The Legends of Lancaster (California) converge. Two albums Produced by Frank Zappa are registered with the National Preservation Board (Library of Congress). This is one. Note: We here at UMRK determined that the TMR Master was damaged somewhere in the years of it's return orbit. The Vaultmeister created almost in its entirety a new Master from our own Vault safety copies. And as if that wasn't enough chocolate for your Sunday sundae, we had Bob Ludwig remaster the Work for you. What you now have available to you is the definitive TROUT MASK REPLICA. Be the judge. Be the jury. Be the bongo. Be the fury!!!
Trout Mask Replica is Captain Beefheart's masterpiece, a fascinating, stunningly imaginative work that still sounds like little else in the rock & roll canon. Given total creative control by producer and friend Frank Zappa, Beefheart and his Magic Band rehearsed the material for this 28-song double album for over a year, wedding minimalistic R&B, blues, and garage rock to free jazz and avant-garde experimentalism.
Du chant à la une!… is the first album by French musician Serge Gainsbourg, released 1958. This was the debut album for Gainsbourg, released on a 10" vinyl. Despite his current vogue, Serge Gainsbourg may be a bit of an acquired taste for Americans, particularly if they don't have enough French to get his brilliant, sardonic lyrics. Personally, I think his early songs are generally his best stuff, and I would recommend starting here, on this remastered first album issued on the Mercury Records Vinyl Replica. N° 2 is the second album by French musician Serge Gainsbourg, released in 1959. It features Gainsbourg backed by the Alain Goraguer Orchestra.
This collection of vintage 1960s orchestral pop from the master of surreal Gallic eroticism includes kitsch masterpieces like "69 Annee Erotique" and Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's chart-topping "Je T'Aime (Moi Non Plus)," in a procession of jazzy instrumentals accompanied by Gainsbourg's throaty, Gitanes-coated vocals and the pertly sexy interpolations of his stunning wife.
The late French pop legend created one of the first ethno pop albums with this 1964 record, which employed heavy North African and Caribbean rhythms in the pop and jazz structures of his songs. Extraordinarily inventive in the canon of '60s Europop, Serge Gainsbourg remains the godfather of exotica and French pop decadence. Among his mid-'60s recordings, Gainsbourg Percussions is essential Gainsbourg, enhanced by Alain Goraguer's arrangements. The album contains the hit song "New York-USA" and nine of the tracks from this album appear on the compilation Couleur Café, which is a blessing considering the original version of this fantastic LP could be a little hard to track down.
You don't need to speak a word of French to understand Histoire de Melody Nelson – one needs only to look at the front cover (with its nearly pornographic portrait of a half-naked nymphet clutching a rag doll) or hear the lechery virtually dripping from Serge Gainsbourg's sleazily seductive voice to realize that this is the record your mother always warned you about, a masterpiece of perversion and corruption.
This is one messed up set. Dig the fact that this is Serge Gainsbourg in dread beat and booze. Aux Armes et Cætera is literally Gainsbourg on the rocksteady tip with Sly and Robbie, Flabba Holt, Michael "Mao" Chung, Ansel Collins, I-Threes, Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths, and Judy Mowatt, Sticky Thompson, Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace, and a bunch of French folks playing puff-the-ganja and help the white man in Kingston. Gainsbourg knew what he wanted – a Lee Perry-styled dubber and dread outing – and he knew the cats to hire to get it. It contains 15 cuts; some, such as "Javanise," are remakes, while others, ("Des Laids, Des Laids") were written for the session.
Even tolerant music fans shudder inwardly at the mention of the concept album, a largely prog rock genre that spawned many of the greatest aesthetic indiscretions of the '70s. L'Homme à Tête de Chou (The Man with the Cabbage Head) is a concept album and shares some of prog's general characteristics, but it's unlike anything emanating from rock's beardy depths. In the spirit of his 1971 masterpiece Histoire de Melody Nelson, Gainsbourg sets this album's brief tale amid a widescreen musical canvas. Whereas Melody Nelson was provocative without being explicit, the gravel-voiced Gallic lecher goes X-rated here – albeit without sacrificing his poetic élan.