Thursday, December 13, 2012

Sounds Great ... tastes great, too

The LP below (thanks again to Declan) was put together in 1970, and was assembled from the recordings which had originally appeared on LP and EP for Avenue label. I've finally been able to get hold of a copy and give it a spin...





Since these recordings are from Avenue's 1970 catalogue, Elton John can be heard on several tracks, although not singing lead (although it has been suggested he takes part of the lead role on the difficult-to-identify "Wandering Star"). Rather, these versions of songs like "In The Summertime" and "Yellow River" are fronted by David Byron, and are of course the same versions as appear on his latter-day Artistry label CDs. Here are some of the uber-rare original LPs which appeared on Avenue  in 1969-70:



An interesting point about the Sounds Great '70 album is the inclusion of a company logo - in this case, Meredith & Drew who were a biscuit-maker. This album must have been the result of a commercial tie-in of some sort and raises the possibility that the record was only available by mail order. Maybe listeners had to munch through 20 or so packs of ginger nuts to be able to send off for it? We'd like to hear from anyone who remembers getting a copy from new!


 

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like a good deal to me lol. I love ginger biscuits as much as I love the cover albums, therefore eating 20 packets of the things to get one of the albums sounds like a rather agreeable deal to me. If only I was around in 1970 to partake.......

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    1. Yep, it's quite a nice way to "buy" an LP. There are a few budget records with snack food tie-ins. I've got a flexidisc from the 12 Tops series which was put out by Barker & Dobson, sweet manufacturers. I've also got a bizarre children's LP promoting Smarties, with a few Top of the Pops tracks on it. And of course mfp released a whole LP plugging Pepsi.

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  2. A flexidisc from the 12 Tops series? Sounds intriguing to me. We had volume 19 of the 12 Tops series in our house when It came out in 1974. For that reason, I tend to have rather a soft spot for the 12 Tops series as it was the 1st cover album I heard. :-)

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    1. Yes indeed. The flexi-disc is called, somewhat confusingly, "2 Chart Busters". You can see a scan of the sleeve (actually just a printed paper bag) on this page:

      http://hitcovers.weebly.com/eps-12-tops.html

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