Anthony Newley's Musical

Tomorrow is some sort of holiday or something. Obviously it has a song associated with it, and i'll talk about it somehow. But. I just stumbled upon what is surely the most obscure album in the collection. It's an x-rated british musical film (keep in mind x-rated for 1969 just means there's gratuitous nudity). It's not the most famous thing Anthony Newley ever did (somebody had to co-write "Goldfinger"), but it's definitely the most ambitious. Terrible, but ambitious.

I haven't seen this movie, but from just looking at the cover it had to be terrible. It had to be. Roger Ebert gave it a passive-aggressive complimentary review, Joan Collins filed it away as a reason to look for a third husband, Milton Berle was in it at all, this soundtrack never got published on CD... i don't need to see it, but i have to listen to it. If Anthony Newley himself produced it, composed it, convinced his much more renowned wife to be in it, and tangibly suffered for it, it has to have some redeeming quality.

And it is a completely normal musical, as far as the songs are concerned. In spite of the cringeworthy plot outlined in the notes, a couple of the songs made me giggle because they were actually funny (musical funny, but nevertheless). The project as a whole surely deserved every raspberry it received, but it's no worse to listen to than South Pacific, or Brigadoon, or Damn Yankees. It's no Jesus Christ Superstar (which i totally also have), but the songs are actually servicable songs.

At the end of the day, the guy just wrote a musical and made it happen on an international scale. It earned 4 times it's budget at the box office so i seriously doubt Universal actually lost much money. It's on youtube already, 'cause some people care about cheeky musicals that flopped. I don't want to meet those people, but at least it means i don't have to sit here and dub it so you can say you've actually heard it...

Next

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more