🎵 AotW Classics Baja Marimba Band THOSE WERE THE DAYS SP-4167

[Harry]

Julius Wechter and the Baja Marimba Band
Those Were The Days
A&M SP-4167

Tracks:
Side One
1. FLYIN' HIGH (Jimmy Borden) 2:09
2. DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME (Kahn-Schwandt-Andree) 2:24
3. BIG RED (Frank DeVito) 2:11
4. HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE (Lennon-McCartney) 3:25
5. THOSE WERE THE DAYS (Gene Raskin) 3:18

Side Two
1. (There's) ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME (Bacharach-David) 3:08
2. LES BICYCLETTES DE BELSIZE (Les Reed-Barry Mason) 3:00
3. PERU '68 (Julius Wechter) 2:18
4. KNOWING WHEN TO LEAVE (Bacharach-David) 3:02
5. HAPPENING TO ME (Steve Cohn) 3:13
6. ELENORE (The Turtles) 2:34

Arranged by: JULIUS WECHTER and NICK DeCARO/ Engineering: RAY
GERHARDT / Recorded at Annex Recording Studio / Produced by: ALLEN
STANTON / Photography: GUY WEBSTER / Art Director: TOM WILKES

 

[Harry]

Far and away, my favorite Baja Marimba Band track is the lead-off to this album, "Flyin' High". It's just brilliant!

Harry

 

[LPJim]

A great album, and with many fine tracks. I voted for "Les Bicylettes" because covering a lesser-known Engelbert Humperdinck tune was a masterful creative choice on the BMB's part.

 

[Dave]

I voted for the real trippy version of "Eleanor" by The Turtles... A first, covering an up-and-coming pop band, other than The Beatles, by this group...

-- Dave

 

[mexicat]

"Flyin' High" gets my vote, but it easily coulda been "Big Red" or one of the Bacharach/David tunes... "Flyin' High" appeared on the EZ/Lounge 2xLP compilation, "Espresso Espresso" on Deram, I remember hearing it played in London clubs around that time. Baja Marimba Band tunes played in nightclubs! Probably doesn't happen too much nowadays...

 

[Harry]

Five of the eleven album tracks can be found on various CD compilations:

"Flyin' High" is on the DIGITALLY REMASTERED disc from Japan, the Collector's Choice BEST OF, and the Timeless 3-CD set.
"Dream A Little Dream Of Me" is found only on the Collector's Choice disc.
"Those Were The Days" is on all three of the compilations mentioned.
"(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me" and "Knowing When To Leave" are both on an A&M JOURNEY OF BURT BACHARACH comp from Japan.

"Big Red" can also be found on the LP compilation FOURSIDER.

Harry

 

[Mr Bill]

I love LPJim's logic and reasoning for his vote! I had to vote for "Big Red" for three reasons:
1 - It's Frank DeVito's soul com-position inthe BMB's recorded canon
2 - I grew up hearing it as the theme to The Ben Hunter Show (Ben Hunter hosted a daily afternoon movie program not unlike what you get on AMC these days where Ben would give anecdotes or trivia about the cast or crew in and out of the commercial breaks. It ran on MetroMedia channel 11 in L.A. -- the MetroMedia station group would later become the core of Rupert Murdoch's Fox network).
3 - I used it to play along with one of my animated 8mm movies way back in 1973 in 8th grade. A class project, it was called "The Red Car" based on a book we had to read. This "race car" story allowed me to try my hand at the technique used in the Gulf Gas Station commercials of the time. These ads showed people, families and even a train in one, without vehicles! Just the driver sitting on the pavement... If you're over 45 you probably remember these. The cast and I wore out the seats of several pairs of pants do this!

 

[Rudy]

"Flying High" and the two band originals are the only ones I listen to on this one. I've been meaning to do my own compilation of band originals, which would showcase the songwriting of the BMB members. Also interesting as a side project would be a mixed TJB/BMB compilation containing all Julius-penned tunes. A few of my favorite TJB album cuts were written by Julius (such as "Panama").

 

[Mr Bill]

"Panama" is a great tune and the version the 74-5 TJB did was even better than the original -- that version of the TJB was able to (or allowed to?) stretch on that and other tunes as never before.

 

[Rudy]

I think I still have my recording of their appearance with the Muppets on TV. They probably did "Panama" at the concert I saw, but I don't remember the setlists for those. All I remember is "Zorba" as an encore track, which got the whole place worked into a frenzy.

 

[bob knack]

I dragged this out of my Baja bin recently. It's a great album. I always thought that the vocal on Flyin' High was very similar to We And The Sea by the Tamba Four. Is there some connection there?

 

[Bobberman]

I voted for " There's always something there to remind me". It was the first version i heard of this bacharach tune back in 1979. And still stands out today In fact the Entire album is excellent. It was my second BMB album to my collection my first was "Greatest Hits".earlier that year with the Silver/tan era A&M Label.

 

[Bobberman]

By the way as mentioned very recently elsewhere "Those Were The Days" is Now Availiable for Downloading on Amazon. It was just released on April 1st.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

This is my 2nd favorite Baja album (behind Fresh Air). "Always Something There To Remind Me" has always been my favorite song here, with "Flyin' High" a close second. As usual with the Baja albums, I like the peppier tunes the best and find the slow songs kinda boring.

This is one of the many A&M albums that I first had on one of their infamous black-plastic 8-tracks. Those tapes were notorious for tangling up -- I had this album in that format until it cratered (almost immediately). I didn't hear it in full again until a few years ago when I got a sealed LP of it and made a needle-drop CD which turned out nice. My latest version is that Japanese mini-LP CD which came out a while after that.

