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Posted: |
Nov 24, 2014 - 4:38 PM
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By: |
finder4545
(Member)
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I wonder if one of the most enjoyable scores of Elmer Bernstein, going back to the late 60’s, is rightly remembered by fans, or even well known: I’m talking of I LOVE YOU ALICE B.TOKLAS, by Hy Averback, 1968.
No pretentious (correct myself: "ambitious") work in the great manner of “Commandments”, but absolutely delightful and entertaining.
I remember that after having listened the not-official album for the first time, years ago, found myself in a “full immersion” with it for weeks, with countless playings that made this score as a sort of “sound of my house”.
After many years, rehandling the album, I have been again enraptured and fascinated by its beauty, poetry, light-heartedness, humour and rhythm, remaining surprised for the absence of an official release.
Maybe the soundtrack suffered a lack of presence, on the movie, having been badly edited and mixed, with cues trunked or dissolved, but on the album the Bernstein score is a vivid musical experience, in its genre, in everyone of its 45 minutes, and in some way is a true musical tour-de-force of a Bernstein in top form, who gives his personal rendition, in musical terms, of the new coming era.
The film, going directly to the turning point of 1968, far from reconstruction or imitation, appears by now to be a direct document of the changing time, and Bernstein, with his music, gives excitements and nostalgia. I think it is a pure gold that deserves a complete release.
Have someone the same opinion?
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I couldn't agree more! Elmer's music certainly captures the zeitgeist of the 60s and lends much to the humor of the film. I had the same LP until a friend transferred it to CD for me a few years ago. Love the sitar and the goofy song, and would happily snap up a legit release if it ever becomes available. I seem to recall some previous discussion here to the effect that the original tapes are long gone or at least unlocated as of yet.
(I wonder how "Hans Rossbach" is doing these days...)
I enjoyed the film when I first saw it in the cinema and I always try to watch it when it turns up on TV. I really love the score, so catchy and full of those special Elmer touches that we love. I'd instantly order a release, always hoping it will see a release some day!
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Posted: |
Nov 25, 2014 - 4:29 PM
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By: |
finder4545
(Member)
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I was going to chime in totally agreeing but I always saw Elmer striking a nice balance. In TOKLAS, which tried to have it both ways, lampooning the middle class (Elmer gives Harold Fine an automobile theme as he drives around LA looking for off ramps and "something better") Plus satirizing the counter culture of gurus and hippies (with Bernstein's psychedelic arsenal). THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is no more pretentious trying to have both a "classics illustrated" version of the Bible and letting Demille get away with a certain amount of sex and violence and soap opera because it is contained therein.
...or call them both pretentious....
Morricone, thank you for having pointed out my mistake, due to a hurried translation: my mind was thinking "ambitious" while hand was writing "pretentious", in assonance with a more soft Italian "pretenzioso" often used in certain contexts in a possible positive sense. I intended to refer just to the range covered by Bernstein with angular movements from GOLDEN ARM to COMMANDMENTS to ALICE B.TOKLAS and so on, spanning time and genres. Sorry to have given impression to denigrate the genius of the most eclectic composer in the cinema universe, who did opposite kind of works with the left and the right hand at the same time, with high success. However I think the mood of my post was clear, and the same was my love for Elmer Bernstein. Many thanks also for having addressed to your previous thread of ALICE B.TOKLAS, which was completely out of my knowledge. Impressive and deeply analytic about the movie and the score, absorbing this thread point by point and even word for word.
About those glorious Cinema Records album "conducted by Hans Rossbach", I remain confused to see someone speaking of him as a real existing person: commonly admitted, at the time, "Rossbach" was a ghost name to bypass legal issues here in Europe, where the discs were pressed.
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Niall From Ireland once told me he meet Hans Rossbach when Mr. Rossbach was in Dublin conducting a concert. Perhaps Niall will further enlighten us?
Ha ha, very funny Peter! We've had a lot of strange folks visiting Dublin over the years but Hans Rossbach wasn't one of them! However I can tell you a story, a true story about when I was chatting with Elmer Bernstein in his dressing room after his Dublin Music Week concert at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin on 28 March 1974. A friend of mine had brought the Cinema LPs back from London for me as a present and at time most people hadn't a clue as to who this mysterious Hans Rossbach was? But I had suspected from listening to the wonderful music that HR was a false name.
