I'm getting an LP for my birthday...

[Grez]

This to be precise: Facade. Music: William Walton; Lyrics: Edith Sitwell; English Opera Group Ensemble directed by Anthony Collins; Narrators: Edith Sitwell, Peter Pears.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s136484.jpg (http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/william_walton/facade_etc__edith_sitwell__peter_pears_/)

I've been after a copy of this album since I first heard it in 1982 and I've never come across one for sale before. I can't wait to wrap my lugholes round it but when my eldest daughter asked me what I wanted ("Men are so difficult to buy for"), I said I'd seen it on the web and she could get it for me.

Facade is really unusual in that it's a poem cycle set to music (like very primitive rap for posh people!); the music's odd too because a lot of it is based on popular styles of the early 20th century but for a small classical-type ensemble. The poems are a bit avant-garde and rely on wordplay and are almost a collage of interesting sounds, performed remarkably well and at times tongue-twistingly accurately by Edith Sitwell and Peter Pears. The album was recorded for Decca in 1954 but the version I'm getting is the one pictured which was reissued on the Eclipse label in the late 60s or early 70s (not too sure which).

Yes, it's a bit weird, but also strangely compelling, and it grabbed me immediately as an impressionable teenager while I was still at school. Even after all these years, I'm really looking forward to having this once and for all. It's hard to define any genre for this album - it doesn't fit comfortably into any category of music I've ever come across.

So, is there any album that you've been craving for years and not been able to get your mitts on? If so, what is it and why do you want it oh so much?
:)

[Alex_UK]

Excellent Grez, and great idea for a thread. I have got one - but it is still on the way, (and I'm now getting a bit worried...) But I will reveal all when (if) it arrives! How's that for a teaser! :eyebrows:

[Grez]

Excellent Grez, and great idea for a thread. I have got one - but it is still on the way, (and I'm now getting a bit worried...) But I will reveal all when (if) it arrives! How's that for a teaser! :eyebrows:

Enigmatic, Alex....
:)

Can't wait!

[chris@panteg]

Hi Grez

well i never :) i have a copy of this same LP , got it from the local charity shop for 50p a few years ago.

very quirky and oh so English ' Edith is magnificent .

[chris@panteg]

Just a thought ' do you have the original decca 2LP of Peter Grimes ?

Magnificent recording from 1959 ' one of the greatest in fact , if you like the music ' which i do , i have the CD but the original vinyl is very collectable.

I 1st heard it through a Quad system many moons ago with ESL57's ! incredible.

[Grez]

Hi Grez

well i never :) i have a copy of this same LP , got it from the local charity shop for 50p a few years ago.

very quirky and oh so English ' Edith is magnificent .

It's brilliant, innit? 50p well spent there!




Just a thought ' do you have the original decca 2LP of Peter Grimes ?

Magnificent recording from 1959 ' one of the greatest in fact , if you like the music ' which i do , i have the CD but the original vinyl is very collectable.

I 1st heard it through a Quad system many moons ago with ESL57's ! incredible.

No, I don't unfortunately

:(

[Alex_UK]

Excellent Grez, and great idea for a thread. I have got one - but it is still on the way, (and I'm now getting a bit worried...) But I will reveal all when (if) it arrives! How's that for a teaser! :eyebrows:

Well, the record has just arrived, not quite the condition I was expecting from the description on ebay, but it only cost me 99p so I musn't grumble.

It's not so much that I've been after it for years, (as it isn't hard to find) but it is that quite suddenly, (prompted by DSJR's recent auto-changer fetish I suspect) a memory just popped into my head - sitting with my grandfather in front if his radiogram (one of those big old sideboard things, with the speakers amp and tuner built in, and what I think was a Garrard auto-changer turntable.)

Anyway, this I realised is my first ever memory of "hi-fi" or at least of a record being played. I'm guessing it would have been around 1973-4, so this was an old record even then, and I guess "Grandaddy" thought it an appropriate choice for his junior audience - ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first record I ever have a memory of, and now "pride of place" in my own collection:

Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra - A Swingin' Safari (1962)

http://retrotrash.org/DB_images/lg_bert_swinginsafari.jpg

:lol:

I'm now playing it - it's bloody wonderful!

http://open.spotify.com/album/4y37Vo9sldpnOQoQ33ylyE

[The Grand Wazoo]

That album features in my childhood too Alex. It will be part of my inheritance!!

[Alex_UK]

Its really weird, because I thought it is bound to mean something to someone else, and I half-suspected it might be you Chris! I have an inkling that my Mum had a copy too, unless it was the same one that she inherited. Hopefully it is an heirloom in waiting, but at least I have a "non-sentimental" copy I can play in the meantime. It is actually very well recorded, and in a couple of years I can hold a Golden Jubilee party for it! (I've had parties for more spurious reasons!)

[The Grand Wazoo]

I've always had a thing for ladies in boots - perhaps this album is why!
Pith helmets somehow don't do it for me though............

[Grez]

Well, the record has just arrived, not quite the condition I was expecting from the description on ebay, but it only cost me 99p so I musn't grumble.

It's not so much that I've been after it for years, (as it isn't hard to find) but it is that quite suddenly, (prompted by DSJR's recent auto-changer fetish I suspect) a memory just popped into my head - sitting with my grandfather in front if his radiogram (one of those big old sideboard things, with the speakers amp and tuner built in, and what I think was a Garrard auto-changer turntable.)

Anyway, this I realised is my first ever memory of "hi-fi" or at least of a record being played. I'm guessing it would have been around 1973-4, so this was an old record even then, and I guess "Grandaddy" thought it an appropriate choice for his junior audience - ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first record I ever have a memory of, and now "pride of place" in my own collection:

Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra - A Swingin' Safari (1962)

http://retrotrash.org/DB_images/lg_bert_swinginsafari.jpg

:lol:

I'm now playing it - it's bloody wonderful!

http://open.spotify.com/album/4y37Vo9sldpnOQoQ33ylyE

Brilliant! Reminds me of listening to radio 2 with my folks when I was a kid!

[quadsugdenman]

Wonderful record - He had a very evocative distinctive sound - Reminds me of Sundays as a very young kid in the early to mid sixties listening to Two Way Family Favourites on the BBC Light programme - Before Radios 1,2,3, etc :)