Tomorrow's World - Pt.2

As a follow up to this post about Tomorrow's World and the superb Johnny Dankworth theme, here's a brand new rip of the later Martin Cook and Richard Denton theme from around 1980 (it's only taken me about 2 years to get round to it!).
Easily my second favourite theme to this series, it's a great bit of electronic music and it did indeed sound like it was music from the future back then. Listening to it now it's still great (with a surprisingly hefty 4/4 beat), it's clearly influenced by Jean-Michel Jarre and has a little Star Wars style middle eight but that can be forgiven when you consider this was 1980.
I initially made a rip from the 7" vinyl release of this theme but it wasn't in the greatest of condition so ended up recording it from an LP release from 1980 of this and many other Denton/Cook themes (more info here) and to my ears this is a better quality pressing than the 7" anyway. As a bonus I've included the theme from "Hong Kong Beat" as well, it's a great little mid-tempo number with a Pink Floyd type vibe.

High res (24Bit 96KHz) FLAC and 320 MP3 Links in comments and as usual I'd love to hear your comments.

Gurney Slade

I was wandering around the house doing a few jobs the other month when a tune came on the radio that I'd not heard in years!

It took me right back to being a child in the 70's but I couldn't recall where I knew it from.

I listened to the end and discovered it was "Gurney Slade" by Max Harris.

Now this rang no bells with me whatsoever so I turned to Google to help me out. It transpires that the tune was the theme to "The Strange World of Gurney Slade" a six part TV series broadcast on ITV in 1960. 

Clearly my memories of the tune could not be from that (it predates me by 10 years), a few clicks later and I discovered that the tune had also been used in "Vision On", a series that I remember well and defines a particular era of my childhood, so mystery solved.

Anyway, it's a great piece of flute jazz music, I do love these "Jazz" theme tunes from the 60's (see also my post for Johhny Dankworth's "Tomorrows World" theme here)

There have been a few versions recorded over the years and I've started to buy the original 7" singles, this download includes a rip straight from the original Max Harris 7" as well as a 7" released by Steve Stannard in the same year. The original version is the smoothest and classiest but the Stannard version is faster and swings a bit more during the solo, leave you to decide which is the best. 

I'm still looking out for other versions and will post them as I find them....links in comments (24Bit 96KHz & 320K MP3)

Max Harris

Steve Stannard

ULLA!!! (B-Side Treasures - No.1)

There are many things that I can get a bit obsessive over...some of these will become apparent over the life of this Blog I'm sure. One of them is "The War of The Worlds", whether it's the H.G.Wells novel, the 1952 Byron Haskin movie or the Jeff Wayne musical version from 1978.

I have an ever increasing collection based around this fantastic piece of work, many different versions of the book (I'll post some of the covers up here one day, some great ones), artwork and promotional material from the 1952 film and all manner of musical bit's and pieces from the Jeff Wayne project.

Anyway, this post is taken from the 1978 7" version of "Forever Autumn" sung by Justin Hayward and taken from the Jeff Wayne album. The single was quite a hit and I clearly remember hearing it a lot at the time, it's a beautiful song and stood out to me even as an 8 year old. Years later I'm listening to the single and decide to give the "B" side a spin, "The Fighting Machine". I'd assumed it would just be a short version of the Album track probably just with a fade out, but it was a lot better than that. This is a fairly drastic re-edited version, with a new intro and managing to cram in all the best bits of the LP version into a pretty exciting track (at least from my biased viewpoint). A couple of the edits are a bit clunky but overall I really like it and it makes a great 7". I've not seen it appear on CD yet, not even on the massive 7 disc collectors edition from a few years back so here it is. As usual I've ripped it at High Res (96/24) and also created a 320 MP3 version, links in comments.

This post is also the first in a completely random series of "B-Side Treasures"

UUUUUULLLLLAAAAAAA!!!!.

Tomorrow's World - Pt.1

"Tomorrow's World", sigh, now there was a science program. Thursday nights on BBC1, best TV night of the week...Tomorrow's World then Top of the Pops...TV bliss for a young Mark Morb.
Plenty has been written about this science program and watching a few clips from the 70's and early 80's on Youtube it definitely had a naive amateurish charm to it, far more endearing than the "Kids TV" slightly patronising style that current BBC science programs go for (I'm looking at you "Bang goes the theory!").
During the main years I watched the program (mid 70's to mid 80's) there were two theme tunes, the jazzy Johnny Dankworth composed original from 1966 and the synthy version by Martin Cook and Richard Denton from 1980.
This post is a new rip I've done of the Dankworth theme (credited to "The Brass Chorale") along with the B-Side, the theme from "The Late Show", which is also excellent. Taken from the original vinyl (I also own an original 7" Demo version but it's an identical recording) and ripped at high res (96/24) although the usual 320 MP3 version is available also (links in comments), let me know your thoughts.

I will post up the Cook/Denton version at some point over the next few weeks as well so keep an eye out for that.