Madonna – The Immaculate Collection (1990)

No retail shopping for me on Record Store Day, just cheapo chazzing. In fact, I already had Immaculate Collection on CD*, but couldn’t resist this early singles double Lp helping of the pop martinet whose musical and visual image mongering takes David Bowie’s similar chameleonality to absurdly cynical lengths and whose glamorisation (leading ultimately, and ironically, to normalisation) of sexual fetishism has virtually defined all solo female pop singing subsequent.

The liner notes offer a remarkable balance of slavering and intellectual pretension. Oh, Madonna, you so bad!

More Herb Ritts action on the inner sleeves.

*I will likely Music Magpie the compact disc version.

The Astrud Gilberto Album (VLP 9087) (1965)

“Astrud Gilberto is no longer just The Girl From Ipanema.”  Or so say Jack Maher’s notes on Gilberto’s solo début Lp from the following year. He’s not fooling anybody and goes on to allude to the world-beating hit a further six times. Gilberto is not a technically great vocalist, but producer Creed Taylor has the measure of her abilities and, though surrounded by heavyweights (husband João, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bud Shank, João Donato, arranger Marty Paich, etc.), provides a pillow-light musical support, some gentle, insistent swing and the wistful melodies (all but two by Jobim) that don’t overwhelm Astrud’s artless, muted trumpet soto voce singing. Her phrasing is far more interesting and lively on the four Portuguese-sung numbers, English exposing a vulnerability verging on tentativeness.

A few years ago, a Gilberto compilation CD on Verve (part of the budget series with the generic ugly tan covers) provided the background to a dinner party I attended in Streatham–I was impressed then how good it was and so snapped up the present pop Bossa album for a pound in Hythe without much ado.

Dusty Springfield – Ev’rything’s Coming Up Dusty (Phillips RBL 1002) (1965)

This is more like it. Effortlessly good second Dusty solo Lp which asks only, “Am I filed under pop, soul or Richie Valens-related?”

Ah, she’s white: so, pop it is.They musta broke the Phillips 1965 album packaging bank with this one: eye-catching photography for a classy gatefold sleeve and stapled-in colour booklet, hype-y and vaguely poetic liner notes, glued-in top load album sleeve. The works, basically.Just a pound a couple weeks ago from Hythe. Huzzah.

The New Petula Clark Album (Pye NPL 18118) (1965)

Pet is no Dionne let alone Dusty, her phrasing can be pretty four-square and her tone can lean towards the pinched. A patently spurious title for a disc over 45 years old, the record under consideration (purchased today on the green in Hythe for 50p), is proficient, likeable enough and contains a couple kernels of goodness, e.g. “Heart”, but this is basically goosed-up crooner music designed to make an older generation comfortable with rock ‘n’ roll and I simply can’t get worked up about it.

Judy Garland – Judy At Carnegie Hall – Vols 1 & 2

Let me make this clear: despite my thorough enjoyment of this double Lp of show tunes (particularly the arrangements, which are models of the art of scoring), I am not, nor have I ever been, a mate of the singer born Frances Ethel Gumm. Sure, I’d be flattered by her attention and maybe even a little curious to know what she was like, but we never met. Of course, we only shared the planet for three years, and no doubt people would have found it a bit outrageous if not downright queer, the sight of a gay little toddler becoming buddies with a middle-aged woman. But to be honest, I’m not sure we would’ve gotten along, as she was a bit of a drama queen and could be bitchy. So, to repeat, I’m not personally acquainted with the woman who famously played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

Speaking of that role, someone who does claim to be a “Friend of Dorothy”‘s (as he calls her, adopting an overly familiar nickname, IMO), is Rufus Wainwright. He even staged a recreation of the Judy At Carnegie Hall Lp utilising the same arrangements, set list and everything. How sweet, I thought, a tribute to his late friend. And yet research has revealed that the Loudon Wainwright III scion is no more a friend of so-called Dorothy’s than I.

He was born four years after her passing. The whole thing was just an outrageous show biz ploy.

Cilla Black – The Best of Cilla Black (EMI – PCS 7065) (1968)

There’s usually little of meaning on the average 60s pop greatest hits album cover, but this one is an exception and has much to tell us about its times: our Cilla is dressed up in swinging cowboy togs reflecting the contradictory zeal for a return to earthiness while retaining some of the costumery of the immediate post-Summer of Love-era.  And I’m sure I don’t have to you about the obvious symbolism of the backdrop’s peeling paint and splintered wood when Miss Black’s songs so comprehensively strip (or “peel”) away society’s artifice only to reveal the divisiveness (or “splintering”) lying just beneath the surface. Is Cilla, I wonder, as she smiles and covers her crotch to obscure a broken zip, making a subtle jab at the broken promises of sexual freedom or hinting at latent proto-feminist empowerment?  You’ll have to work that one out for yourselves, kids.

As for the music, it’s our buck-toothed, former hat check girl’s early glory days and includes over a quarter Lennon/McCartney originals, three of which are not part of the Fabs’ official oevre.   Cilla strains mightily for notes and significance, succeeding on occasion, especially the Bacharach/David numbers. It’s hard to imagine a time when this was considered youth music rather than adult pop.