TROTTERBOOKS.COM 

Woody ALLEN, The Night Club Years (1964-68). Well, here’s where some of his best and most recycled schtick came from. A little goes a long way, but here’s about two hours of prime material. Source has some light scratches; nothing gross … so to speak.

BAUDILAIRE: “Flowers of Evil:” Yvette Mimieaux, speaker; Ali Akbahr Khan, sitar. (Not as campy as you’d expect – she reads the poems with plenty of sultry inflection and the sitar improvisations would probably have appealed to Baudilaire as well, depending on his hash-hish intake at the time he heard them.)

“CHANT BY THE DALAI LAMA”: [Date, venue and Karmic state-of-affairs are not given on the Source tape, but on the basis of the integrity of the man who loaned it to me, I think it’s safe to say that this really IS the actual Dalai Lama and whilst I am generally skeptical of such things, I have to tell you that I found this to be a compelling and eerily positive listening-experience. The repetition of the sounds, recorded in what sounds like a large, stone-walled chamber, sets up harmonically-convergent Alpha waves (or something….) and after 15-20 minutes, it blissed me right out. His Holiness has a pleasant baritone voice, smooth accurate intonation, but with a touch of huskiness at the edges, and throughout the 76-plus minutes of this CD, he never sounds fatigued or less-than-dedicated to the ritual he’s practicing. Whatta guy! No, seriously, this is the Real Thing, folks, and if you listen IN-to (as opposed to…well, you know what I’m trying to say), you will get something out of the experience. Send me emails and let me know – after my own unexpectedly positive reaction, I’d be curious to learn about the effect it has on other people.)

John DONNE:

The Love Poems of John Donne. Richard Burton. [Waxed in 1962, when Burton was at the height of his considerable powers, this goes on my list of the Best Ten Spoken Word Recordings Ever Wuz. Burton uses his voice like E. Power Biggs used a pipe organ – by turns smoldering, anguished, smoky with lust, consumed with passion; perfect, just perfect for this greatest-of-all-love poetry in the English language. Source in near-mint condition. One of the great make-out records of all time.]

Antoine de Saint-Exupery) The Little Prince: [Absolutely enchanting. The late lamented Peter Ustinov (The Last Truly Civilized Man in Europe?) reads all the voice-parts and contributes his trademark sound-effects as he goes along. Requires approximately 1 and 1/3rd CDs, so pick something else for the leftover space. Interesting footnote: musical interludes are from one of the first LPs ever made by Marriner and the Academy of St. Martins-in-the-Field (their first disc, for Argo, was released in, I believe, 1969, and this 2-disc set was released in 1972; the music, by the way, is from Mozart’s Notturno for Four Orchestras – a cool bonus indeed, and the Source is near-mint.]

FITZGERALD, F. Scott: Excerpts from Gatsby, The Crack-up and This Side of Paradise, read by Franchot Tone. What a pleasant surprise was this! The vastly under-rated Tone reads these excerpts with just the perfect amalgam of world-weariness, fading youth, and flashes of cockiness. I don’t recall ever hearing a recording of Fitzgerald’s voice, but Tone is so convincing I don’t want to hear this marvelous prose read by anyone else. Source is ultra-rare Riverside LP in excellent condition. Total time: 61:37]

FLANDERS & SWAN: THE BESTIARY. [Two gentle, wry, ever-so-civilized English gentlemen who made millions smile and sing-along with their Winnie-the-Pooh style songs; back in a time when “comedy” didn’t rely on four-letter words to amuse a mass audience. But then, the mass audience was considerably better educated than the culturally clueless zombies and fad-followers of today. If you’re old enough to remember such sweetly memorable ditties as “The Warthog” and “The Sloth”, this album is like a time machine. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face and a warm glow in your heart.]

ISHERWOOD, Christopher: Readings from “Goodbye to Berlin” , “Prater Violet”, and “The Condor and the Cows”. Eloquent, wry, sharply observant… not all writers make ideal readers of their own work, but Isherwood is one of the exceptions. If you like his published works, you’ll surely enjoy hearing this unique “interpretation”. Source is a Caedmon LP that was still in its original shrink wrap when I found the record in a Goodwill Industries thrift shop … for one buck! I rummage through the record/tape department in Goodwill’s big Guilford County store at least once a month because, well, you just never know! Hidden behind those moldering, scratched up copies of “Charo’s Greatest Hits” and “Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam”, you sometimes discover something like this!]

KING, Alexander reads from his works, including the best-seller “Mine Enemy Grows Older”. Remember this guy? I barely do, but it’s witty stuff, sort of James Thurberish.

“THE KING OF ELFLAND’S DAUGHTER” W/ Christopher Lee, Mary Hopkin; Alex Korner; P.P. Arnold; Derek Brimstone; music & lyrics by Bob Johnson & Pete Knight. [Here’s a “concept” album almost as ghastly as the Richard Burton “War of the Worlds”, embellished by the kind of faux-Wagnerian musical tapestry that Rick Wakeman, poor sod, might have dreamed-up when he was sleeping off a terrible case of indigestion on top of some murderous phony LSD that was cut with dried mushroom powder and cat tranquilizers. Christopher Lee, usually reliable even in the cheesiest sort of dreck, sounds like he’s sleep-reading his lines and is terribly embarrassed at the thought of Lord Dunsany’s corpse rolling over in its grave… So atrociously bad it’s almost cool.]

