"Shadow Music"[mono studio album LP]
EMI / Columbia SX 6041; UK, May 1966)
SIDE ONE:
1. I Only Want To Be With You (v)
2. Fourth Street (Brian Bennett piano feature)
3. The Magic Doll
4. Stay Around (v)
5. Maid Marion's Theme
6. Benno-San
7. Don't Stop Now
SIDE TWO:
1. In The Past (v)
2. Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)
3. Now That You're Gone
4. One Way To Love (v)
5. Razzmataz
6. A Sigh (Un Sospiro)
7. March To Drina
All tracks were being released for the first time.
I Only Want To Be With You,
Fourth Street,
The Magic Doll,
Maid Marion’s Theme,
Benno-San,
Don’t Stop Now and
Razzmatazz were group-composed originals.
This 1966 LP almost fully lived up to its title. Of the fourteen tracks included, seven were written by the group in various combinations and all but two were published by Shadows Music (Belinda), the group's publishing company. Only the standard song
Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words) by Bart Howard and the Euro-instro
March To Drina came via different publishers. Even the three vocals written by Arnold, Martin & Morrow (2) and Michael Cahill (1) came under the Shadows Music imprint, as (more predictably) did the Hill/Whitworth/Meehan instrumental
Now That You're Gone and the Norrie Paramor arrangement of Franz Liszt's
A Sigh (Un Sospiro). Come to think of it though, getting a publishing credit out of the hands of Norrie Paramor really was a major achievement. Old Norrie was notorious for keeping publishing in the family...
Elsewhere, the album has been described (by Hank) as "lacking in direction" and as "business as usual" and "less essential" by Dave Thompson of the All Music Guide (
http://www.answers.com/topic/shadow-music-expanded). I think that both descriptions are less than fair. Whatever one thinks of this LP – and despite any more worthy hopes that the group might have entertained for it, it is a cut way above the two predecessor albums ("Dance With..." and "Sound Of The Shadows").
"Shadow Music" saw the group back on form with an enterprising and updated sound. OK... in the same year that Eric Clapton/John Mayall set the world on fire with the "Beano" album, the Beach Boys opened everyone's ears with "Pet Sounds" and (supremely) the sheer shock of The Beatles' "Revolver" resounded around the globe, The Shadows were never going to cause an earthquake with ten instrumentals. But there was still real progress here. The four vocals (one of them group-composed for the "Babes In The Wood" Christmas stage show) were first-rate, and the instrumentals almost uniformly-strong with only a couple of throwaway tunes to fill out the listing. Of particular note are
Now That You're Gone and
March To Drina (the former for the beauty and simplicity of its melody and the latter for a bravura multitracked guitar performance).
Maid Marion's Theme is another introspective guitar reading. One or two tracks feature the DeArmond pedal (notably
A Sigh and
Now That You're Gone), though the main glory days for that foot-operated effects unit were still a little way around the corner.
Oddities:The stereo and mono mixes of both
Benno-San and
Don't Stop Now, whilst being essentially the same overall performance, exhibit different approaches to the overdubbed guitar solos. The mono-stereo DigiPak release of 1998 (is it really that long ago?) came complete with both versions, of course.
Annotations by Paul Wray:The album had 2 pressings during its run mainly because there was a mastering error with
Benno-San and
Don’t Stop Now.
1st Pressing (1966) - This Pressing Has 33 1/3 Printed On The Label Next To The Matrix Number.
2nd Pressing (1966) - This Pressing does not have 33 1/3 Printed On The Label Next To The Matrix Number."