Another strange wee review for my pal Russ's zine. People had to write about their favourite albums of 1985, but when the ones I wanted to do were already taken I got in a huff and did something stupid instead! To be honest, it's not a great piece, I'm trying to justify the whole of my interest in easy listening and review an album in a few hundred words and I don't think I manage to chew everything I've bitten off there. But, it's probably the best James Last review you'll read today.
Oh, and in breaking news, Discogs lists this as released in '86, so it doesn't even fit the brief! But the sleeve makes it look like it was released in '85.
And in doubly breaking news, this full Last discography says '85, so I think it's OK. Phew. www.grandorchestras.com/jlast/albums/jlast-discography-reference.html
JAMES LAST - SWING MIT JAMES LAST (Polydor)
In the mid-90s, some friends and I would buy old uncool vinyl for pennies, and spin it whilst drinking cheap wine. The decision to listen to music we thought tawdry was conscious and ironic (the decision to drink cheap wine was, however, purely economic). But after a while doing something you don’t like for the sake of supercilious wryness paled, so we stopped...at which point I realised that I had not been disliking all the music at which I performatively sneered, and started to go back to some – though, dear God, not all – of those cheesy platters. Of all the easy and exotica acts to whom I came back - Kaempfaert, Denny, Alpert – James Last towers over them all, like the Colossus of Rhodes in a spangly jacket.
In one way I still listen to easy listening ironically, in that I am conscious of the distance from the context and culture in which it was made – this is just as true as when I listen to Renaissance motets or roots reggae. And easy listening can sound odd. It’s perhaps down to the intense primacy melody has, and when arrangements and performance decisions are based wholly on supporting a tune-delivery system, some unusual choices can be made. Sometimes I find this sort of music quite psychedelic, even though it wasn’t the intention of the creators (then again, Victorian children’s illustrators didn’t intend for their work to look trippy to 60s Haight Ashbury stoners, either).
Swing Mit... is ostensibly a tribute to the big-band sound, as the name implies, although the material comes from a range of sources, from Ellington mainstay Juan Tizol to Romantic composer Offenbach, from jukebox jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic, to no fewer than 3 tracks written by or associated with Huey Lewis & The News for some inexplicable reason. The album opens with 'Study In Brown', a bona-fide swing classic written by bandleader Larry Clinton, which Last strips down till it's functional and smooth to the point of being undetectable by radar. This could have been the underscore in a round in The Generation Game. 'Perdido' is also a piece of utilitarian swing with some breathy female vocals doubling the horn lines, and buried so deep in the mix you might miss them – this was a common trick of Last’s, possibly because he didn’t want to foreground too many English lyrics for his pan-European consumers – and 'All By Myself' (no, not that one) is a bouncy confection that could have accompanied illusionists at the Palladium.
But it’s the more unusual selections that stand out. 'Nutcracker' is credited to Peter Hesslein and Frank Jarnach, but this is a blag because it’s a march written by Tchaikovsky, and the arrangement owes a lot to B Bumble & The Stingers’ novelty rock ‘n’ roll version, 'Nut Rocker', but this has a meatier kick drum and some yummy Vangelis synths. 'Who Cares' is a track from Huey Lewis’s debut album (again, don’t ask me why), and whilst it’s one of his better power-pop tracks, this version punches far harder, with sharp horns stabbing ever more wildly above the insistent earthy bass ostinato, with the breathy backing babes intoning the title occasionally. This is tight and infectious, and has at least as much energy as a hundred rediscovered disco cuts now selling for funny money. The album ends with what may be the best track, 'The Heart Of Rock And Roll' by Huey Lewis (I repeat, what the fuck?), which removes his smug demeanour, burnishes the music to an almost krautrock sleekness, and has the backing ladies deliver fragmentary words and phrases with a strange dub logic.
This is not the best album of 1985 – that's Steve McQueen, Fables Of The Reconstruction, or Rum, Sodomy And The Lash - and it’s a fair way from being James Last’s best album, which are all from the 70s - but there is music here of a near post-human tightness and directness you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere in the era. Take a listen...but pick up some half-decent wine.
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