Morning Of The Earth - Original Soundtrack (1972)

(Various Australian Artists -1972)

Australian Surf Movies and their associated musical scores have always fascinated me, namely Sea of Joy, Crystal Voyager, Drouyn, Highway One and my all time favourite MORNING OF THE EARTH.

Although I lived close to the surf coast I didn't actually surf myself (no balance I'm afraid), but my older brother did, and during my early teenage years I would often tag along with him when he would go surfing at Torquay (WinkyPop), Bells Beach, 13th Beach and Anglesea. I was happy to sit back and simply watch the surfing action, while listening to music on my portable cassette player, soaking up the sun and mesmorising atmosphere of our beautiful beaches.

So when my brother asked me if I wanted to go and see a new surf movie at the Pix Theatre in West Geelong, called MORNING OF THE EARTH, I jumped at the opportunity and remember being in total awe of the amazing surf footage that appeared on the big screen, while listening to some of the best music I'd ever heard. The only artist that I recognised at that time was the distinct voice of Brian Cadd (from the Bootleg Family), but the remaining music was all new to me.

Of course, I promptly hunted down the Soundtrack from Brash Suttons Music Store in Geelong, and still have the treasured vinyl in my record collection. Of course, I have also acquired most of the later CD releases, most featuring the full soundtrack. However, I have chosen to only share the vinyl release as these CD releases are still available.

Now, for those of you who are not familar with this iconic surf soundtrack, I suggest you read on:

With MORNING OF THE EARTH, filmmaker Albert Falzon shook the foundations of surfing film making. With one feature, he made a statement, and he demonstrated what could be done given the right combinations of resources, good waves, good surfers, good music and above all else, a grand design.

Albert Falzon began his film making career at the tender age of 15. Living at The Enhance (on the Central Coast of New South Wales, north of Sydney) he filmed local surfers with his 8mm camera and then showed the footage (usually in his backyard) unedited. Occasionally he would even venture out into the water with his camera to get close ups. This naturally gave him a better feeling for what he was doing; something that planted a seed that would blossom years later into MORNING OF THE EARTH.

Albert Falzon - Filming For Surfing World

Falzon's 8mm antics eventually gave way to a full time job with Bob Evans' surfing magazine The Surfing World (and later shortened to plain old Surfing World) as a staff photographer. The quality of his work eventually led to him being enlisted to help film the annual Bob Evans' surfing feature. It was during this time that the thought of making his own surfing film germinated. Falzon's idea was different to the sports or travelogue orientation of many of the surfing film makers - including Evans - and perhaps more aligned with that of Paul Witzig; Falzon saw surfing as much more a way of life than just an activity and that is what he wanted to capture on film.

Tracks - Feb, 1972

With David Elfick and John Witzig (brother of Paul), Falzon founded Tracks Magazine in 1970, his new position allowing him the freedom to begin shooting footage for his film. Trips to Bali and Hawaii soon followed. So sure was Falzon of what he had, bookings for the film were already made for ealy 1972. To fulfill these self-imposed obligations, Falzon spent the end of 1971 locked away in his Whale Beach studio shaping his dream into a celluloid reality. The film had the working title IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY, but this was soon superseded by the more ambitious MORNING OF THE EARTH.  The film debuted as scheduled in February 1972 to rave reviews and quickly became the largest grossing home grown surfing film of the time.

Musically, the soundtrack to MORNING OF THE EARTH was a mixture of various styles with one common thread; they were all statements in one form or another. Taking Paul Witzig's lead, Falzon opted for no commentary and instead left the soundtrack to speak for itself. Promotional material of the period exclaimed, 'They are songs of the sun and the moon and the sky and the sea. They are songs of places and people and ideas. They are songs of freedom and peace and waves.'

