Westminster Gold

No doubt everyone is familiar with this Zardozzy cover.

But I hadn't really clocked that there was a whole discography of releases from Westminster Gold with a similar visual look presumably pitched at the younger, "with it" generation. The work of a designer called Christopher Whorf. 

Lots of cheesecake imagery

That one made me think of PiL's Metal Box, of course.

Also visual puns and japes that are vaguely in the vicinity of what Hipgnosis would do, or the Island samplers like El Pea.  I'm not totally sure what the joke is with the one below

Most of the Westminster Goldcovers are not illustrations or designs but photographs of objects or assemblages.

Or it will be a photograph of a person or group of people posed in an absurd or quasi-erotic scantily clad posture or tableau. 

That one combines the cheesecake and the visual pun - "phwooar, take a look at her bust(s)"

Mostly the covers are notable for the brightly-lit clarity of the photograph, but some go in for a vaseline-on-the-lens blurriness that seems quite modish to the era.  This one looks like it could be from an advert for condoms, or perhaps an Emmanuelle-type softcore skinflick.

Even the labels are snazzy and un-classical.

Mostly the releases are middlebrow, well-known classical composers and works (I have no idea how well regarded these versions are by cognoscenti). But there's a few oddball and avant inclusions. e.g. 

This one below by Professor Emerson Myers of the Catholic University of America (!) was considered sufficiently avant to be Creel Poned. (The vinyl is the only Westminster Gold album I own, I think).

Below you will find an immense number of Westminster Gold sleeves, but falling a little short of the full set (on Discogs, often I'd click on the promising looking Christopher Whorf-style image only to end up with a different, more standard-classical sleeve. 

 

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At other times in the imprint's history, they tried a different tack with these colorful abstract patterns

Telly Savalas looks at UK Cities

 

In 1981 the British Film Producer Harold Baim made 3 documentry films about British Cities (Birmingham, Aberdeen and Portsmouth) all narrated by the actor Telly (Kojak) Savalas. Originally there were supposed to have been 11 of these short films, but only 3 were ever made. When asked why Telly Savalas?? Baim replied "its a marketing ploy" Baim's short films known as Quota Quickies were originally made for distribution with United Artists films/ features which enabled UA to meet the legal requirements for the minimum number of UK-made productions shown at the cinema. Being as I come from Portsmouth I do find this film quite intriguing and entertainingly quirky.  As Telly says "a time capsule of life in Toooder England" "So long Portsmouth..here's looking at you" he also said "here's looking at you" at the end of Aberdeen and Birmingham so I suspect another Telly catch phrase was in the making there. Old Telly had lots of catch phrases thanks to his character in Kojak "Who loves ya, baby?" and "Cootchie-coo!" "here's looking at you".

Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham
https://youtu.be/EoHVO1eSMFc
Telly Savalas Looks at Aberdeen
https://youtu.be/WhIyj64TQPg

Tabor and Flintlock and Steeleye

 

A delightful clip of a young June Tabor performing the trad. arr ditty "While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping" - a song about poaching. From the show Fanfare, which was built around the boy band Flintlock, who'd become popular on 1970s kids TV through appearances on You Must Be Joking and Pauline's Quirkes. 

What I like about this clip, alongside the performance, is the way that the six young lads plus older male presenter respectfully ask Tabor about her vocal craft (how she gets the "decorators" in with all those twiddly bits and ornaments) and the provenance of the song (Dorset) and seem riveted by what she has to say. There's a funny bit about her practicising in the loo, for the acoustics and privacy, and to not drive her mum mad. 

The whole program from which the rendition of "Gamekeepers" comes is below,  complete with June joining in a mass performance of "Yellow Submarine" near the end of the show (from 21.48), with her wearing a nautical hat at a rakish angle. 

Some more folk-rock on British TV - Steeleye Span (during the period when Martin Carthy was in the band) on an ATV show called Music Room, in 1970.  Carthy in particular looks newborn luminous. You got to love the presenter's trendy get-up.  They're so earnestly middle class and conscientious about their craft it's touching. 

June Tabor's first released recording would be with Steeleye's Maddy Prior under the name Silly Sisters

This, her debut proper, is much better

More top Tabor tuneage.... 

Two separate songs about a shepherdess maiden in the heather, bonny enough to take as your queen - but quite different in mood. 

 

Have been unable to get the song above, "The Scarecrow" (originally written by Lal Waterson and recorded on the album Bright Phoebus) out of my head for days now. 

Tabor's haunting rendition of "The King of Rome" appears at around 24 minutes into this Ken Russell doc In Search of the English Folk Song  - plus an interview with her.  The song is thematically reminiscent of another Ken's work - Kes, by Ken Loach. Relatively recently written, no trad. arr job,  "The King of Rome" is a true story-song about a racing pigeon and heroic-ascent-by-proxy for the earthbound working class man. 

Above - another great performance of "While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping", from an outdoor concert in Koln, 1990.

And below - yet another, from Jools Holland 

These boots are made for folking. 

The Fawley Flame

 

At 16.05 minutes into Ken Russell's decidedly eccentric documentary In Search of the English Folk Song, local minstrel Bob Appleyard sings about a giant oil refinery on the Solent. 

The whole doc is worth a watch.

Hemel Hempstead as Winnerden Flats as Tambury

 

Quatermass 2 was filmed in Hemel Hempstead as it was being built (effectively a new town, populated with London overflow, glommed onto the side of an existing, much smaller and more charming town - which thereafter became known as Old Hemel). In the movie it doubles for the fictional town of Winnerden Flats. 

The new Hemel now dwarfs its older namesake, like a carbuncle on a buttock that swells to several times the size of its host body. And this Hemel Hempstead is a pretty dreary-looking place.  I remember the NF selling pamphlets on the streets there, back in the early '80s, when they were toying with Northern Ireland as a wedge issue.  Hemel is one railway stop along from my hometown Berkhamsted  (in the old days, Hemel was so small, it didn't even have a railway station - the stop was Boxmoor). Or you could make a not overly taxing bike ride to get there. Mostly I'd be going there for want of somewhere to go, in those boredom-aching days of youth that gaped with emptiness to fill. The town's attractions were limited to a larger, slightly more widely stocked W.H. Smiths than the one in Berko; a large indoor swimming pool; and... that's about it. Like Watford, it could also serve as a stage for pranks devised by me and my brothers. 

While looking up Quatermass and Hemel Hempstead, I stumbled on this eerie phonetic coincidence: there's are two streets in Hemel called Quartermass  - Quartermass Road and Quartermass Close - and they are named after the victim of a grisly 1896 murder: 12-year-old Katharine Mabel Quartermass.

Here's the full story at Hemel Today. 

Old Hemel

Just out of view, on the right side of this photo, is a little side road called Cherry Bounce - a term for a street that I have never seen anywhere else. 

In this next pic, to the left and out of sight - behind the camera - is one of the best Indian restaurants in the country. the Cochin. Worth a detour. 

Scenes from the Ricky Gervais comedy After Life were filmed right by the Old Town Hall (now a theatre, I believe) and other places in the environs, giving Hemel Hempstead another fictional alter-ego, Tambury. 

The things you find on the internet!

https://implausablealternatehistory.fandom.com/wiki/Hemel_Hempstead_(1962:_The_Apocalypse)