I know I’ve been quiet lately, but that doesn’t mean I’m brain-dead. Actually, my wife Su and I were finally able to take a long trip together, the first since we’ve been together (12 beautiful years!) Germany, Austria, Slovakia. It was a very refreshing and renewing experience, and on our return I jumped into some new projects. One was learning a new program called Iris, from developer Izotope, which involves complex sound filtering using drawn shapes. Also one can use one’s own sound sources. I made use of two sound files, one of Cairo during a call to worship, the other of a muezzin in Teheran. The result is nightmarish, like some kind of fever dream perhaps. Enjoy… or not…
My Latest Nightmare
February 3, 2013American Places
October 28, 2012Right on the heels of my latest soundtrack, my album of field recordings was just released. Luís Antero, a Portuguese sound artist, runs a net label called Green Field Records, and after hearing some of my old recordings, he approached me to ask if he could put out an entire album chosen from my audio stretching back seven years. This is the result! Many thanks to him, and also to Su who was with me almost every step of the way (and Photoshopped the pictures beautifully!). You can download the whole album from the link down under the Flash player. That takes you to archive.org which hosts Green Field. Then click at the left where it says “vbr zip” to download the whole album, though of course you can go track by track if you want to. The booklet with explanatory notes and photos is at the bottom of the page under “other files”; it says “text pdf.” Sorry it’s so involved to get it; I hope you find it worth your while!
Star Light Star Bright
October 28, 2012Here I go again, with another video, this time paying homage, in my own snarky way, to the fantastic German animator Lotte Reiniger, who began working in the 1920s, and emigrated to Britain in the 1940s. Her “Star of Bethlehem” is from 1956. I shortened it a bit, and composed my own soundtrack, rather different from the original to say the least. Reiniger mostly did fairy tales of one sort or another; “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” is available on DVD, and various bits and pieces of her work can be seen on YouTube. I love her shadow-puppet style of animation, where the figures are moved one frame at a time like claymation. She was definitely far ahead of her time! I have to apologize for a couple of glitches in the sound that I couldn’t get rid of, plus, because of a problem in the video conversion months ago, the last few seconds are cut off! Crap!! All you’ll miss is the tail end of the angel voices as they fade into the eternal heavens, singing Kurt Weill’s “Tango Ballade” as arranged for ukelele, bass harmonica and slide guitar besides the voices… But crap, anyway…
Heard You Missed Me, Now I’m Back!
September 23, 2012Well, I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to really say THAAAT… But I just did… Anyway, I’ve been quiet for months now, with lots of life’s cares and woes occupying me, but I have been working on some stuff as time permits. I’ve started to do sound for video, in the form of YouTube films where I make cuts if needed, strip out the soundtracks if there are any, and compose new ones. Here’s a link to my first effort, a 1923 silent short by the Surrealist artist Man Ray for which I created a track. It took six months to finish, with a huge learning curve for an oldster like me. And, by the way, watch this space for several new things in the coming months!
If You Can’t Lick ‘Em, Join ‘Em (2011)
December 27, 2011Pity the poor organist! All he wants to do is practice his Peer Gynt Suite in his church, and he gets invaded by a bizarre marching band of toy soldiers complete with maniac vocalist. He joins in, only to be drowned out, and then the soldiers march on, leaving only the faint sound of a car stereo. Besides the thundering pipe organ, there’s a thumping tambourine, a Jew’s harp, a full women’s choir and a couple of honking vuvuzelas, plus a distant recording of Tejano music coming from an overloaded car trunk subwoofer. Oh, and “March of the Wooden Soldiers” from the 1940s.
Sketch 1–The Journey Is Over (2011)
November 6, 2011Here’s a short thing I’ve been working on for awhile, using samples from a wide variety of sources plus a beautiful recording of a forest in the rain. Hope you like it…
Spinach Mother of Christ
October 16, 2011I have toyed with the idea of expanding beyond pure audio in my posts, and this recipe pushed me over the edge. That is the correct title, and it’s from a book called “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices,” privately printed in a small Minnesota town in 1960. Here goes:
“The Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ was very fond of spinach. This is as well a known fact in Nazareth today as it was 19 centuries ago. Her favorite music was that of the crude bagpipes of that time, and this also is a well known fact.
Her recipe for preparing spinach spread with Christianity throughout Europe. On the eve of Christ’s birth in the cave that was called a stable, Her only meal was spinach.