I wonder if the new Amazon version has had any remastering done? I'm curious how it sounds.

 

[Bobberman]

I heard the samples of both and they sound pretty good to me i compared them to my needledrop cds from my Vinyl versions in my opinion though the vinyl versions have a slightly fuller sound but other than that they are about on par again this is just my opinion.and my vinyl versions are in very good and clean condition. Which transfered to CD-R very well.

 

[Steven J. Gross]

I bought TWTD, it's outstanding...as for Fresh Air, I have the CD, but will download soon. I'd really like "Heads Up" and "As Time Goes By" soon in this format, I want them all, actually..

 

[Bobberman]

I bought TWTD, it's outstanding...as for Fresh Air, I have the CD, but will download soon. I'd really like "Heads Up" and "As Time Goes By" soon in this format, I want them all, actually..

I have everything on vinyl and Cd needledrops and the collectors choice " Best of" and "New Deal " on proper CDs all in very satisfactory condition. Im glad to see BMB albums become availible again especially for new generations of listeners who haven't been able to access them but only heard about them. Since the two download albums may have come from the japanese cds perhaps the 1964 debut album which was briefly on cd in the late 80s could be released in digital download form as well as whatever album masters may exist. ( keeping in mind of the tragic fire at universal some years ago in which some master recordings were destroyed.) And perhaps we may never really know what was really lost but it is possible some of the BMB and other A&M masters were lost in the fire. However we can only hope that there are backups or the masters are stored safely elsewhere. As They Say Time Will Tell.

 

[Steven J. Gross]

I've heard this fire legend, I would think that vaults were fireproof?
Anyway, David Foster runs Verve Records which owns the masters, he would certainly know..

 

[rbisherw]

This is my 2nd favorite Baja album (behind Fresh Air).

Could not agree more.

Glad I have the Japanese CDs!

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I've heard this fire legend, I would think that vaults were fireproof?

I don't think any vault is truly firePROOF; if something gets hot enough the stuff inside it will burn or melt even if the fire can't get in. At any rate, I don't think it's a legend. There really was a fire; Richard Carpenter has talked about it in at least two interviews that I know of. And I remember reading about it in Billboard.

 

[Rudy]

Yep, a ton of stuff was destroyed in that fire. And that wasn't their first one. We're talking stuff from popular vintage recordings to recordings of old MCA Universal television shows that cannot be replaced. "Vault" is only used in the figurative sense; they're sometimes nothing more than a locked room with rows of shelving.

For that reason I'd be highly suspect of the sources used to make any new A&M product unless it were already officialy digitized in the past (such as, on import CDs). Some of the Universal stuff was digitally "archived" (and I loosely use that word, given the poor CD-level resolution they used). But, marginal stuff with very little market interest likely wasn't preserved. And, what are you going to archive first? A recording that sold millions, or something that only a handful of collectors are interested in?

 

[Bobberman]

Yep, a ton of stuff was destroyed in that fire. And that wasn't their first one. We're talking stuff from popular vintage recordings to recordings of old MCA Universal television shows that cannot be replaced. "Vault" is only used in the figurative sense; they're sometimes nothing more than a locked room with rows of shelving.

For that reason I'd be highly suspect of the sources used to make any new A&M product unless it were already officialy digitized in the past (such as, on import CDs). Some of the Universal stuff was digitally "archived" (and I loosely use that word, given the poor CD-level resolution they used). But, marginal stuff with very little market interest likely wasn't preserved. And, what are you going to archive first? A recording that sold millions, or something that only a handful of collectors are interested in?

Its sadly True. As i mentioned before whatever Universal Media related products you have in physical form whether its vinyl. tape. Or Cds VHS or DVD. I think it would be very wise to" Hold on to What you Got". ( incidentally there was a one hit wonder named Ian Gomm who had a hit with those exact words under the title "Hold On". One of my favorite oldies.)

 

[Acapulco 1922]

I voted for the real trippy version of "Eleanor" by The Turtles... A first, covering an up-and-coming pop band, other than The Beatles, by this group...

-- Dave

 

[Acapulco 1922]

They did cover two by THE ASSOCIATION on "Fowl Play" and one by SIMON & GARFUNKEL on "Do you know the way to San Jose?".

 

[Harry]

Looking through a box of LPs that got shipped south with us, but never unpacked, I found an odd variation of the THOSE WERE THE DAYS album. It's a white-label promo of the album, but it has CSG processing on it. My stock LP does not have that, nor does the CD version from Japan.

The jacket one of those gold oval stickers on it bragging of the CSG processing being able to be played in stereo or mono, but there's nothing about it on the white label. The run-out groove however does have the "CSG" in the numeration.

From Discogs:

Those are exactly what mine looks like. I took a listen to "Flyin' High, and sure enough, it's got that uncomfortable altered-phase sound to it. The LP itself has seen better days, as it was stuck in the jacket with no innersleeve where it's probably been rattling around for years. It's possible that a good cleaning could make it serviceable, but then all you'd end up with is an annoying CSG recording!

I'm not sure where this came from. The outer markings don't look like any radio station I've been involved with. I do recall getting a bunch of Alpert and Baja albums from some eBay purchases that were just thrown in the package. Probably from when I ordered a big lot of TjB monos, the seller probably had tons of these and threw them in. I keep my "good" A&M albums out in the main record shelves; these were packed away as extra copies that I haven't had the heart to dispose of.