Theo Vaness
Back to Music (Prelude 12157)

Any album that begins with a narrator saying "It is the year 2501" has already got my undivided attention. Apparently in 2501 "our world is no longer a place where you can dream about the future, only the past," so "we use our time machine every now and then to get back to nature – back to music."

Of course, the time machine brings us straight back to 1978 for a side-long disco medley containing, among others, bits of "Feelings," "I Who Have Nothing," "Yesterday," "Brahms' Third Symphony" (?), and a whole string of 50s rock'n'roll songs ("It's Now or Never," "What Did I Say" (sic), "Blue Suede Shoes," "Shake rattle and Roll," "Johnny Be Good" (sic), and "Tutti Frutti").

This is done more or less in "Stars on 45" style, though when they get to the 50s songs, it's pretty much just a singer arbitrarily singing the choruses of those songs over the same chord progression (which is not faithful to any of the originals, by the way).

This was recorded in Paris, but I would bet my life that everyone involved was German, not just because of the whole misguided feel of the album, but also the accent of the singer – it seems to me that there is only one lead singer, and he's trying at various times to mimic Robin Gibb, Barry Gibb, and Eartha Kitt – at least that's what it sounds like.

It's almost like they told him to do different voices to make it seem like there were more singers. The music is incessant, with no dynamics at all, just full-on disco fury with no chord changes. Basicaly the whole thing sounds like someone punched up "disco" on a casio keyboard with the one-finger-play mode on, and just recorded it in one take.

Side 2 has three extremely unmemorable songs with an even more pronounced attempt at Bee Gees imitation. It doesn't work. Still, if an underground club were to play this album nowadays it would certainly be the most genuinely underground club of all time. It has that sort of seedy, coke-addled haze to it that conjures up only images of the deepest bowels in a place like the Mineshaft.

Ah, the memories. Too bad clubs really don't set up rooms where you can lie in a bathtub full of human excrement anymore. Fortunately the theoretical soundtrack is still with us in the form of excrement like Back to Music.

That said, I fully enjoyed the album for what it's worth (not quite the 99 cents I paid for it). It's not a "funny" bad album, really, but it really does take you to a very different time and place, not to mention making you feel grateful for living in a time where you can dream about the future and the past, bringing the two together with the "timeless" music of Theo Vaness.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Ulee Gold