Geoff Love's BIG BOND MOVIE THEMES
Simon Bermuda
Posts: 4MI6 Agent
Does anyone else remember this album of cut-price instrumental cover versions? As a schoolboy back in the '70s, I had to make do with this record, costing, if I recall, 50p from Woolworth's, as my pocket money wouldn't stretch to the official Bond soundtracks. I didn't sound too bad, provided you didn't have the originals to compare it with.
Comments
Jazz you old fraudster!! You know it's worth at least 75p!!
Side note: I would recommend anyone to listen to this, Jazz is doing himself a disservice ...
Hey, this is a 'blast from the past'. I has this LP still, along with a lot of other Geoff Love LP's.
Does anyone remember the 'Roland Shaw Orchestra'?. I think he captured the spirit of the Bond Sound fairly well.
Cheers,
Ian
(Does anyone also remember Geoff Love's BIG WAR MOVIE THEMES and BIG SPACE MOVIE THEMES?)
Luckily I got another Bond compilation of John Barry's stuff (original) from Dr No to DAF. It was a classy looking double album with gunbarrels on a dark blue cover, one for each film with a pic from the film eg Andress in DN, classic Connery pose for FRWL, the SPECTRE meeting in TB, the volcano in YOLT and Bond on his Las Vegas wire trip for DAF. Great packaging.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
As a kid, this was the first album of John Barry's Bond music I owned. It was a prize possession... especially since, at the time that I bought it, I hadn't yet seen all of the movies from Dr. No to DAF. (I was yet to see FRWL, YOLT and OHMSS... so the selection of tracks whetted my appetite for these wonderful movies.) The blue cover with the encircled movie stills added to the lustre.
I loved this album... Geoff Love and His Orchestra were quite popular back in the 70s, and they made a fair fist of covering all the title tracks. (At least there were no tacky covers of the vocals... it was purely instrumental.)
As a kid I used to pore over the splendid album cover while listening to the record... I loved the way in which the cover painting merged the worlds of Moore's Bond with Connery's Bond and Lazenby's Bond as if they all belonged together in a single splendid movie poster! (Plus, Roger never looked better than in that painted pose which featured on the posters for both LLD and TMWTGG - and which was brilliantly re-hashed as the centrepiece for this Geoff Love album cover.)
It was also interesting how the line-up of tracks placed 'Casino Royale' alongside the other entries as if it was part of 'the canon'. Indeed, the 'Casino Royale' cover version was the highlight of the album.
Most interesting of all, the theme for TMWTGG seemed to have climactic importance... just because TMWTGG was the most recent Bond film!
The one you are thinking about is called "Cafe Martinique" and it's not the same - it's an instrumental of MKKBB, not TB. Geoff Love used a lungy version of TB which was recoreded only for the soundtrack as "Thunderball (Instrumental)" but an alternate take of it made it to the movie as well, when Bond arrives to the casino.
The Crime Lounge has more information on these spy music albums.
Rewatched this recently and you are right of course. Geoff's version was very nice I thought, whatever it was supposed to be. Pity my car cassette player chewed that one up.
And do you remember the discs had an unusaul arrangement of "sides". Disc 1 had sides 1 and 4 while disc 2 contained sides 2 and 3. I assume that this was so that they could be played on the multi-stack spindle, you just placed disc 2 on top of disc 1 and when they had both played (side 1 then side 2), flipped the 2 discs together to play sides 3 and 4, a great arrangement - although multi-stacking was supposed to be used for singles and not albums. I also have a french pressing of this album where they used the conventional method of using sides 1 & 2 on disc 1 with sides 3 & 4 on disc 2.
Ah, nostalgia time! I had that album too, and remember the sides situation you say. It was a great compilation in its day- some of the tracks were edited, though.
Oh yeh definate nostalgia! I dont know about 007 music, but I ahve copies of Blonde on Blonde, Exile on Main Street, Electric Ladyland and The Beatles that all have this 1 & 4 and 2 & 3 stuff. Of course Elvis' From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis was two separate albums sold together so you didnt have to separate. Stacking was a wierd idea. It ruined your vinyl. I replaced all my originals years ago. And then got the blessed CDs.
And now the live half of that set is a 2CD in its own right from the FTD label. (The studio half has been recompiled endlessly for years.)
Yeah I remember that! I always thought that was a mistake! I took it back originally (and belatedly) because it dawned on me there was a pamplet insert missing with loads of b+w pics of films I'd hardly ever seen and only on b+w telly. No DVDs or videos back then!
Always wanted a follow up for the Moore years, with red packaging!
Roger Moore 1927-2017