I don´t care about cars. I don´t even have a drivers licence. You don´t need one in this city. Public transportation is very reliable and besides that pretty much everywhere I need to go I can go by bicycle. I´m a little busy this week so these posts are going to be short. Just good music.

The Tigers were some guys from the Deuce Coupes who were involved in the California Surf and Hot Rod scene. This record was advertising for the new 1965 Pontiac GeeTO Tiger. Two great Surf/Hot Rod tunes. I like the semi-instrumental b-side GeeTO Prowl even better…

THE TIGERS, GeeTO Tiger, 1965

THE TIGERS, The GeeTO Prowl, 1965

Drag Race is a nervous piano-driven instrumental song but it doesn´t really have anything to do with Hod Rods. Tipsy has the same leading piano mixed with the sound of a bottle being opened, alcohol being  poured and some glasses clinked. Does this record advocate drunk driving?

Anyway two great Rock´n`Roll instrumentals!

BILLY SHERRILL, Drag Race, 1963

BILLY SHERRILL, Tipsy, 1963

This is a soundtrack from the MGM-film Grand Prix directed by John Frankenheimer and starring James Garner, Eva Maria Saint and Yves Montand. The title track is  crap but Speed International is a really cool organ and percussion driven beat tune.

Including plenty of roaring engines…

DAVE MYERS EFFECT, Speed International, 1966

DAVE MYERS EFFECT, Grand Prix, 1966

(Update 07/09/09:  Stefan must have a million records. Or exactly my taste in music. Once again he had this record too. And the sleeve. Thank you, Stefan!)

This is from the soundtrack of the film Girl On A Motorcycle written by Les Reed starring Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon. The Girl On The Motorcycle starts with a roaring engine and then goes into some weird mix of  Les Baxter Orchestra meets the funky organ.

THE BRITISH LION ORCHESTRA, The Girl On The  Motorcycle, 1968

Since last week the protests in Iran have largely been suppressed and are now in the process of regrouping. The coming days and weeks will show how strong the movement really is.  As I wrote last week, I believe we have seen the crack in a system that is doomed to fall. By the way, here´s a interesting Iranian perspective about Why the Mullahs are Un-Iranian. All of this was overshadowed however by last week´s top international news:  the death of  Michael Jackson. And how could  the first time, at least in the last decade, that there has been massive resistance against  a Islamic dictatorship in a Muslim country, be more important than the death of the King of  Pop! He invented the Moon Walk, his best friend was a monkey and we knew him since we were kids!

This week I´ll return to my mainstay and initial reason to start this blog: advertisement records, Flexi discs and private pressings by people who just wanted to leave a trace of themselves.  Records that are off the radar of most serious record collectors. I´m also happy to announce that Jungle World, the lefty pop culture paper that publishes my weekly comic-strip BIGBEATLAND finally, after bugging them long enough,  gave me a column. It´s basically a printed version of this blog in German. You can read the first installment of Berlin Beatet Bestes here and the second one here.

I bought this week´s stack of records at the little flea-market that is happening every Saturday down the street. My girlfriend and a couple of friends were waiting for me to have a coffee and to do the weekend shopping so I had about 15 minutes to pick them up. Also it was already 2 p.m. and the market closes at 4.  So I assume it was already combed over by other collectors. But as I wrote, these are the type of records that they always leave behind anyway.

This little compilation EP called Töne gejagt und eingefangen ( Hunted and Captured Sounds) was released to commemorate the 9. International Amateur Recording Contest held in Amsterdam in the fall of 1960 and of course to advertise for Telefunken reel to reel tape recorders. Apparently the International Federation Of Soundhunters and the contest still exists. A cool little subculture even more obscure than record collecting.

This record features a mixture of sound excerpts made by various winners of the contest. Thankfully the only full track here is also the only one that is interesting to pop music fans. Beat´n heart was also featured on volume 4 of  Prae-Kraut Pandemonium, the most essential LP compilation series of obscure German Beat music. Since it was becoming too expensive   to continue putting out vinyl, it´s been released for free via some handy Zip files on the Spurensicherung blog. You can download the two latest volumes  here and here.

I didn´t know what was on the record and just bought  it because it looked interesting. What a surprise when I found this little gem! Beat´n heart is clearly influenced by Joe Meek. Only this recording was all done by Ronald Patrick Guttridge himself, a British travelling salesman as the insert states, with the use of a reel to reel tape recorder.  As you can guess, it´s him playing guitar and drums mixed  with the sound of a beating heart. The insert even speculates on the real hit potential. Obviously it didn´t make it.