“LEMMINGS” – The Original National Lampoon Stage Show!! [In 1977, a group of aspiring young comedians pooled their considerable talents and mounted a hysterical, at times downright savage, parody of the Woodstock Festival. Among the prominent contributors/performers were John Belushi, Sean Kelly, Chevy Chase, P.J. O’Rouke and the still-brilliant Christopher Guest. On this now legendary “original cast album”, you can hear the seeds of such later classics as This is Spinal Tap and numerous routines later honed to perfection on the early seasons of Saturday Night Live. The song parodies are nothing less than brilliant, puncturing the bloated reputations of such icons as Bob Dylan, Jimmie Hendrex, the Grateful Dead, and the then-ethereal Miss Baez. My personal favorite is the absolutely merciless send-up of John Denver’s gloppy “Rocky Mountain High”, which includes such inspired verses as:

We had time and space and freedom,

We had love and peace to spare,

Though we ran out of things to smoke,

And say and do and wear;

And the morning of the avalanche,

A Yeti kidnapped Blanche

And took her to his cave up in the Rockies.

The baby didn’t die until we’d burned up all the wood.

Considering we ate her raw, she tasted pretty good!

And then the Fascist health inspectors

Dug us out and mailed us home –

Except for Blanche, who would not leave her mate.

For all of us who just endured the Sixties rather than participate in them, and who thought most of “what was happenin’ “ was puerile, self-indulgent horseshit, this now-rare album remains as funny and liberating as ever!

MARLOWE, Christopher: “Dr. Faustus”, starring Richard Burton as Faust & (so help me God, I’m not making this up) Liz Taylor as Helen of Troy! Mind you, I adored Burton’s acting, even after he descended into self-parody (which he did almost as fast as Marlon Brando). Indeed, I was fortunate enough to see his near-mythical version of Hamlet on Broadway in 1963, while both Burton and the affair with Taylor were still relatively fresh; it was a sonorous, orotund, Dylan Thomas-like Hamlet – somehow Burton put me in mind of Orson Welles after losing 200 pounds. But in this 1963 production of Marlowe’s over-heated version of the Faust legend, Burton not only chews the scenery to shreds, he gargles with the left-over bits. As for Ms. Taylor as Helen, well, one may in this case give thanks for the lack a of video! The occasion was a benefit for the Oxford University Drama Society (only dedicated theater mavens will recognize any other names in the cast & crew, and there’s enough ham in these grooves to open a deli!) My Source is in excellent condition – Marlowe’s play is already hysterical and campy enough without Burton sliding the vowels down his Welsh throat like a geek trying to set the Guinness record for swallowing raw eggs… Time: 54:15]

MASTERS, Edgar Lee: “Spoon River Anthology”. From the early Sixties, in good stereo, a staged reading/production of Masters’ poetic epic. An impressive cast: Betty Garrett; Robert Elston; Joyce van Patten; Charles Aidman. (Source tape has no timings; approx. 50 minutes)

“THE DAYS OF WILFRED OWEN”, read by Richard Burton. “This is not about heroes./ English poetry is not yet fit/ to speak of them…” The readings derive from a BBC documentary shown in 1963. Burton is in prime voice – like a pipe organ, those rounded, sonorous Welsh cadences! He was in his prime here; not the cracked-voiced, heavy-smoker’s and alcoholic’s croak he produced by the time he got around to “Virginia Woolf”! Owen’s war-poems are perhaps the finest in our language and his images of combat and random death surely the most vibrant since Shakespeare’s. Burton invests them with dignity, pathos, and understated bitterness – truly the voice of a poet speaking from beyond the demarcation of his pointless and ghastly death (Owen was killed exactly one week before the German surrender; he was 25 years old…) An ineffably moving and treasurable disc; also an exceedingly rare one, which is unlikely ever to be reissued.]

STEVENS, Wallace: Reading his own works, including the pivotal “Idea of Order at Key West”, and “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”; also some brief extemporaneous remarks on “The Theory of Poetry”.

*** PARTY RECORD ALERT!!!***

SIDNEY POITIER READS PLATO

Yes, you read that right. All the Gargantuan Greek’s biggest hits, including “This I know – That I know Nothing”, “Immortality of the Soul”, and, um, that bit about living in a cave!! No one will accuse you of sophistry when you slap this disc on at your next MENSA get-together! Sonorous, thoughtful interpretations, subtly backed up by West Coast Jazz legend, Fred Katz and his combo!!

TENNYSON, Poetry of: read by Dame Sybil Thorndyke T. 48:05.

USTINOV, Peter: PETER USTINOV LECTURES ON CHAMBER MUSIC. The Last Civilized Man in Europe holds forth for 43:28 on one of his favorite subjects, with his trademark wit, intelligence, and charm. New-comers will learn a lot; connoisseurs will be delighted.