Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2023 August 28 • Monday

Let's twist again? Like we did last summer? I don't think I did any twisting last summer. So let's twist this summer with the 793nd Soundtrack of the Week: Joey Dee in Hollywood, two rock and roll movie scores that appear to be by Henry Glover.

The first dozen tracks come from Hey, Let's Twist!, an admirably direct title. First up is the audio from a trailer for the movie, with an announcer excitedly going on about the "magnificent madness that's twisting across the world" while we get little clips of various songs.

Followed by the songs, of course, all pretty standard early rock and roll numbers with names like "Roly Poly", "I Wanna Twist", "Let Me Do My Twist" and so on.

They all have really good energy and nice musicianship, particularly from guitar and keyboards.

It ends with a bit of a surprise, a love song for voice and accordion (with a dash of maybe celeste or glockenspiel) in (mostly) Italian, "Na Voce, 'Na Chitarra e' o poco 'e luna".

The other movie represented is Two Tickets to Paris, which starts with a more standard orchestra-backed theme song, "What Kind of Love Is This". It's maybe a rather subdued twist.

After that we get a mix of twist numbers—"Willy Willy", "Twistin' on a Liner", "Instant Men"—and other flavors of musical number for the rest of the score—"The Open Sea", "Left Bank Blues"—etc.

Again there's great guitar playing as well as saxophone and other instruments.