Chosen to 'produce' the soundtrack was New Zealand born G. Wayne Thomas, a producer and recording artist whose first single "Take lt Easy" had been a Top 40 hit in '71 for the newly formed Australian Warner Brothers label. Those offered the opportunity of contributing to the soundtrack were individuals Greg Quill, John J. Francis, Brian Cadd, Terry Hannagan (listed as Hannigan on the record label), Newport surfer and boat painter (and former member of the band Seed) Peter Howe, and the groups Tamam Shud and Ticket. Thomas himself also stepped to the fore as a solo artist and contributed a handful of songs, including the title tune.

Although reputedly promised the entire soundtrack project, Tamam Shud's contribution to the MORNING OF THE EARTH soundtrack was cut to only three songs; two by Bjerre (Sea The Swells and Bali Waters) and one by Tim Gaze (First Things First). In the end though, the Shud's material was given frequent airings throughout the film soundtrack with the instrumental Bali Waters being heard three times; Sea The Swells twice and First Things First once. Bali Waters which also showcased Richard Lockwood on flute, was also issued as the title track to the group's one and only EP release. Most of the recorded material for the film eventually found its way onto the soundtrack longplayer issued by Warner.

As a film experience, MORNING OF THE EARTH was immensely popular around Australia, grossing over $200,000 on the local market during its first two years on the circuit. The soundtrack album was equally as successful, given considerable promotion by Warner Bros. and pushed to breaking point by G. Wayne Thomas. Tracks magazine was also a significant factor in both the success of the film and the soundtrack, the latter quickly achieving Gold Record status. The added Top 20 success of Thomas' "Open Up Your Heart" was icing on the cake. In various permutations, the soundtrack of MORNING OF THE EARTH has remained commercially available since it was first released on vinyl in 1972, then on CD in 1992 and expanded editions in 2002 and 2012. [Extract from Liner Notes 'A Life In The Sun']

G.Wayne Thomas Recalls....

In 1972, two guys walked into my office at Warner Bros one afternoon, introduced themselves as Albie and David, and asked if they could use the record player. I think the song they played was "You're not Alone", and then asked who had produced it. G.Wayne Thomas, the same guy who wrote and sang it I replied, and said "You just found him". They told me they were making a movie and after we chatted for a while, they asked me to produce, write and maybe sing some of the songs for the soundtrack of the film, to be directed by Albie Falzon and called MORNING OF THE EARTH.

G.Wayne Thomas 1972

I had never scored or produced a film soundtrack before, and this was Albie's first film, so over the next few days and weeks we formulated a rough plan, based on pure optimism and a 'we can wing it' ethic, because even Albie wasn't sure what exactly was going to be in the final cut. As it turned out, some of these decisions were still being made as the first reel was running in the theatre on the opening night at Manly Silver Screen. Albie and I were driving hell for leather from the dubbing suite somewhere in Wahroonga with the second reel of the movie, while everyone at the theatre was supplied with free white wine, and no doubt all wondering why there was such a long interval.

One smart thing I did do was to ring John French, the sound engineer and boss at TCS, a recording studio situated at the back of Channel 9 in Melbourne that had recently installed 16 track recording. Back in 1972, there was no 16 track recorders in Sydney. I also rang Brian Cadd who I admired as a musician, writer and singer, but at that point had never met. Without John and Brian, and also Peter Jones, just starting on a career as an arranger after being a piano player and who did the brass and string arrangements for MORNING OF THE EARTH, I don't think we could have pulled it off.

One comment on the vagaries of success in the music business concerns the song "Open Up Your Heart". When in Melbourne recording we had completed all the material that I had planned to use for the soundtrack, but there was a concern expressed by various people of what would we do if there was not enough material.

I was adamant that I had worked it out pretty methodically with Albie and was confident that we had it covered, and also we were all exhausted after about three weeks of continuous recording, over-dubbing and mixing. But to keep the voices of doubt happy, I agreed to write one more song just in case. I had basically had the idea for "Open Up Your Heart" for some time and so went into the studio next door and finished it in about twenty minutes while Caddy called th band back into the studio. We put down only a rhythm / backing track and a rough vocal, thendid a rough mix and tacked it onto the end of the master tape.

