Apparently Some Like It Hot translates to I Hetaste Laget in Swedish. And that's the name of an album by Swedish band Heartbreak.
This is a cool power pop/new wave record with some snarly punk energy running through it as well.
The vocals are all in Swedish but the titles are pretty easily translated and can give you an idea of what the songs are about. Some, like "Weekend-sex", probably don't need translation.
The guitar sound seems pretty specific to this band and some of the songs made me think of Cheap Trick and The Knack.
Thank you, Mikael, for sending this!
2025 August 25 • Monday
What is this record? It's called Howzit Bradda! and it also says Outdoor Boys Vibration! Surfing Sound on it.
Apparently it features Shaun Tomson, Mark Richard, Eddie Aikau, Dan Flecky, Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew "and the others". Some of these names are definitely well known surfers.
It's hard to find information about it but it appears to be the soundtrack to the first surfing movie made in Japan. So maybe it is. Let's call it the 871st Soundtrack of the Week. Some sources say that the music is by Izumi Kobayashi & Flying Mimi Band so let's also say maybe on that, too.
The first half of the first track is "North Shore Morning" and is just the sounds of waves. Then there's a bit of synthesizer that would fit into a 1980s slasher movie, then some bird sounds, cars driving by, somebody says something. Then we get to the second part, "Shaping", in which you hear whatever power tool is used to shape surboards, then a guy talking about the process and the sound of sanding the board.
Then we get a Hawaiian radio station's ID, KIKI, followed by "Charly's Beach Report". This leads to "Speak Like a Bitch", the first proper song, that's more of a funk/fusion number than a surf tune. It features hand percussion and saxophone and guitar solos.
After that comes "Dan Flecky's Riding", which sounds like someone put a microphone on him while he went out to surf. You hear lots of water sounds and he says "It's a long paddle out here" at one point.
Side A concludes with "Skateboard", which begins with textural synth sounds, then more crashing waves. Then there's some percussive noises through some sort of delay, then some people talking, more cars going by. Finally some sounds that are most likely people riding skateboards.
The B side starts with "Shaun Tomson's Riding & Message", which is a lot of wave sounds again, and then Tomson talking about what his surfing experiences are like.
The second track is another two-in-one, beginning with "Eddie Aikau's Riding" (more wave sounds) and then moving on to a Kobayashi piece called "It's Raining", a mellow fusiony tune with lots of saxophone playing.
"'Stubbies' 1978 Surf Classic Gold Coast Australia" is, believe it or not, more field recordings of the sounds of waves and then the album wraps up in the same vein with "Carnival" (merry-go-round music and crowd noise) and "North Shore Sunset" (more waves).
So this is a pretty odd record. It has very little music, lots of surf sounds and occasional bits of dialogue. But of course I'm glad it exists.
2025 August 22 • Friday
Despite the cover, Sweet Sue Evans isn't a harp record.
There's a tiny bit of harp playing but it's really a vocal record with some nice guitar playing.
It's a small ensemble also with vibes and it's very nice. Evans has bright and pleasant voice and the mood is jazzy.
Some of the tunes are original, two of them written by Evans herself, and the ones from the songbook are definitely not the usual. I'm actually not sure if I'd heard any of them before.
So if you want a really good jazz vocal record with a small combo and tasty guitar solos, definitely pick this up. But if you want a harp record, this isn't it.
2025 August 20 • Wednesday
Who was Evelyn Scott? I don't know but the photo on the cover of this album, 30 Guitar Favorites, does not give an accurate preview of the music.
There's a woman holding an acoustic guitar and singing. There's no reason to think that that's even Evelyn Scott, because this is an isntrumental electric guitar record, and an excellent one.
The playing ranges from tough, growly tones to breezy and intricate jazz voicings.
The material is similarly varied. First of all, thirty numbers! Sort of. These are mostly melodies, so you get a bunch of tunes in one short track.
"Hall of the Mountain King" is a highlight, as is, of course, "Caravan".
This is a really great record and the kind of thing that I love. Can't really find out anything about Scott or the session, though.
2025 August 18 • Monday
The middle of August is about as summer as it gets. Watch out for sharks! Especially Morton Stevens's score for Great White (a.k.a. The Last Shark), the 870th Soundtrack of the Week!
I would see this movie. Apparently it's like Jaws but with a lot of wind surfing. It's so much like Jaws that there was legal action when it came out.
