast quantities at charity shops and car boot sales near you. I’ve sourced this off the vinyl for that authentic seventies snap, crackle and pop.
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CD reissue :: of soundtrack album at Discogs (with extra tracks)
File Download (2:19 min / 3 MB)
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