Category: Music

Wonder Woman (soundtrack)

Split EnzLa-La Land Records releases a 3-CD box set of music from the 1970s Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV series, featuring music by Charles Fox, Artie Kane, Robert Prince, Johnny Harris, Robert O. Ragland, Angela Morley, and Richard LaSalle. Read more

Stranger Than Fiction: The Life And Times Of Split Enz

Order this bookStory: Original Split Enz bassist Mike Chunn, who played with the New Zealand supergroup in its formative art-rock-turned-theatrical-extravaganza phase (1972-77) charts the formation, the heady rise and eventual success of the group, with comments from all of his bandmates and his own insider perspective.

Review: Can there ever really be enough books about the musical career of the Finn Brothers? (For this reader: no. As it so happens, the first book ever reviewed in this section was a book on this very topic.) And strangely enough, the aforementioned book about Crowded House quoted this book heavily: primary source material if ever there was some. And source material doesn’t get much more primary than the memoir of one of the founding members of Split Enz.

Dudley Simpson, composer, dies

Dudley SimpsonDudley Simpson, the Australian-born veteran BBC composer whose sound defined Doctor Who in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as such series as Blake’s 7, The Tomorrow People, Moonbase 3, and many others, dies at the age of 95. Simpson scored his first Doctor Who serial, the second season opener Planet Of Giants, in 1964 at a time when the series often relied on stock music. He solidified his position as Doctor Who’s house composer during the Troughton era, scoring pivotal stories such as The Evil Of The Daleks, The Ice Warriors and The War Games, and became the dominant musical sound of the series during the Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, during which he provided all but a handful of original scores and stock music fell by the wayside. It was only when incoming producer John Nathan-Turner took over as Doctor Who’s showrunner in 1980 that Simpson’s Doctor Who tenure ended. He retired to Australia in the 1990s.

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors (expanded soundtrack)

The Five DoctorsSilva Screen Record releases an expanded edition of Peter Howell’s soundtrack from the 1983 Doctor Who 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors, including music from both the original 1983 broadcast version and the additional material from the extended home video version. Read more

Raymond Scott: The Jingle Workshop – Midcentury Musical Miniatures 1951–1965

The Jingle WorkshopModern Harmonic releases The Jingle Workshop – Midcentury Musical Miniatures 1951–1965, an album of classic radio advertising jingles written and performed by Raymond Scott (frequently with vocals by his wife, Dorothy Collins). The album includes jingles played by both traditional instruments and entirely electronic pieces, both with and without vocals, and features a book of extensive liner notes. Read more

Neil Innes, songwriter, dies

Neil InnesSongwriter and occasional actor Neil Innes, best known for his association with Monty Python, The Rutles, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, dies unexpectedly at the age of 75. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s hit “I’m The Urban Spaceman” brought him into the orbit of the Beatles, and he contributed a background track to their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour. His participation in a later parody of the Beatles, the Rutles, led to TV specials and well-received albums, which counted among their fans and participants the former members of the Beatles themselves. Innes contributed material to the shortened final season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which made him one of only two members outside of the Python troupe to write material for the show (the other was future Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams); his work with the Pythons continued into their feature films in the 1970s and early ’80s; he was also a cast member in the Pythons’ live performances during this period.