Stevens came up with a great main title theme in 3/4, using harpsichord and various percussion instruments along with frantic string parts, a sweeping and dramatic melody and driving rhythms.
The main title theme returns in a slightly more exotica mode for "Teen Folly No. 1", which switches to more dramatic horror sounds with blended strings adding power to the melody.
I guess somebody died, because "Chewed Up Surfboard" has that sad feel to it, with strings starting in a very high register before plummeting, joined by melancholy piano.
Low sounds (with sustain pedal piano used effectively) and some delicate swirling flute notes create a claustrophobic atmosphere for "Drivers Trapped" that soon gives way to what certainly sounds like shark danger.
And sure enough "Shark Attack" is next, with strings and percussion relentlessly pushing forward while horns create music for a hunt.
Then some long tones, a lovely piano part and a sensitive and beautiful part for the strings, referencing the main title theme, come together for a great cue called "Coma".
The underwater piano and flutes from "Divers Trapped" return for "Drivers Set Trap". They're similar but have different feels.
"Teen Folly No. 2" starts with a harp feature and then begins another swirling, driving piece with the strings in the forefront, using the harmonic structure of the main title.
Then the hunting horns, pounding percussion, swirling strings and frenetic flutes join forces for "The Final Shark Attack", an exciting action/horror cue that certainly sounds like a climax.
A sad and wistful version of the main title theme appears for the "Aftermath".
After the movie was banned from the United States, Stevens arranged his score for concert presentation, a three-movement piece called Tiburon.
That's included here at the end of the program and it's also excellent.
2025 August 15 • Friday
Here's a record I've listened to more than a dozen times in the last few months. I had never heard it before even though it came out in 1974. It's called Tina Turns the Country On! and it's the first Tina Turner solo record.
As the title suggests, it's sort of a country record. One of the strongest tracks is her cover of Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On" but what's really happening here is a blend of country, soul, rock, blues, even some musical elements that probably came from gospel.
While "Bayou Song", the album opener, was written for Turner, mostly the record mines material from heavy-hitting songwriters of the day: Dolly Parton's "There'll Always Be Music", James Taylor's "Don't Talk Now", Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and two by Bob Dylan: "He Belongs to Me" and "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You".
One of the absolute best songs is "If You Love Me, Let Me Know", which had been a hit for Olivia Newton John and was written by John Rostill, who played bass in The Shadows and wrote many of their songs as well.
Tina's vocal performance is out of this world. It feels like all of the intensity of her life's experiences is coming pouring out and smashing through the speakers. There's such depth of feeling, such range and power and such impeccable musicianship, it should be enough to convince anyone that she was one of the greatest singers of all time.
The band is also incredible. This isn't a big, elaborate countrypolitan type of thing. Bass, drums, guitars, keyboards, a bit of saxophone. It's pretty stripped down. J. D. Maness's steel guitar playing makes him one of the MVPs but there's also some very tasty playing from the great James Burton.
This is the kind of record that's so good I want to buy it and hear it for the first time again. In fact, after buying the CD I also got the fiftieth anniversary LP release.
2025 August 13 • Wednesday
Here's a compilation from Numero that I think came out last year but is just getting its moment on the Gutbrain turntable right now: Soft Summer Breezes.
I got the yellow vinyl version. Sun color, I guess.
Sixteen songs by sixteen bands and I hadn't heard of most of them. Maybe I've encountered Attila & The Huns before but I'm not sure. Margo Guryan is on here, though, and she's no stranger to the Gutbrain stereo.
The Giant Crab is my favorite band name here and "The Time of the Year Is Sunset" my favorite song title.
It's a pleasant enough record but nothing on here is really great. A lot of the vocals stray too far in the whiney direction and there isn' a lot of variety or intensity.
Of course in this way it's in sympathy with its title. Soft summer breezes aren't intense of varied either, but they do tend to be delightful while this record is just kind of calm and pleasant.
2025 August 11 • Monday
Is it possible that Ennio Morrione's music for Per Un Pugno Di Dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) has never been featured here as a Soundtrack of the Week? As Tuco would say, we fix that right away. It's #869.
With its acoustic and electric guitar, literal bells and whistles, and extremely active bonding with the action on screen, this was a truly revolutionary score.
I have to imagine that the crystalline electric guitar sound heard here did as much to move sales of the instrument as popular rock bands did.