The film and the sountrack went together pretty much as Albie and I had imagined, and we subsequently did not require the extra track. The No.1 radio station at the time was 2SM and as a part of the promotion of the film they wanted to select the single (from the score). So a copy of the master was sent over to John Brennan, now legendary in Australian radio, and at the time the musical director of the station. He called back a few days later, after the film had opened, and said he thought the single should be the last track on the tape, "Open Up Your Heart"

One of the film's surfer - Michael Peterson

I had to tell him it wasn't in the film, and had only been done as an afterthought, just in case. Brennan insisted, so I had to go back to Melbourne and finish the song and we placed it over the end titles, the only place we could find to put it. It turned out that Brenno was right, and the song went #1 in about two weeks and followed suit in every state in Australia except Victoria, where the record wasn't even played due to the efforts of a petulant programmer, but that's another story.

I never thought I would be writing about these experiences so many years later, but the film and music has taken on it's own life and developed it's own legend, and seems to be affectionately installed in just about everyone who has ever surfed, and recalls when surfing wasn't about contests, but rather natural pleasure and a free spirit.

Many of the bands, writers, musicians and singers who contributed so stronly to the soundtrack were, or were about to be, Australian music legends. Many were to go on to, and in some cases, still influence the course of Australian music. [G.Wayne Tomas, 2002 Liner Notes]

Tom Carroll speaking about 'Morning Of The Earth'

MORNING OF THE EARTH brought together the message of the 70's surfing era, without the use of spoken dialogue, and I look at the film now and remember the time of my life when I was discovering myself and the ocean, and breaking away with my own thoughts and ideas. The aesthetic of the ocean it created came back to me very powerfully. Through watching the images of the film I noticed the way people surfed and the way they used and built their equipment, and it became really significant. It's an incredible documentary of the time.

Looking now at surfing in the 70's, the rebellion of young people, the Vietname era and the post war period, surfing was an escape, an outlet for the young to express themselves, and was riding along with other alternative movements. At the time I didn't really know what I was looking at, but now when I look back I see we were being inspired by the self discovery and adventure.

The focus and aesthetics of surfing is very powerful for me. I was surfing every morning in the early morning light and was very aesthetically drawn to the way the waves broke and the swell, and the way the light shone on the water. It really drew me in. With MORNING OF THE EARTH, which was shown at Avalon Beach Cinema, seeing these large images really had a big impact on us, a big impact. 

It was that image of walking out on the reef at Uluwatu, this distant and mystical image of Bali that (director) Albie Falzon put together, it ingrained such an image in my mind of where I wanted to go in my life. It looked so huge and crazy and wild, and these guys were just walking out over the reef, and I had no idea that the reef was so sharp, and there they were out there with no one around and these incredible left handers, and I was a natural goofy footer!* I loved the idea of surfing in remote and challenging conditions like that.

The images with the music were just as powerful as the actual surfers. The film has a lot of these back lit scenes of water running off the surf board. The way the water moved around the board and back up into the wave and the curl, especially when it was done in slow motion. I'd just sit there and be mesmerised by that.

Tom Carroll

The inspiration of  MORNING OF THE EARTH and the style of surfing the film gave me has lasted forever, and it's still going, still inside me. I will always keep moving with that. [Tom Carroll**, 2002 Liner Notes]

* A goofy foot surfer rides with their right foot forward, representing about 30% of surfers. The term originated from a 1937 Disney cartoon where Goofy surfed with this stance. It is not considered inferior to "regular" (left-foot forward) stance, merely a preference often determined by which foot instinctively steps forward.

** Thomas Victor Carroll (born 26 November 1961, Newport, New South Wales, Australia) is an Australian former professional surfer from Sydney. He won the Australian Junior Title in 1978, the Pro Juniors in 1977 and 1980, the 1983 and 1984 ASP World Tour, and the 1987, 1990 and 1991 Pipe Masters. He became the first surfing millionaire after signing a contract with Quiksilver in 1989.

This post consists of FLACs ripped from CD (same track listing as Vinyl) and includes full album artwork for both CD and Vinyl.  As my vinyl has been played to death, I decided to provide the crystal clear music from my 1992 CD release, for your listening pleasure.