The early European immigrants from Germany, France, and Italy nearly all brought this recipe with them. This is a recipe for people who like a mild garlic flavor, it definitely is not for people who do not like some garlic.
This recipe cannot be made from canned spinach. Canned spinach in no way resembles fresh or frozen spinach and in my opinion is fit for neither man or beast.
Take six quarts of fresh spinach and carefully remove the heavy stems. If you use frozen spinach take two boxes. Boil the fresh spinach five minutes–no more. If you use frozen spinach place it in boiling water…”
Wellll, it drones on and on and on. Seems like a pretty ordinary recipe to me. But then again, I don’t pretend to be a culinary genius. Or a theologian, either…
Spry (2011)
September 6, 2011It’s been a while, once again… Here’s a fantasy homage to pure vegetable shortening of bygone days. The text is from the company booklet “What Shall I Cook Today?”; illustrations follow. Actually, this piece is about the past and the future, not very much about the present. With that mysterious statement, I’ll get the hell out of the way…
Focus Group (2011)
June 1, 2011What do movie producers, food manufacturers, and politicians all have in common? Riiiight, focus groups! They get people together, pay ‘em a little money, give ‘em some (cheap) food, and try and make ‘em believe that their opinions are really making a difference, that they are exerting control over our crazy world. Well, ummm, they’re not. But let’s eavesdrop on one, evaluating the sound track on a very peculiar film. Listener discretion advised…
Hell and Damnation (2011)
February 20, 2011Here’s my first piece in quite a while. I’ve been working on it for almost a year. For me it almost qualifies as a “magnum opus,” since it’s almost 11 minutes long! It’s a meditation on…well, hell and damnation. The inspiration was a rip from a Thai Buddhist cassette I found on a blog. That repetitive choral line goes on for half an hour. Anyway, a hellish soundscape with flashes of prairie chickens, preachers, Japanese phone calls and power stations, Balinese mornings, French forests, Czech mineshaft elevators, bla bla bla… enjoy!
Tea Party Antics (2010)
September 19, 2010As we get deep into the political season here in the U.S. of A., my hackles start to rise again. Here is a fantasy infomercial that could have been put out by the Tea Party Express. Rude and mean, just like them…
Jesus, I (Rocky Catarrh) Have Needs (2010)
August 11, 2010Rocky Catarrh, “private detective and intensely devout Christian,” as he calls himself, is back, and more confused than ever. His life is falling apart. Work has no meaning, his rabbit Ace has been ill for weeks, and there’s always “the woman thing”… As usual, he prays to Jesus, who seems to have problems of his own lately…
Vuvuzela Gabrieli (2010)
August 6, 2010In the wake of the World Cup, I got curious about vuvuzelas, the plastic horns being blown exuberantly throughout the matches. Some audio company had developed a filter to reduce the onslaught of the racket on TV, to make commentary actually audible. Then my wife got the idea: what if vuvuzelas could be made to play in brass choirs, like Gabrieli’s music centuries ago? With the brilliant vuvuzela sample set from Sample Logic, and a midi file from Classicalarchives of a Gabrieli canzona, combined with my always-twisted point of view, the piece was inevitable…
Gamelan Showroom (2010)
May 30, 2010This piece started out sooo innocently… A showroom in Indonesia demonstrating the classic gamelan gongs, mostly for tourists; when you hear “Mary Had A Little Lamb” being picked out on gongs, it’s a pretty fair bet that tourist kids are on site. So far so good. But then, the piece is hijacked… by birthers. Listen for yourselves…
Bad Trip (2010)
May 4, 2010Timothy Leary made me compose this one. No, he didn’t come to me in a dream, but I stumbled upon a rip of his mid-60s “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” album, complete with excruciatingly bad sitar music in the background, occasional cymbal crashes, etc. I cut many of his remarks up into small pieces, and began combining them to see what might result. From there, it was just a hop, skip and jump through the verdant fields of “Reefer Madness”-type stuff, of which I have acres’ worth, to the narrative of a turncoat hippie who wasn’t a bit hip in the first place. Ah yes, I remember them well…
Sedona (2009-10)
April 8, 2010I have an almost visceral dislike of extreme New Ageism, as manifested here. I’d had my eye on Sedona for a long time, and started the piece well before the revelations about the sweat house deaths. But I put it aside ’cause of technical problems, and finally came back to it with a vengeance. Yeah, that’s what it is…
The Lost Chord (Apologies to Sir Arthur Sullivan) (2010)
March 2, 2010You may remember Vern Slathers from a few years back, lounging around his fusty old kitchen in “A Life On Tape.” Here he’s hanging out in a different room—the parlor—with his buddy Burnoose MacPherson, playing his organ, drinking, and complaining.