But it is a charming instrumental Rock´n´Roll tune in all it´s primitive glory…

RONALD PATRICK GUTTRIDGE, Beat´n Heart, 1960

SIEGFRIED NEUENHAUS, Großstadtmelodie, 1960

NORMAN PAUL, Der Rest ist Schweigen, 1960

R.O.Broome, Atomwahn, 1960

JUUL JACOBSEN, Nature imaginaire, 1960

Before I bought the stack of records I noticed that inside this sleeve five other Flexi-discs were hidden. I showed the seller and he replied: “Well, if there in there” and let me have them all for 1 Euro. I love my little flea-market.

Fellow record collector Stefan recently sent in a few very good high-resolution scans of some Persil and Phonocolor Flexi-disc sleeves that  I was missing here and here. Thanks Stefan! He seems to have quite a collection but is yet reluctant to start a own blog. I would sure like to see and listen to his records…

Meanwhile Martin at Brotbeutel has posted some very entertaining German Flexi discs lately here and here and here.

This flexible record was advertising for the Mareno shoe-shop in Hannover. As they proudly anounced on the back of the sleeve they had recently opened another store: after 20 years back in Berlin at the Europa-Center, that opened in April 1965.

This is the logo of the company that made these Flexi discs. I was surprised to find out that the Elaton (like elastic-tone!)-Studio is still listed at the same address in Hannover that is written on the label.

Hawaiki is a Hawaian Swing song that starts with a airplane taking off and some nice in-between comments like: We will be landing in a few minutes, please fasten your seat-belts and stop smoking”.

Those were the days. ..

I already had an earlier one of these Mareno advertisement records. Sweet-Lou is another Hawaiian song but  a little more on the sweet side…

ROHAMA-HAWAIIANS, Hawaiki, 1965

CORNY-TRIO, Großstadtmelodie, 1965

ROHAMA-HAWAIIANS, Sweet-Lou, 1961

BEALE STREET PARADERS, Charlston 61, 1961

A very thin flexible disc with a nice Calypso song advertising for Nescafé sung in German with a thick Dutch accent. Max Woiski sr. (1911-1981) was born in Suriname, in the Dutch Colonies north of Brasil and had a long career in Holland. He started playing Latin-American music in Amsterdam in the 30´s and even opened up his own club La Cubana.

I bet Stefan has a sleeve for this one too…

(Update July 3, 2009: As I suspected Stefan indeed had the sleeve and sent it in. Thank you!)

MAX WOISKI UND SEINE BAND , Calypso Nescafe

Stefan also sent this sleeve for another Max Woiski record on a Dutch label. Haven´t heard it but it looks very promising.

Bongo, Bongo, Bongo I don´t wanna leave the Kongo…

A gold coloured flexible cardboard record advertising for various models of the German Nordmende television sets with the hip new 70´s dance craze : the Charlston. Don´t blame me. I got this brilliant idea to post everything I buy from Baikinange. She said, that´s what she does.

It sounded great at first…

ILLU SCHIEDER UND HANS-UWE SCHNEIDER, Hut ab der “Goldene 20″ Charlston

This will probably only be of interest to Germans or Berliners. Our beloved former Social Democrat mayor of Berlin Willy Brandt is inviting people to move to Berlin and become Berliners. How charming.

If  it wern´t for the terrible music that came with it…

Deine Chance ist Berlin

(Update 07/04/2009: Another compliment of Stefan who sent me these scans of  images from the booklet that came with the Flexi-disc)

It will get worse from here on. This 6″ Flexi-disc was advertising for a new Philips organ, the Philicorda. Various tunes played on the Philicorda interrupted by a annoying yet funny German speaker…

PHILICORDA, Wir machen Musik

(Update 07/07/2009:  So here´s the squeaky organ. This alternative cardboard version is another contribution from Stefan´s collection of German advertisement records. Very much appreciated!)

Now I bought them  and I will post them no matter if they´re good or bad. Another German version of Ricky Nelson´s hit song. You can probably skip this. Yes, don´t download this!

This one is a regular vinyl record released by the German budget label Tempo of which I have posted  a few a while back. The thin paper sleeve is very budget-like but I still like the primitive looking design. Imagine that this was all done before Photoshop and computers. Some nameless graphic-artist sat at a light-table for hours and seperated these colours by hand. They never saw what the picture would look like until it was printed. 