Track Listing;

A1 G. Wayne Thomas – Morning Of The Earth  5:09

A2 Terry Hannagan – I'll Be Alright  4:05

A3 Tamam Shud – First Things First  4:09

A4 Brian Cadd – Sure Feels Good  3:44

A5 G. Wayne Thomas – Open Up Your Heart  3:41

A6 John J. Francis – Simple Ben  7:41

B1 Tamam Shud – Bali Waters  6:13

B2 Brian Cadd – Making It On Your Own  6:00

B3 G. Wayne Thomas - Day Comes  2:55

B4 Tamam Shud – Sea The Swells  6:13

B5 Peter Howe – I'm Alive  3:41

B6 Brian Cadd – Come With Me  4:56

Morning Of The Earth Link (370Mb)

W.O.C.K On Vinyl: Various Aussie Artists - Aussie Coca-Cola Commercials 60's - 70's

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Before things get too serious here at Rock On Vinyl, I thought it might be fun to post a song / album at the end of each month, that could be categorized as being either Weird, Obscure, Crazy or just plain Korny.

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Advertising slogans are a part of everyday life for consumers around the world, and Coca-Cola has produced some great ones throughout their 130+ year history.

Coke's very first ad was published in the Atlanta Journal newspaper on May 29, 1886, a few short weeks after the drink was first served in Jacobs’ Pharmacy. The ad featured one of their longest-running slogans: “Delicious and Refreshing.” Those two words appeared on almost every ad or piece of merchandise (trays, clocks, etc.) until 1920.

 In the mid-1890s, The Coca-Cola Company hired Massengale Advertising of Atlanta. They produced very elegant advertising for the company featuring slogans like “Coca-Cola is a Delicious Beverage, Delightfully in Harmony With the Spirit of All Outings,” “The Great National Temperance Drink,” or “Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains.”

While these wordy slogans were in line with the advertising of the day, the company’s president, Asa Candler, and head of advertising, Samuel Candler Dobbs, spotted the trend toward national magazine advertising with the standardisation of four-colour printing, which rendered more visually dynamic ads than their black-and-white predecessors.

To produce this enhanced advertising, Candler and Dobbs hired the D’Arcy agency from St. Louis. D’Arcy was significant in helping to create a brand identity for Coca-Cola. W.C. D’Arcy was associated with Coca-Colafor the next four decades (he even served on the Board of Directors for a time) until his retirement in 1945.

Together with his creative director, Archie Lee, he crafted some of the greatest slogans in advertising history. While “Delicious and Refreshing” was part of the plan D’Arcy’s first big change was to add an arrow to all the advertising and packaging while adding the slogan, “Whenever You See an Arrow, Think of Coca-Cola.”

Their longest-running tagline, “The Pause That Refreshes” (1929),
was used in one form or another for almost three decades.

 In 1907 they added the slogans “Good to the Last Drop,” (yes, we beat Maxwell House with this one) to the advertising. The team hit their stride by the 1920s when they created the “Thirst Knows No Season” (1922) and our longest-running tagline, “The Pause That Refreshes” (1929). That campaign was used in one form or another for almost three decades.

Advertising began to change after World War II, when music and sung jingles played an increasingly important role in campaigns. Slogans became shorter to fit into a catchy melody.

By 1955, Coca-Cola began to look for another agency who specialised in the modern radio and television advertising. In 1956, McCann Erickson was named the lead worldwide advertising agency for Coca-Cola.  The changes in advertising were dramatic, and when the McGuire Sisters sang “Be Really Refreshed,” the company was aligned with the times. 

In 1963, Bill Backer, creative director for McCann, penned the jingle “Things Go Better with Coke,” and had the Limeliters record a demo in a run-down apartment on 57th Street in New York City.  Backer had to splice together several tapes, and you could still hear several flaws in the recording. The company loved it and used that demo for the next six years! Backer also developed the slogan, “It’s the Real Thing,” for which he and his team wrote “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” in 1971.

