![]() ![]() It’s his 1975 release Rocket Man (A Tribute to Elton John) that strikes the avid consumer of liner notes and names of session players. Having succeeded as a cover artist, Montenegro spent much of the next decade taking on the likes of the Beach Boys, Neil Diamond and even Bob Dylan on the rather bizarre Hugo Montenegro’s Dawn of Dylan. There is nothing particularly revelatory about Moog Power-it offers a number of contemporary pop hits rendered in space-agey Moog arrangements-but the use of the Moog, coupled with the out-there cover art, helped make it an album of note. It seems nearly any early adopter of the Moog has been forgiven any and all other potential musical atrocities past, present and future. Why then is Montenegro given a pass? Much of it has to do with his 1969 album Moog Power. Montenegro made a name for himself in the mid-‘60s with albums like Original Music From the Man From U.N.C.L.E., which consisted of cover versions of spy soundtrack staples and several collaborations with Clint Eastwood that resulted in commercially successful albums of Ennio Morricone covers. On his albums, you will find a host of strange and unusual covers of then contemporary pop hits, the majority vastly watered down for consumption by the adult market. To those unfamiliar, Montenegro was a band leader, conductor, composer and shameless cover artist. There are myriad reasons for this line of thinking, but for this particular instance we’ll stick with the name recognition: Hugo Montenegro. Perhaps they’re better known for some early work or oddball, left-field crate digger’s wet dream. As a collector and consumer of pop culture in general and popular music specifically, you begin to accumulate a mental rolodex of names worth remembering. Of course, there are the occasional easy listening albums that at least give off the impression of being interesting, either through the cover art, personnel or song selections-check out Bing Crosby’s Hey Jude/Hey Bing! for a fine example of this. You might as well be hoarding stacks of old newspapers. In other words, just because someone has accumulated a collection of records doesn’t necessarily ensure it even deserves to be thought of as a true record collection. So much so that, as I near my third decade of record collecting, I’ve learned that should anyone offer you something from their record collection, you’re best served to politely decline unless you want another copy of Whipped Cream & Other Delights or early Barbra Streisand records. From Mantovani to Herb Alpert to Percy Faith and all points in between, these albums are readily accessible to most everyone. Read the whole statement on her website, and watch the video below.It’s no secret that there is an extreme overabundance of so-called easy listening albums cluttering up countless thrift shops and record store dollar bins across the country. Most artists in the mid seventies played guitar but Elton played piano and I dreamed of being able to play like him.” “I couldn’t stop playing it – I loved it so much. “I remember buying this when it came out as a single by Elton John,” she writes. In a statement, Kate Bush shares what “Rocket Man” means to her, recalling when she first bought it as a single. There will also be rarities from film soundtracks, such as Nicolas Roeg’s Castaway and The Golden Compass. ![]() The album will feature another Elton cover, “Candle In The Wind”, alongside others such as Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”. This new release (February 22) is the first since the original TV broadcast.Īlongside the video comes news of a new rarities album, The Other Sides, which will drop March 8. The song was originally reworked by Bush for Two Rooms, an album Elton and long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin put together, featuring covers of their own songs. Kate Bush has officially released the video for her 1991 cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” (voted the greatest cover of all time by Observer readers in 2007). ![]()
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