I don´t think that´s  primitive at all…

JIMMY FIELDS, Hello Mary Lou, 1961

THE ROYAL BAVARIAN DIXIELANDERS, Am Sonntag will mein Süßer mit mir segeln gehn, 1961

I warned you. Now we´ve hit the bottom. But you´re still here. Well maybe you are a little bit like me and will enjoy this unknown  singing fireman as much as I do. At least Joachim Sommerfeld had the balls

to write, record and release this on his own. Yes, I know he can´t sing and the tunes are kind of unimaginative  but in between all of this…

Well, there´s something…

JOACHIM SOMMERFELD, Die Männer von der Feuerwehr

JOACHIM SOMMERFELD, Da brannte mal ne Scheune

Now that the Western journalists have successfully been silenced or had to leave the country ( at least German television seems to be completely ignorant of the wave of repression that is happening in Iran right now)  the Islamist fascists can finally crack down on the protesters. And they do with the most vicious brutality. It´s heartbreaking. Like this video that reports of mass beatings and killings happening June 24, 2009:

The brave people of Iran have shown that the resistance to the Islamic dictatorship is widespread and that they have had enough. Whatever will become of the situation in Iran, the powers that be, will not be able to turn back the wheel of time. No dictatorship has ever been able to do that. They can rule with fear and scare everyone to death. Just like Hitler did. But they will inevitably be brought down. The crack in the system is there. It´s only a matter of time now until it gets bigger and bigger and it will break…

There is so much that Iran could give to the world if the people would be free. It´s a big country of 70 million and the majority are young and restless. They want freedom. As a reminder that Iran used to have a great history of Pop music that was mixing Western  and Iranian traditional influences, here is the most famous Iranian Rock song. Of course there is Rock and Pop music in Iran today but as usual  I´ll stick to vinyl records on this site. These were lend to me by my friend Minou who got them from her father. Incidentally she is visiting her family in Los Angeles right now. Thank you Minou! Thank you Mousa!

How fitting that these records are in such poor condition. I don´t have any professional clean-up program yet to get rid of all the disturbing surface noise. Just don´t give up too early. There are some beautiful  tunes that lay beneath that. They mostly start out real bad but it gets better towards the middle. Enough with the metaphors, on to the music…

Kourosh Yaghmaei was Iran’ s most well known Rock musician before the Islamic Revolution brought the country to a halt in 1979 and all Pop and Rock music was banned. He was silenced and forbidden to perform and record for 17 years. He started playing in the 60´s in the Iranian Beat group the Raptures and then went solo with this his first record.

Gole Yakh is a sad, slow Rock song with a nice piano and a great guitar solo. It´s got a beautiful, haunting melody.  The b-side Del Dareh Pir Mishe is a mid-tempo song with great fuzz guitar and organ. Wonderful!

KOUROSH YAGHMAEI, Gole Yakh (Ice Flower), 1974

KOUROSH YAGHMAEI, Del Dareh Pir Mishe (The Heart Is Getting Old), 1974

Fikret just supplied a much better sounding file for Gole Yakh.  If you like the song you´ll find the link in his comment below.

The bootleg LP compilation Raks! Raks! Raks! of  Iranian Beat groups of the 60´s came out in March of this year. But I haven´t heard it  yet. In 2004 Tian An Men 89 Records released the first ever Iranian Punk Compilation The Persian New Waves (Mawdj-e Naw e Farsi) LP. That one I gave to Minou so I cannot say much about it either.  For these posts I`ll stick to the records Minou gave me . Until I will hopefully find out more about them later this week, they will remain nameless. Like the protesters that are currently being beaten and murdered in Iran… ( Update:  I just got a mail from Minou in Los Angeles with translations for the record labels done by her family. Thank you so much!)

The biggest expert on Iranian records is probably Dario over at the Irannostalgia blog.  Stuart at Radiodiffusion had a great post last year about a Iranian  45 by the Golden Ring. I feel a little bit stupid because I know so little about Iranian Rock and just try to grab bits and pieces here and there. And I´m certain this record is also well known to Iranians but for the time being I will have to go by the music alone to describe it

The First song is actually two songs. A classical piece that I´m too ignorant (or uneducated) to know, followed by Katanga, a organ-driven Rock instrumental with very dynamic drums. Psychedelic!

Diwane Bood In Del (This Heart Was Insane) is a beautiful sad Psychedelic-Pop song with a nice sitar by Abbas Mehrpouya.

( From the youtube video description: Abbas Mehrpouya (1928-1993) was one of  Iran’s top guitarists and sitarists.
He had a unique voice and a unique style which no one has copied yet.
He has composed most of his pieces. He used to invent natural instruments and sometimes bones and some pots were used instead of drums.)

MEHRPOUYA,  Katanga

MERHPOUYA, Diwane Boud In Del (This Heart was Insane)

The  Persiandiscography site was very useful to find at least some information about all of these lost Iranian record labels, of which  Ahang-E-Rooz was the most important one. This record has the same usual white and yellow front but a black b-side.

Delakam is a mid-tempo song with a funky wah-wah guitar and the great  voice of  Ramesh.  Tschi mishe is a sad, slow Pop song.

RAMESH, Delakam (My little heart)

RAMESH, Tschi mishe (What´s gonna happen)