All Us Indians Gotta Stick Together (2010)
February 10, 2010Who has Carvin Bitzoff scored to interview on his most recent talk show? None other than Pleasy Lakshmi Chandra, Indian media star on the rise, touring the US to raise money for a Bollywood film mashing Indian Indians and American Indians–or Native Americans, as she is surprised to discover they are called–together into a dancin’, poundin’ stew set on an Arizona reservation. But eminent Native American spokesperson Ingrid Catches Breath will have none of it. Sparks and fur are flying by the end of the show. Let’s tune in and find out…
Nature Is Calling (2010)
January 28, 2010A couple weeks back, I came across rips of some anonymously-played-and-produced albums that I suppose could be called “New Age,” supposedly emblematic of the Native American Experience. The album titles were “The Last Of The Mohicans,” “The White Mustang” and “Dancing Wolves,” and they use just about every possible cliché imaginable. Well, the tracks called out loudly to me: “Mash us up!” so I did. I especially like the disco cymbals coming in at 1:15, for that truly authentic touch… I added a couple of strategic sound effects and a poem, and that’s it. Incidentally, the poem was written by Clancy Carlile, a cohort of mine 35+ years ago, a musician and writer whose claim to fame was writing the screenplay for a Clint Eastwood movie called “Honky Tonk Man.” Clancy was from Oklahoma and claimed to be a quarter Cherokee; maybe that’s why he thought he could get away with writing and singing stuff like that.
I Gotta Wintry Feeling, With Cat On Shoulder (2010)
January 13, 2010My first composition of the New Year, based on a song I’ve grown to like a lot, one of the monster hits of 2009, by the Black Eyed Peas. It’s a winter day, and our listener has a cat on one shoulder, listening to a fanciful landscape…
Mister Smoothie’s Interview (2009)
December 30, 2009Here’s the latest from my “archive.” Ace talk-show host Carvin Bitzoff, who we last saw in the field at the St. Stupid’s Day parade, is interviewing Walter Weego, aka Mr. Smoothie, the veteran recording session percussionist with music and reminiscences to share.
Dudes And Dudettes, Transfigure The Night!! (2007)
December 4, 2009More than some of my pieces, this needs a little background. In 2007, my wife and I, plus four colleagues from our organization Golden Gate Music, had an opportunity to perform Arnold Schoenberg’s great string sextet “Transfigured Night.” We did a relatively huge amount of rehearsing, plus I for one practiced my part for dozens of hours. This piece was inspired by a highly emotional German poem that begins “Two people walk through a bare cold grove.” Well, shortly after the (successful) performance, I felt the need to blow the strenuous effort out of my head by making fun of it, and this was the result: “Schoenbergfest 07,” held in the Southern California countryside near a campground and an enormous cattle feedlot, complete with poetry, sound effects and other instruments. I had fun adding contrabassoon, trap drums and electric guitar.
Carvin Bitzoff, Interviewer On The Street (2007)
October 31, 2009Carvin Bitzoff is a recent example of a very old genre, though of course he has a boatload of quirks. For the sound background, I used the St. Stupids Day recording from San Francisco that I posted here a couple months back.
