Astro Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000
Unherd
1,880 Posts
Interested to hear the record, anyone wanna usend a little some'n?
From Inner Sounds to Astro Sounds Session guitarist Jerry Cole made several albums of instrumental surf rock as the leader of Jerry Cole & His Spacemen, but after playing on sessions that produced the Byrds' Mr. Tambourine Man and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, he realized he had to adapt to new musical trends. In the summer of '66, Cole responded by bringing several session buddies together to record The Inner Sounds of the Id, a psychedelic studio creation that was at least a year ahead of its time. The story might have ended there if the producer hadn't stolen the Id's session outtakes. Producer Paul Arnold made a quick buck by passing on the outtakes to Alshire Records, a budget label run by Al Sherman and D.L. Miller. Alshire then released material from the outtakes to the Id sessions under the name of a fictional group, the Animated Egg. From then on, the material from the Id sessions mutated as the penny-pinching Alshire Records recycled it in almost endless variations. Because Alshire was already the home of the anonymous easy listening group, the 101 Strings, D.L. Miller decided to squeeze out another 101 Strings album by putting strings on top of the Animated Egg album, running the drums through an analog phaser, then shoving everything through a Leslie speaker. The result was Astro Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000, a record designed to cash in on Barbarella and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but that instead became a cult classic. Other cast-offs squeezed out from the Id outtakes include Sounds of Today, the Exotic Sounds of Love (with heavy breathing added by electronic composer Bebe Barron), at least two fake tribute albums to Jimi Hendrix, and an attempt to synthesize "acid rock" and Hank Williams. Ironically, Jerry Cole remained ignorant for decades that his outtakes had been used for all this material, including samples by Public Enemy and Fatboy Slim, until PopMatters finally interviewed Cole about it.
From Inner Sounds to Astro Sounds Session guitarist Jerry Cole made several albums of instrumental surf rock as the leader of Jerry Cole & His Spacemen, but after playing on sessions that produced the Byrds' Mr. Tambourine Man and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, he realized he had to adapt to new musical trends. In the summer of '66, Cole responded by bringing several session buddies together to record The Inner Sounds of the Id, a psychedelic studio creation that was at least a year ahead of its time. The story might have ended there if the producer hadn't stolen the Id's session outtakes. Producer Paul Arnold made a quick buck by passing on the outtakes to Alshire Records, a budget label run by Al Sherman and D.L. Miller. Alshire then released material from the outtakes to the Id sessions under the name of a fictional group, the Animated Egg. From then on, the material from the Id sessions mutated as the penny-pinching Alshire Records recycled it in almost endless variations. Because Alshire was already the home of the anonymous easy listening group, the 101 Strings, D.L. Miller decided to squeeze out another 101 Strings album by putting strings on top of the Animated Egg album, running the drums through an analog phaser, then shoving everything through a Leslie speaker. The result was Astro Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000, a record designed to cash in on Barbarella and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but that instead became a cult classic. Other cast-offs squeezed out from the Id outtakes include Sounds of Today, the Exotic Sounds of Love (with heavy breathing added by electronic composer Bebe Barron), at least two fake tribute albums to Jimi Hendrix, and an attempt to synthesize "acid rock" and Hank Williams. Ironically, Jerry Cole remained ignorant for decades that his outtakes had been used for all this material, including samples by Public Enemy and Fatboy Slim, until PopMatters finally interviewed Cole about it.
Comments
I actually just found a nice copy a year ago in a box of other 101 Strings/Mantovani type stuff after looking for yeeeeeears.
The PopMatters piece is great, although the way the author conflates the Black Diamonds LP and the Purple Fox LP (two totally different Hendrix rip-off records; the latter doesn't feature any of the Id/Animated Egg/101 Strings material) makes me wonder how much of the rest of the article is just him talking out of his ass about music he hasn't heard.