By 1993, with the constant evolution of advertising, The Coca-ColaCompany once again switched agencies. We hired CAA (Creative Artists Agency) to develop ads for Coca-Cola. CAA would hire the best and brightest producers and directors in the field to produce ads based on the slogan, “Always Coca-Cola” (1993). Luminaries like Ken Stewart (the mastermind behind the iconic Coca-Cola Polar Bears) and Rob Reiner created the ads, and the jingle became an instant classic.

Ken Stewart was the mastermind behind the iconic Coca-Cola Polar Bears.

Animated ads have always been a staple of Coca-Cola advertising, and the “Coke Side of Life” (2006) and “Open Happiness” (2009) campaigns featured some of the best the company has ever produced, including “Grand Theft Auto,” “It’s Mine” and “Happiness Factory.”

Slogans, by their very nature, are supposed to be “mindstickers” or “earworms.” The purpose of advertising is to make people associate a slogan with a brand. Coca-Cola is fortunate to have had some of the greatest creative talent in advertising work on our marketing. While the fictional Don Draper from Mad Men could always come up with a slogan, in the real world, industry giants like W. C. D’Arcy, Archie Lee and Bill Backer produced some of the greatest slogans, jingles and ads of all time.  [Article by Ted Ryan (director of Heritage Communications for Coca-Cola) and sourced from Coca-Cola's Website with thanks].

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Because 'Things Go Better With Coke' - including music, I've decided to share with you some fairly Obscure Aussie Coke Jingles from the 60's & 70's for this month's W.O.C.K on Vinyl Post.  Oh, and by the way, as a bonus I've made it Sugar Free as well !   Thanks to WoodyNet for the RIP and Sunshine for a late addition with some bonus tracks by The New Seekers.  All files are in FLAC 

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Track Listing

01-Bee Gees 1

02-Bee Gees 2

03-The Valentines

04-Billy Thorpe

05-Sherbet

06-Brian Cadd

07-Doug Parkinson

08-Dragon

09-Ronnie Burns

10-Easybeats 1

11-Easybeats 2

12-Johnny Farnham

13-The Executives

14-The Groove

15-The Seekers 1

16-The Seekers 2

17-The Twilights

18-Normie Rowe

19-Alison Durbin

20-New Seekers 1

21-New Seekers 2

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Aussie Coca Cola Commercials (107Mb) New Link 18/11/2024

Brian Cadd - White On White (1976) plus Bonus Single

(Australian 1965 - Present)
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Australian singer Brian Cadd is one of those people who never became as well known as he could have. Those who heard Cadd's 1970s pop/rock felt that he had a lot of potential as both a singer and a songwriter -- and, in fact, his songs were recorded by well-known artists like Glen Campbell, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Little River Band.
After releasing his third solo album, Moonshine in 1974, Cadd left Australia for the US. Based in Los Angeles, Cadd became a studio-bound songwriter, apart from one tour with the Bootleg Family Band.
But none of Cadd's American releases were big sellers. After recording a few LPs for the Chelsea label in the early '70s, Cadd moved to Capitol Records with 1976's little-known 'White on White'. Favoring an approach that is somewhere between Elton John and Billy Joel, Cadd delivers an album that is generally decent but not mind-blowing. "All in the Way (That They Use My Face)," "White on White Eldorado," and "W.C. I See" (an ode to actor W.C. Fields) are pleasant, catchy numbers, although one senses that Cadd was capable of more. He even does a rehash of his 1972 hit single "Ginger Man". In 1976, Capitol hoped that people who were into Elton John (whose 1970s drummer Nigel Olsson is employed on this record), Randy Newman, and Billy Joel would get into Cadd as well. But White on White (which has never been reissued on CD) wasn't the hit that Cadd was hoping for, and the LP ended up in the cutout bins after a few years. [Review by Alex Henderson, Rovi]
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The following is an extract from Cadd's autobiography 'From This Side Of Things' in which he givers us an insight into the making of the album 'White On White':

