You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

15/12/68 : The Good, The Bad And The Ugly OST - Ennio Morricone

Our third soundtrack in a row and this is definitely one I would have rejected in earlier years - instrumental soundtracks just aren't my sort of thing.  But the next album on the list was a Val Doonican offering that isn't available, so I took the hint and checked this out - I was expecting some fine music, but not a great deal of variety.

Well, at least it opens with the title track, I guess!  And I think it's fair to say that the famous musical motif is revisited several times throughout the album - but I also have to say there was more variety there than I was expecting.  A lot of it is surprisingly wacky - it appears he was the Radiohead of his day.  But my problem with instrumental film music is that, although I accept the right music totally raises any scene, I really don't "listen" to it when I'm watching the film - and if I attempt to listen to it without the film, then I internally bitch about the lack of moving pictures to accompany it.  So it's on to a loser before it starts with me - yes, that's totally my fault but that's why I'd generally choose not to listen to it.  However, I have to say I enjoyed this more than I was expecting - but I won't be revisiting it.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on its eleventh week on an eighteen week run, peaking at #2 in its eighth week - all of which seems pretty random and something that definitely wouldn't happen these days.  The rest of the top five were The Beatles (of course), The Seekers best-of (this album spent seven weeks at #2 waiting for The Beatles fans to finish buying their album, then managed SIX (non-consecutive) weeks at #1!), TSOM and Simon & Garfunkel and the highest new entry were The Rolling Stones (#9) with a very young looking Tom Jones also arriving at #11.

Wikipedia tells me that the main musical theme is intended to be the howling of a coyote - it never occurred to me that was the idea.  It's played with different instruments depending upon the character involved - flute (The Good), arghilofono (The Bad) and voice (The Ugly).  Hold on - a what-what?!?  Ah, apparently, it's an ocarina - although it's intriguing that Wikipedia redirects you to its ocarina page, but then never actually mentions the word arghilofono.  It also tells me that the album was on the US charts for over a year and sold over a million copies over there - how very strange.  It also tells me that this version of the main theme by Hugo Montenegro got to #2 over there this year as well - it's certainly, well, something.

"Customers also listened to" - well, this is going to be an interesting one, isn't it?  Oh, it's a bunch of orchestras - The Danish National Symphony, The London Symphony, The Cinema Stage and The London Theatre Orchestras.  I guess Ennio is pretty orchestral, so it makes some kind of sense.  I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting, but I still find it hard to imagine that too many people would sit down and listen to it.

08/12/68 - Some Swinging Sixties night-life
22/12/68 - You know Dave, right?