Friday, July 16, 2010

Spaghetti Western New Years Eve at the Beach!


Some mystery EP from China, circa late 60's, found at some thrift. Nothing about this leaped out at me. There wasn't one persuading factor which ignited my crate-digger-geek-sense into a frenzied, palpitating, deep throb somewhere south of where a belly-button should be. But I bought it anyway. And if it was crap, it was a quarter lost, so no big problem. 

A trebly guitar is partnered up with an organ for a voiceless rendition of "Come Back to Sorrento", a tune dating back to 1905 and covered by just about everybody and their grandma including Placido Domingo and Meat Loaf. A nice relaxing number. 
For some reason we're then ringing in the new year (1968 I believe) with reverb and one of those ratchety-things you play with your hands... as opposed to an instrument that isn't played with one's hands... um... and note the D instead of a G. 
Flip side! Clint Eastwood! No, not the Gorillaz tune, but two cuts from the soundtrack of For a Few Dollars More.

A slightly-surfy mystery disc. Until someone comes along and translates this so I can credit it all.
Enjoy!

Come Back to Sorrento
Auld Land Syne
Dollars
Titoli


1 comments:

KL from NYC said...

The Chinese writing on the cover is "Traditional" not "Simplified," so it's likely from Hong Kong or Taiwan (Mainland China changed to "Simplified" after communism). Singapore used Traditional writing before 1969, and they had a thriving recording industry (including major labels like Philips), so that's a possibility, also.

The words at the top and across the bottom are names, so you'd have to determine the area to figure out which language they speak -- Hong Kong uses Cantonese; Taiwan uses Mandarin.
Chinese characters are just symbols and people's names change when they're spoken in different areas.

Since this is probably from the 1960s, don't be surprised if this was considered to be a garage band, and/or if the group is actually from Southeast Asia or thereabouts.
GarageHangover.com has a bunch of Asian garage band EPs, and Mr. Ed has posted batches of them from time to time.