Anyway, Mr. Bernstein had graciously finished signing a lot of LP sleeves for me when I produced the dubious Hans Rossbach releases! I took the LPs out of the bag after he had finished signing all the other bona fide LPs, clever enough of me I suppose, lol! I said to him "have a look at these"! Aaaaaaaggh Elmer wasn't happy at all and immediately said to me "I am not signing those" yikes! I immediately blurted out "oh no, I wasn't going to ask you to sign them, I only wanted to show them to you" (which was the truth). I suppose it was a very naive thing for me to do but I did want to bring them to his attention in case he hadn't know about them? We didn't have the information technology back then that we have nowadays. I said "I knew just by listening to the recordings that it was yourself conducting" and the dear man relaxed. Phew, the moment of crisis passed! Elmer didn't mention HR at all but he went on to say that the releases were not authorised and that he was hoping to bring the music out sometime in the future on his own Elmer Bernstein's Fim Music Collection club label.
For a moment back then I thought that Elmer was going to grab the LPs from my hands and dance a jig on them, but of course he was too much of a nice guy and gentleman to do any such thing. So, I kept my 'boots' and survived to meet Elmer Bernstein another day!
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Posted: |
Nov 26, 2014 - 3:35 PM
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By: |
PFK
(Member)
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I was going to chime in totally agreeing but I always saw Elmer striking a nice balance. In TOKLAS, which tried to have it both ways, lampooning the middle class (Elmer gives Harold Fine an automobile theme as he drives around LA looking for off ramps and "something better") Plus satirizing the counter culture of gurus and hippies (with Bernstein's psychedelic arsenal). THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is no more pretentious trying to have both a "classics illustrated" version of the Bible and letting Demille get away with a certain amount of sex and violence and soap opera because it is contained therein.
...or call them both pretentious....
Morricone, thank you for having pointed out my mistake, due to a hurried translation: my mind was thinking "ambitious" while hand was writing "pretentious", in assonance with a more soft Italian "pretenzioso" often used in certain contexts in a possible positive sense. I intended to refer just to the range covered by Bernstein with angular movements from GOLDEN ARM to COMMANDMENTS to ALICE B.TOKLAS and so on, spanning time and genres. Sorry to have given impression to denigrate the genius of the most eclectic composer in the cinema universe, who did opposite kind of works with the left and the right hand at the same time, with high success. However I think the mood of my post was clear, and the same was my love for Elmer Bernstein. Many thanks also for having addressed to your previous thread of ALICE B.TOKLAS, which was completely out of my knowledge. Impressive and deeply analytic about the movie and the score, absorbing this thread point by point and even word for word.
About those glorious Cinema Records album "conducted by Hans Rossbach", I remain confused to see someone speaking of him as a real existing person: commonly admitted, at the time, "Rossbach" was a ghost name to bypass legal issues here in Europe, where the discs were pressed.
" ...... here in Europe, where the discs were pressed."
As far as I know the LPs were pressed in the USA, probably Los Angeles. They were made to look like European records. Same with the POO LPs, made in Los Angeles made to look like they were from Japan. My cousin married a Japanese girl who could read Japanese. She said the Japanese words on the POO LPs notes had nothing to do with films or music!
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Posted: |
Nov 26, 2014 - 4:55 PM
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By: |
PFK
(Member)
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Niall From Ireland once told me he meet Hans Rossbach when Mr. Rossbach was in Dublin conducting a concert. Perhaps Niall will further enlighten us?
Ha ha, very funny Peter! We've had a lot of strange folks visiting Dublin over the years but Hans Rossbach wasn't one of them! However I can tell you a story, a true story about when I was chatting with Elmer Bernstein in his dressing room after his Dublin Music Week concert at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin on 28 March 1974. A friend of mine had brought the Cinema LPs back from London for me as a present and at time most people hadn't a clue as to who this mysterious Hans Rossbach was? But I had suspected from listening to the wonderful music that HR was a false name.
