I got home last night and stayed up watching Time Life’s ‘Soul Story’ on tv and I always get the urge to write down the names of artists I like from those 8 second clips they show you of what’s on the CD, and last night I did it. haha. I wrote down names such as, Barbara Lynn, The Miracles, J. J. Jackson, etc. And then I went on a crazed downloading fit and found this index from some teacher’s school files where she had uploaded tons of good ol’ oldies.

Anyway this track by The Tornados stuck out, and I did some research on them, meaning I went to Wikipedia and this is what is says:

The Tornados (in the U.S. they were credited as The Tornadoes) were an English instrumental group of the 1960s, who acted as the in-house back-up group for many of Joe Meek’s productions.

The Tornados also enjoyed several chart hits in their own right, including the Number One “Telstar” (named after the satellite and composed by Meek). It was the first U.S. Number One by a British group. The song was featured a clavioline, a keyboard instrument with a distinctive electronic sound.

This novelty record was intended to evoke the dawn of the space age, complete with sound effects that were meant to sound “space-like”. A popular story at the time of the record’s release was that the weird distortions and background noise came from sending the signal up to the Telstar satellite and re-recording it back on Earth. However, is more likely that the effects were created in Meek’s recording studio, which was a small flat above a shop in London. It has been claimed that the sounds intended to symbolize radio signals were produced by Meek running a pen around the rim of an ashtray, and that the “rocket blastoff” at the start of the record was actually a flushing toilet, with the recordings made to sound exotic by playing the tape in reverse at various speeds.

Warning: This is an instrumental song.

Listen: The Tornados - Telestar (1962)
(give it some time to load, hypem was being difficult. if you have trouble with it playing, click ‘read more’ and click the actual music link inside the blog post)

Yea? yeah? yeah????!! yes. You know its great.

After seeing the Darjeeling Limited over the weekend it became clear that the music Wes Anderson chooses for his movies, make the movies. I went on an Anderson binge over the weekend, watching the Royal Tenenbaums twice, seeing his new movie, and now I’m here waiting for my friend across the hall to let me borrow Bottle Rocket from him.

What’s so great about Wes’ style? How can a slow motion image of Adrian Brody running to catch a train make you instantly grin when the music comes in? (’This Time Tomorrow’ by the Kinks) Or in the Royal Tenenbaums when Margot gets off the green line bus to meet Richie and the film slows down? (’These Days’ by Nico) It’s simply awesome music choice.

Music links after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »