SLEEVE NOTES to
"The Exotic Beatles Part One"
(used with kind permission)
"pass the egg and chips, Paul"
(used with kind permission)
"pass the egg and chips, Paul"
. . . Allow a Frenchman to point at a crucial linguistic distinction. Eccentricity is cultivated, while exoticism grows naturally, more often than not in the most surprising environment. I wonder if Dino had anything more in mind than making a few lira when he cut his impressive version of "I Should Have Known Better". What matters is that, nearly 30 years later, what we hear in his crazed delivery is Lennon and McCartney as they would have sounded if they had smoked their first cigarettes in the Boboli Gardens rather than in the Strawberry Fields of Liverpool.
. . . Do you understand, now, why Peter Sellers' "A Hard Day's Night" didn't even make the shortlist, while BRIAN SEWELL did? Don't look for irony or cynicism in this collection. Its conceptors had something else in mind: "freshness, innocence, and -of course- exoticism.
. . . All of these tracks have something exceptional about them. The music, for instance. I would bet my last copy of "Help" that DESMOND DEKKER's sublime "Come Together" is superior to the Fab Four's. Menacing, swaying, and very sexy. And what about OS VIP's, Brazil's first-ever (and last) authentically punk band? Their ultra-rare cover of "Things We Said Today" is one of the last they ever cut. A couple of months after its release, Artur and Joao were killed when the Mini they had "borrowed" from their father jumped some 200 ft. into the ocean. Rock 'n Roll.
. . . So it's not all about the Beatles. It's about the thousands of boys who started to go to the hairdresser for a hairdo rather than for a haircut. They were not imitators, in the sense that their devotion was so excessive and their skill (generally) so minimal that their act of re-creation had more in common with Andy Warhol's cans of soup than with the pale soundalikes thrown into the market by desperate British record companies.
. . . Think of LES SURFS. Today, we'd call them "persons of restricted growth". They looked like 13 year-olds, and the "tallest" of them only reached 4'11". Five brilliant twisters, who left the jungles of Madagascar to find fame and fortune in Paris with a series of stunning EP's for the Vogue label. They had style, energy, and a marvellous lead-singer who sang the most inane lyrics with a tenderness and a conviction that rivalled Lennon's most inspired moments.
. . . EMI BONILLA, a travelling flamenco singer of which almost nothing is known, and whom somebody mysteriously took to a recording studio where he cut "She loves you", the most improbable disc of the Beatlemania years.
. . . SANDRO, an extraordinarily popular child actor, lived the polo life for a few years before discovering God, but in the wrong place: "his affair with a young novice caused a scandal and forced him to retire to his parents' farm. A pity, if one is to judge by his simultaneaously awful and delectable hispanisation of "We Can Work It Out".
. . . CATARINA VALENTE and EDMUNDO ROS. The multilingual actress/singer who sang Little Willie John's "Fever" before Peggy Lee hijacked it. The replete and mustachioed king of Latin Music whose career started when a ramarkably alert A"R man heard the then traffic warden warbling "La Cucaracha" to soothe drivers caught in a Mexico traffic jam.
. . . LOS MUSTANG, 4 Madrid rebels who covered everything in sight, who deserve a re-release of their whole catalogue - I wonder who'd dare to do that...
. . . THE QUESTS, Malaysia's answer to the Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds and everything. They looked smart, the four teenagers from Borneo Island. Their hair was wild. Their smile non-existent, and for a good reason: "Kiulu, the lead singer, was of Papou descent, and all his teeth had been filed to accommodate his tribe's tradition. And they shared one characteristic with Sandie Shaw: "they had no shoes, because they couldn't afford any. But, then again, there's this record, a minor-minor hit in Malaysia at the time: ""I'll Be Back". Unfortunately, they were not.
. . . Still, funny names and incredible stories are but a verse of the whole song. Exoticism also pre-supposes an in-built disdain for common taste, when it's not an assault on its values: "FAIRGROUND ORGANS and SINGING SITARS and POLICE CHOIRS will probably have to fight for a folding chair in the orchestral pit of Heaven. They've found a home on this record anyway, and Japan's AKIKO KANAZAWA and LEFTY IN THE RIGHT will be able to tell everybody they've been right by the side of WILLIAM SHATNER.
Eccentric? No, exotic. Pass the egg and chips, Paul.
(Louis Philippe)