Rocky Catarrh: Private Investigator, Devout Christian (2006-7)
October 30, 2009Rocky Catarrh (it could be spelled “Qatar” like the country, but that’s pronounced more like “cutter,” according to my stepdaughter, who’s moving there) is one of my most cherished characters, and I don’t think I’m done with him yet. He is a self-righteously pious prig, congenitally incapable of minding his own business, but a tender-hearted soul for all that (witness his relationship with his rabbit, Ace). But he hasn’t figured out the relationship with his snarky God, whom he always calls Jesus. Hilarity ensues…
Lumpy Harvest In India (2005-6)
October 18, 2009Pellagra Transom, whom you may have already met, is a shameless gold-digger from Britain, but now you can meet Indira, a woman on the rise in India. She hatched in my mind after a discovered a TTS voice called “Indian-accented English,” and here’s the result. Indira is not as blatant as Pellagra (though she gets herself into kind of an X-rated situation in Indira Going Places), but her intentions are definitely the same…
How I Spent My Vacation (2006)
October 18, 2009Well, call me a cynic and a pessimist, which I do all the time… Here’s a fantasy example of tourism masquerading as Western cultural imperialism. Before you think this is some kind of doctrinaire equivalent of a political tract, be advised that it’s just as nuts as any of my other work. Also, I think things are getting better on the tourism front, as more wealthy people engage in ecotourism, as well as travel that really contributes to the well-being of residents at the local level rather than hotel owners and tour packagers. Maybe someday I’ll do a piece on native habitat restoration or something like that… Maybe not as much opportunity there for me to go as nuts as usual… But I might well find a way…
Guitar Center (2004)
October 18, 2009Here’s a very small piece, a kind of what-if? joke about a harpsichord player showing up at a Guitar Center, the notorious chain of instrument stores that specializes in serving rock (and maybe some jazz) musicians. I made the background recording myself at Guitar Center Concord, and the harpsichord was featured in another piece, Music Festival/Vancouver Docks, which I posted earlier. It’s the instrument made entirely of Legos (and strings…)
Pellagra Transom: Her Saga (2003-6)
September 30, 2009Meet Pellagra Transom, woman of the world and femme fatale. You wouldn’t want to know her; I guarantee it. A nasty piece of work; you stand warned.
I did five pieces starring Ms. Transom. In “To The Ends Of The Earth,” I was further exploring the joys of (free) library music, and flexing my storytelling muscles, while she searched for a suitable mark, um, man, in Las Vegas. Needless to say, she found one. In “Pellagra’s Blues,” she bounced around the world in the company of one man after another, ending up in Nigeria after answering a get-rich-quick email that actually worked. “Olay Pellagra” found her “rooted and settled” for all of three days in the hinterlands of Peru, after hitting Tashkent, Jerusalem and a kibbutz in the space of less than a week. In “Pellagra In The Desert,” she has met up with the Nuance Vocalizer Players, who are presenting her show about having settled down for real, as the proprietess/madam of the Black Stallion Ranch near Las Vegas. “Pellagra From Beyond The Grave” is narrated by Bruce Jizzlington, her former accountant and now owner of the Ranch, who hears her voice in his head frequently. Pellagra is frightful, but somehow I was interested enough in her to bring her back for five episodes. I might have done more, but her voice became unavailable to me and I had to move on. Crap.
On The Road To Bangalore (2004)
September 13, 2009The first of my Indian fantasies. This one was inspired by a sound recording made at a rural train crossing in India. A song is on the radio (demonically made into an earworm loop) in the snack shop nearby; a motorbike pulls up; the train passes; the recording device is discovered (and probably turned off); all while our two bizarre characters natter away. More pieces set in India to follow…
Energy Blast 3
September 11, 2009More hot weather = more energy needed. Here’s The Showmen Inc. from 1969. I had an old 45 of it, of which practically nothing has survived except the label, I played it so often. Eventually I was able to find another copy. In auditioning drummers for my first band that year (which specialized in r&b and soul), I told my partner that I wanted a drummer like the one on this cut. We had a singer who did this style flawlessly, but our drummers never could cop the proper feel. Oh well…
Thailand Fantasies (2004)
September 11, 2009These are the first of my Asian fantasies. I was getting my brain around a lot of new techniques, and developing more characters for the voices I had at my disposal. In these two pieces we meet Barney Valentino, a second-rate talent agent of a certain (very old) age, who’s been in Thailand for many decades, trying to pull one scam after another. In each case, his hapless victims, human or animal, take their revenge.
New Time Religion (2004)
September 9, 2009One person’s take on Christmas in a church, albeit surrealistic. But, when you get right down to it, you have to accept a certain amount of surrealism to be devoutly religious. Just not this kind…
A Life On Tape (2004)
September 7, 2009An old man, puttering around his old house and stuck in the past, never far from his trusty old tape recorder. Catty comments galore about his dysfunctional family. He comes to a bad end. Alfred Hitchcock has nothing on THIS guy…
Bad Dreams (2003-6)
September 4, 2009Spoiler alert: these are pretty weird, even for me. The Bad Dream series is augmented by a tasty little extra, NO2, about a trip to the dentist and the unfortunate (to put it mildly) results.