Anyway, Mr. Bernstein had graciously finished signing a lot of LP sleeves for me when I produced the dubious Hans Rossbach releases! I took the LPs out of the bag after he had finished signing all the other bona fide LPs, clever enough of me I suppose, lol! I said to him "have a look at these"! Aaaaaaaggh Elmer wasn't happy at all and immediately said to me "I am not signing those" yikes! I immediately blurted out "oh no, I wasn't going to ask you to sign them, I only wanted to show them to you" (which was the truth). I suppose it was a very naive thing for me to do but I did want to bring them to his attention in case he hadn't know about them? We didn't have the information technology back then that we have nowadays. I said "I knew just by listening to the recordings that it was yourself conducting" and the dear man relaxed. Phew, the moment of crisis passed! Elmer didn't mention HR at all but he went on to say that the releases were not authorised and that he was hoping to bring the music out sometime in the future on his own Elmer Bernstein's Fim Music Collection club label.
For a moment back then I thought that Elmer was going to grab the LPs from my hands and dance a jig on them, but of course he was too much of a nice guy and gentleman to do any such thing. So, I kept my 'boots' and survived to meet Elmer Bernstein another day!
Niall, you might enjoy this story.
In the early 1970s I saw Page Cook several times. He told me Bernard Herrmann walked into Sam Goodys Record Store in New York City. Herrmann spotted a stack of the Cinema b**t records to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and promptly started to whack the records with his umbrella!
Page Cook could stretch the truth a bit at times, but I like to think this story is true! 
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Posted: |
Dec 1, 2014 - 2:42 AM
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By: |
finder4545
(Member)
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No mystery that the Cinema Records LPs, pressed or not in Europe, were not legit ones and carried “by tricks” not licensed materials (who seriously can believe “Hans Rossbach” conducting “note-per-note” the exact same of the long originals?), and no wonder that Japan-like boots reproduced strange notes on their covers.
The interesting, today, is that some of these boots contain recorded materials believed to have gone lost or mislaid, and ALICE B.TOKLAS - just to return to the thread - seems to be one of these.
Said that even specialized “detective-labels” (Kritzerland, Intrada, La-la Land), “if” and “when” willing to do a release of this now extraordinary “cult score” of Bernstein, would find almost impossible to locate a master, I think this boot can be a resource and give opportunity to recover something of the composer remained unknown for decades, not surviving in other form, virtually lost forever.
I remember that when these boots appeared, was told they were of degradable vinyl and would have not survived more than a few years. This, fortunately, turned out to be not true, as the copy I played countless times at the beginning, resurrected recently, after decades, sounds near to perfection as the first time, and shows the unexpected quality of the analogue recordings of the era, full of harmonics and details, with deep bass, brilliant highs, a clear image of the instruments even if in mono, no hiss, no rumble. A true triumph of the vinyl through the years (by the way, I read Intrada is re-introducing this format in a special line).
Subsequently, if this boot recording of ALICE B.TOKLAS seems to be a quasi-replica of the first generation material, I wonder if it can be of help to regain a new master of almost perfect quality, for the joy and knowledge of today’s Bernstein enthusiasts.
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No mystery that the Cinema Records LPs, pressed or not in Europe, were not legit ones and carried “by tricks” not licensed materials (who seriously can believe “Hans Rossbach” conducting “note-per-note” the exact same of the long originals?), and no wonder that Japan-like boots reproduced strange notes on their covers.
The interesting, today, is that some of these boots contain recorded materials believed to have gone lost or mislaid, and ALICE B.TOKLAS - just to return to the thread - seems to be one of these.
Said that even specialized “detective-labels” (Kritzerland, Intrada, La-la Land), “if” and “when” willing to do a release of this now extraordinary “cult score” of Bernstein, would find almost impossible to locate a master, I think this boot can be a resource and give opportunity to recover something of the composer remained unknown for decades, not surviving in other form, virtually lost forever.
I remember that when these boots appeared, was told they were of degradable vinyl and would have not survived more than a few years. This, fortunately, turned out to be not true, as the copy I played countless times at the beginning, resurrected recently, after decades, sounds near to perfection as the first time, and shows the unexpected quality of the analogue recordings of the era, full of harmonics and details, with deep bass, brilliant highs, a clear image of the instruments even if in mono, no hiss, no rumble. A true triumph of the vinyl through the years (by the way, I read Intrada is re-introducing this format in a special line).
Subsequently, if this boot recording of ALICE B.TOKLA seems to be a quasi-replica of the first generation material, I wonder if it can be of help to regain a new master of almost perfect quality, for the joy and knowledge of today’s Bernstein enthusiasts.
I completely agree, and I'm in for a legit release even if it is from a copy of 'boot' vinyl sources?
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