Like many Morricone scores, this one exploits the potential of a single theme. But what a theme! The main title has arpeggiated acoustic guitar backing up a whistled melody that soars up and down like a bird riding air currents. Then piccolo comes swirling in, percussion that starts extremely sparsely and builds very gradually. Then a male chorus and one of the all-time great electric guitar sounds for one of the all-time great electric guitar lines, perhaps not as well known as the James Bond riff but certainly its equal in quality.
Some of the rhythmic ideas are moved to piano for "Quasi Morto", with staccato playing that anticipates some of Jerry Goldsmith's work down the road, particularly for the Rambo movies.
"Musica Sospesa" uses long tones from flute and organ and short, sharp notes from guitar and percussion to create some uneasy feelings. After this comes a very heavy and shadowy "Square Dance" cue that doesn't really sound fun or easygoing at all.
Some very weight and dramatic music introduces "Ramon", the villain of the piece. It sounds funereal and the mood is not at all lightened in the next cue, more long, heavy, shadowy tones for "Consuelo Baxter".
The main theme then gets another run-through for "Doppi Giochi", followed by "Per Un Pugno Di Dollar (#1)", the movie's secondary theme, an ancestor of "The Ecstasy of Gold", still a few years away. This is classic "walking to the final battle" music.
Snare with some subtle electric guitar or bass guitar kick off "Scambio Di Prigioneri", soon joined by trumpet and strings and female chorus for another tense track.
An abbreviated version of the main theme, which swerves into some unexpected harmonic territory follows with "Cavalcata" and then gets reprised with a much busier and lighter feel in "L'Inseguimento".
Morricone could cover a lot of ground and this is displayed vividly in the almost ten minute-long track "Tortura", a suite of sonic surprises and orchestral color, merging the melodic with the avantgarde and bringing in elements you'd expect to hear from a horror or fantasy movie score. If someone hasn't written a monograph just about this piece yet, why not?
After that comes a kind of march piece, with pounding snare drum, lots of sharp notes and swelling crescendi/descrescendi, again anticipating some famous movie music we would all love in future decades.
"Senza Pietà" starts quietly and peacefully and then takes off for "and now we ride!" energy at the end.
Very off-kilter rhythm and seesawing parts from harmonica, violin, percussion (especially gong), with electric guitar and piano and other instruments doing monomaniacal and relentless ostinati create a brilliant landscape for "La Reazione".
After that there are two reiterations of the two main themes and we're done.
There are several reasons why this movie and others that followed were so successful and the music has always been one of those reasons.
2025 August 08 • Friday
Here's a great Japanese surf/instro album: Makka na Taiyo by The Sanders!
The title song was a big hit for singer Hibari Misora. She recorded it with the band The Blue Comets who also had a hit with "Blue Chateau", the third song on this record.
Who were The Sanders? I have no idea.
But this is a great record, with the electric guitar and drums sounding like they were recorded in the same studio that provided music for 1960s Japanese gangster movies.
There's too much saxophone playing, but the playing itself is good and doesn't overwhelm the songs. There are strings on some numbers also, as well as a Farfisa-like organ, but the real star is the nimble guitar playing.
2025 August 06 • Wednesday
Surf music always went along with hot rod music. Sooner or later someone was going to do something about hot rods of the sea. Here are The Hornets with Big Drag Boats USA!
I couldn't find a lot of information about this, but apparently it's a Jerry Cole project. The guitar sound is great, as are most of the numbers.
Some of it is a little too goofy and almost all of it is marred by overuse of saxophone. Both the tone and the lines played give it an unwelcome cartoonish effect, when otherwise this could be a tough and tight instro rock album.
It's still worth listening to, and some of these songs deserve to be played by bands today.
2025 August 04 • Monday
Bert Shefter's music for San Francisco-set crime film No Escape is the 868th Soundtrack of the Week.
The main title starts with piano in front of the orchestra playing cascading figures, sort of a mini-piano concerto. Since one of the main characters is a songwriter who plays piano in a bar, this will be a motif.
Typically perky and bright music accompanies "Golden Gate Bridge", but there are some unsual dissonances for the strings as well as some sweeping harp lines and a sultry and bluesly sax line at the end.
Strings, flutes and percussion create sounds of suspense and mystery for "Trace Writes Song", which resolves into a sequence of major chords.