Bad Dream 1 (Closing Time/Black Hole Sun)
The Harvey Manglewiener Story (2005-6)
August 30, 2009You met Harvey Manglewiener, the mad contrabassoonist, onstage in “Music For The Masses,” and in this three-part series you find out just how mad he really was. In the first part, we look in on the late Harvey’s memorial service and learn of his devotion to his contrabassoon. The second part is set in a Las Vegas lobby bar during the Contrabassoonists’ Convention, where musicians drink and reminisce about some of Harvey’s greatest triumphs. The third part finds Harvey’s erstwhile sidekick and partner in crime, struggling real estate agent Dick Hazmat, speaking of the lessons he learned about life and the contra, complete with more examples (this time played through his trusty boombox).
Energy Blast 2
August 29, 2009I think it must be the (super-) hot weather at the moment that drives me to these high-energy tracks. Here is 1972′s “Soul Train,” by Little Royal, a lesser-known singer who never went as far as he should have in this business. I’ve heard many versions of the tune, and this smokes the hardest. Like “Take Me,” the band is just excellent. I’m always a sucker for great rhythm guitar playing, and this track sure doesn’t disappoint! PS Consider turning the volume down a bit; the track runs pretty hot!
99 Ranch, El Cerrito CA (2003)
August 29, 2009This is a huge Asian supermarket that serves the East Bay, an excerpt of a walk around the store. Early on, we hear Rachmaninoff on the Muzak while the man at the fish counter chops away and the tanks of live seafood bubble merrily (or not). Later, we enter a take-out section, and eavesdrop on a couple trying to order food with brown rice (not always the easiest thing in a hard-core Asian environment, where many employees have only rudimentary English). But I’ll bet the servers here understood this hapless fellow well enough, and his efforts at near-pidgin English were unnecessary. At least he finished at the end with a hearty “shay-shay” (thank you).
Energy Blast 1
August 25, 2009Sometimes a shot of really high-energy music is the best thing to cure what ails ya. Here’s Betty Everett singing “Take Me,” from Chicago in 1969, with a backup band that’s almost scary! The rhythm guitarists are incredible. This record is very long out of print, so I feel OK about posting it.
Music For The Masses (2004)
August 24, 2009The Nuance Vocalizer Players are putting on a huge production dramatizing the life and music of light music maestro Albert Ketelbey, composer of “In A Persian Market,” “In A Monastery Garden,” etc. etc. Two fans of leading man Chauncey “Chuckles” Barrymore entertain us from the audience, while backstage everything is going wrong: sets malfunction, sound effects are inadvertently triggered, tech cues inadvertently get fed into a grossly loud PA system. Not only that, but an obnoxious child actor and a contrabassoon player wander on and offstage, and groups playing horrendous arrangements of Ketelbey’s music erupt all over the auditorium. Chuckles goes quite bananas at the end, and… Ahh, I don’t want to be a spoiler. Listen for yourselves.
New Orleans 2006
August 20, 2009At 11 minutes, this is by far the longest of my soundwalks. Here’s why.
My wife Su and I visited New Orleans in March 2006. What we found was both disgusting and exhilarating: disgusting because seeing the residue from Katrina was far more horrible in person than looking at photos or footage could ever be, but exhilarating because the city was clearly (to us anyway) coming back from its near-death experience. Parts of the soundwalk may irritate you: roaring traffic, the shutter of our camera as I take a couple of pictures just inches from the microphones. But overall there is distinctly a feeling of peace: the early-morning chant in St. Louis Cathedral, the trumpet playing “What A Wonderful World,” the women washing down the sidewalk and talking about political corruption, the guys throwing merchandise off a truck while laughing and jiving. Admittedly, this was in the French Quarter, not heavily hit by Katrina. But we could hope that the dogged optimism there, of picking up the pieces and going on with life, could radiate outward and infuse the rest of the city. Romanticized piffle, maybe, but stranger things have happened… Anyway, we look forward to going back.
