Monkberry Moon Delight

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post.  I turned 38 and was given lots of music for my birthday, plus I bought several CDs with some birthday money, so my ears have been very busy for the past fortnight.  This of course hasn't stopped me from vinyl-hunting, and last weekend turned up a couple of Beatles-related LPs.  Firstly, bought for £3, I give you Moog Plays The Beatles:

Marty Gold - Moog Plays The Beatles (1970)

American composer Marty Gold interprets twelve Beatles songs using the then very new Moog synthesizer accompanied by electric guitar, bass, harpsichord, a Lowrey organ, drums and percussion (unlike the  pure Moog-ness of the Star Wars soundtrack by The Electric Moog Orchestra).

Highly comic in places, it works best on tracks such as Penny Lane, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and surprisingly, Norwegian Wood.  It relies more heavily on guitars for rockier tracks like Get Back and Day Tripper.  The cover art is both inexplicable and explicit, and I like it.

Rear cover

Like most Beatles covers though, it just makes you want to hear the originals.  Here it is on Spotify - see what you think.




The next find, also for £3 was Ram by Paul & Linda McCartney:

Paul & Linda McCartney - Ram (1971)

This pre-Wings album was Macca's second release post- Beatles.  He and Linda wrote the album during time spent at their Scottish farm and recorded it in New York with Denny Sewell, Dave Spinoza and Hugh McCracken.

Like his first solo album McCartney, the songs on Ram have a homegrown feel about them; probably a reflection of the domestic bliss that Paul and Linda were enjoying at the time.  A quirky set of relaxed, melodic and whimsical compositions show an intimacy that the pair's seclusion encouraged, yet they don't forget to rock, too.  There are also a couple of thinly-veiled jibes at his former bandmates; this is illustrated by the beetles photo on the rear cover:

Rear cover.  Note the two beetles - said to be how Paul
felt he'd been treated by the other Beatles.

The cover photography is Linda's work, but the awful artwork is credited to Paul - he may be a talented man, but this doesn't extend to graphic design...

Inner gatefold

Ram reached no.1 in the UK and no.2 in the US, and produced three singles.  Here's Monkberry Moon Delight:




And the album on Spotify: Paul McCartney – RAM