Then there's a shift to a minor key and the piano comes back for the intriguing "Love and Laughter Menu", followed by a tense and short cue for "Hayden's Penthouse".
There are two very short "Pinker Jingle" cues just for bells, and then a midtempo ballroom dance rhythm for "In a Dress Salon".
"Tracy at the Piano" and "Tracy Improvises" are two short solo piano pieces, followed by a somewhat Herrmannesque cue, "Calling All Cars", which is a surprisingly soft and gentle action piece.
The strings come in strong for "Police Station Lobby" before handing the melody over to clarinet.
The "Pinker Jingle" returns but is joined by strings for "Pinker's Clock", and then the piano concerto idea comes back for "Tracy Under the Bridge".
Flutes create a sharp sense of uneasiness for "Tickets on Table" that's followed by tension and action statements in "Market and Powell".
Music for "Railroad Station" starts off almost carefree before a romantic heaviness and feeling of danger comes sweeping in with the orchestra.
The second "Calling All Cars" cue is a lot shorter but more intense then the first, leading to a nerve-jangling, percussion heavy "Night Montage".
Then there are two more short solo piano tracks, "Tracy Playing 'No Escape'" and "Chords".
There might be a "Far Away Look in Pat's Eyes" but this isn't a dreamy cue, it sounds more like action and violence. The dreaminess comes next, in the sweetly romantic, violin-led "Tracy and Pat Love Scene - Part 1" and ""Tracy and Pat Love Scene - Part 2 ('The Buzzer')", though the latter does get interrupted at the end by more menacing music.
Stereotypical "Chinese" is unsurprisingly on offer for "In a Chinese Restaurant". Shefter does some sick things with the strings in here, slidy and microtonal and kind of woozy sounding.
"Penthouse" has the piano with orchestra swinging its way through our main theme, this time with some drums!
Chopping strings and perky percussion add a lot of sharpness to "A Fight", but all is well and segues into the sweet and calm "Tracy and Pat End Title", followed by an Afro Cuban-influenced take on "Pat and Tracy".
Then there are two hot jazz source music cues and some alternate takes.
2025 August 01 • Friday
I hope you've found some time to go surfing this summer. It's not too late! If you need some inspiration, check out this unusual record, The Surf Symphony's Song of Summer!
It starts with bowed strings and you might start worrying that this is some kind elevator music neo-"classical" thing but in seconds "The Last Thrill" kicks in with electric guitars and keyboards and electric bass guitar and a serious backbeat from the drums. There's even a good breakbeat in there to sample. Too bad it fades out on what sounds like an electric guitar freak-out.
After that comes "Sandcastles at Sunset", which would be great in any number of 1970s TV shows and movies, that breezy, dreamy, light, electrogroove with syrupy strings.
In what I imagine to be an insurance policy, the next tune is an arrangement of The Beatles' "Get Back". Both the song and this record were released in 1969 so this makes sense. If you ever wanted to hear this with horns and strings playing the vocal part, this is your chance.
Another cover follows, but The Beach Boys' "Warmth of the Sun" is a good fit here and the orchestral arrangement of it does show off how nice the melody is, as well as allowing for interesting harmony blends.
The A side ends with a piece called "Green Water Sails", a dreamy number with arpeggiated guitar chords, wordless vocals and some ethereal floating horn lines.
Another cover of a very familiar song opens the B side and it's hard to argue against the "Theme from 'A Summer Place'" in this context. This is a nice arrangement, particularly the choice of electric keyboard—harpsichord or clavinet or something like that.
"The Promise of Rain" definitely has electric harpsichord as well as some nimble drumming in the intro. The bass guitar also buoys the rhythmic feel and there are some interesting pockets of space and percussion in there as well.
In case you wanted another cover and a really familiar one, you're in luck because the next track is "My Cherie Amour". This is like a Vegas lounge version. It probably sounds like you imagine, if you're imagining electric harpsichord in there again.
Following that comes "That Bluebird of Summer", a jaunty piece with a strangely shadowy feel, again with electric harpsichord or some similar keyboard providing most of the sonic interest before a flute flourish signals a segue into a very "God Only Knows"-inspired section.
The album wraps up with "Night of the Lions", a cover of a lesser known song from Mark Eric's A Midsummer's Day Dream album. This is maybe the best track on the record, with guitar and keyboards digging in and the rhythm section pushing everything forward urgently.
I wouldn't mind hearing more of this.
APPEARANCES