Man To Man (2003)
August 16, 2009The Battle of the Sexes rolls on… At least, this is how I viewed it six years ago. It seems as if I get less penis-size-enlargement emails than I did then, but maybe that’s just because I have a better spam filter. (By the way, one “Mel Burgos” really did send me such an email, quoted verbatim by the voice of “Mel Burgos” in the piece.) Also, the mania for male drumming circles à la Robert Bly may have subsided. Plus, the combatants may be less shrill overall, but that could just be my subjective take on it. The piece seems a little dated to me now, truth be told, but I’ll share it anyway. At the very least, it shows the Nuance Vocalizer Players stretching their limits and taking on new roles…
Talent Show (2003)
August 15, 2009The Nuance Vocalizer Players are concluding their retreat weekend with a talent show. Blatant shtick-stealing (try saying that a few times) ends in naked aggression and vengeance. With a buildup like that, how can you not listen?
I Feel So Powerful (2003)
August 14, 2009A backstage drama featuring the Nuance Vocalizer Players. Our hero is a “warrior in the corporate trenches,” and all goes well as the rehearsal begins. But then the actor begins changing his lines, and the fur begins to fly. Here I continued my budding romance with “library” music, which has continued to the present; my hard drive is bulging with it…
The Show Must Go On (2003)
August 12, 2009Here it is, the piece you’ve been waiting for! The Nuance Vocalizer Players are dress-rehearsing their first big show: “Oscar! Wild Across America,” an original drama about Oscar Wilde’s lecture tour around the US in the 1880s. Thrill to the REAL drama (backstage), grieve over the tragedy that befalls one of the actors. Oh hell, I’m giving away too much already… In this piece, I get my feet wet using “library” music, for which I found free samples I could loop. You’ll hear lots more of it later. Note: There are unsolvable technical problems in parts of the piece that I was not able to remix my way out of, so I hope you’ll pardon the occasional glitch or two.
Tourist Country, Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco (2004)
August 11, 2009A walk around Fisherman’s Wharf, the most touristed part of San Francisco, starting with a faint echo of “Habanera” from Carmen. Soon a crab seller drums with his implements, and chops like a Benihana tableside server, touting his seafood: “We have way better food here! I don’t care what they say!” Further along, quieter touts try to pull the tourists in off the street. The whole area is a big hustle, and the locals tend to avoid it, but it does have—as some writer once said—”a certain raffish charm.”
Springfield (Oregon) Thrift Store (2003)
August 11, 2009Springfield is an old mill and paper town, adjacent to Eugene, but without a university to provide jobs and recreation. The main street is largely boarded up, like so many city centers in the US. Because of the extensive poverty, the local Goodwill is very active. I spent some time there browsing (in the old CDs etc.) and recording the volunteers as they rearranged furniture (beware, it’s pretty loud!) to optimize the space to accept new donations. Nice people!
In A Memphis Nightclub (2003)
August 10, 2009Two roadies, tired of their boss and dreaming of doing their own music, finally have a shot at the big time: a gig with their own band in Memphis, cradle of soul music. Wellll, things don’t go quite the way they would have hoped, but they rarely do in my pieces…
Audition (2003)
August 10, 2009Back to the “classic” pieces. This one features the Nuance Vocalizer Players in full hue and cry, with the co-directors auditioning new members. Several running characters appear here for the first time. Jason Krankenhaus is a prime example of peculiar text-to-speech pronunciation or emphasis which influenced the direction of the story, such as it is. I am amused to hear that the voice of George Pinga, a minor Vocalizer Player whom you will get to know better, directs calls for Apple Support, and also makes robot calls for Longs Drugs informing customers that their prescriptions are ready. Well, I knew him when…
A Pub In A Quaint Corner Of Old Bohemia (2009)
August 10, 2009Back to my roots with this one: synthesized voices, bar sounds (which I’ve used before), and the finest band I could… umm… assemble for the gig.
Clap ‘n Stomp (2009)
August 10, 2009This rhythm track finds me reveling in the world of offbeat samples: Waterphones, wind machines, musical saws, South American cuicas, brass bannisters, bamboo sticks, as well as the claps and stomps of the title. Oh, I almost forgot the prepared harpsichord; now THERE’S a sound! More conventionally musical selections are thrown in too; you might have guessed that somewhere in the world “Love Potion Number Nine” would have been sung in Chinese. The oral recitation is from Syd Nathan, the president of King Records, on the subject of “his” artists in the rough-and-tumble music business of the 1950s. It’s a wonder that James Brown, among others, who was on the King label for two decades, survived such a nasty old dinosaur. The end morphs into a rainy night in Guangzhou, with a surprise children’s song on the fade.