When I first got to LA, I became friends with a guy called Spence Berland, who ran the powerful industry magazine called Record World, Billboard magazine's only other serious competitor after Cashbox. He was a cocky little New York hustler somewhat in the line of Irving Azoff, although each of them would probably disagree on that!
Nevertheless, he was extremely influential and had taken a real shine to me. We became and have stayed friends. He was very much for Robert Appere. BNB were happy with either Appere or Stewart. My friends were divided between Botnick and Appere.
Robert was the leading contender because he was so hot within the industry. He also was very positive (read egotistical) and had lots of ideas (read off-the-wall). So I went with him.
I had heaps of songs at that stage, having been buried in the dungeon at Capitol Records for months and also having brought so many with me from Australia. We sifted through them and Robert booked the studio and some players.

Brian 1976

The day arrived and I turned up at Sunset Sound where most of the album would be recorded. I looked through the control room into the studio where the musicians were setting up and nearly passed out!
My guitar player was Steve Cropper. Good grief, he had been involved in much of everything I liked in pop and R&B music, had been in Booker T and the MGs and had co-written 'Dock of the Bay', just about my favourite song. A southerner, he was very easy going and friendly and we became friends quickly.
On bass guitar was Dee Murray who, while still playing on and off with Elton, had moved to LA to do more sessions. On drums, also from Elton's band, was Nigel Olsson, another hero of mine.
Robert buzzed around everywhere while I sat there in absolute dread. How could I ever play with these guys? I ran through my song list in my head and everything sounded completely amateurish and naive.
Eventually I had to pick something to start, I forget which song now, and I played it through for them just piano and voice. My voice alternated between Tom Waits and Julie Andrews and I played like my fingers were glued together.
Immediately I finished, Steve said brightly, 'Man, that's a good tune.' He's never told me whether he really meant that but it got me through the moment and I was able to summon the courage to begin.
Once everyone started to play, I knew we'd made the right choice as players and, even though they were A-team stars, they were going to play as well as they could for me. Also, the sound through the headphones was mind-blowing! It turned out to be a wonderful day and we got several great tracks down. By the end of the session, we'd already started to bond and I finished up being able to count all three of them as friends for many years afterwards.
The sessions progressed through a couple of weeks and we started laying down overdubs. All sorts of amazing people played and sang on the album. I was absolutely in heaven and couldn't imagine how things could get any better. And they didn't.

It was an era in the business where cocaine was rife. It was so extreme in LA that virtually everyone I knew, it seemed, was permanently 'holding'. If you went to a meeting with anybody about anything it would start with either someone 'chopping out' or 'passing the bottle'. This latter method involved storing the coke in these little clear plastic bottles with black tops. Almost all of them had tiny metal spoons attached to the top by a small chain. So everyone just unscrewed the top, dug the spoon into the white powder and tipped a 'bump' into each nostril.
Immediately the gathering ratcheted up a number of notches and proceedings commenced. This was so common that no-one ever really thought about it. If there were people in attendance who were 'straight', everyone else just went to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom became a most frequent event as the 'hits' received from the tiny spoon were only small. Even so, the cocaine back then was a much purer and genuine article compared with what is mostly on sale around the place now. At least, that's what they tell me. Apparently, the 'trip to the bathroom' practice is still very much in evidence in our industry today.
I even saw a Vicks vapour stick that was originally designed to give you a hit of nasal passage-clearing medicine when applied to each nostril. It had been converted to administer exactly one decent 'bump' each time it was placed into a welcoming nostril!

As cocaine produces a reaction similar to having a slight head cold anyway, it was intriguing to see many of my colleagues armed with these relief-giving converted nasal applicators in every possible social and business situation and applying themselves busily to clearing up their colds'.
The biggest problem, of course, was that, although one's vibe and enthusiasm rose in direct proportion to the number of bumps, one's judgement went the other way. During that period, so much absolute rubbish was written and recorded due to this phenomenon that it's a wonder the music industry survived at all. Everything sounded absolutely like the very best music and playing you'd heard in your whole life up until that moment. Every solo was pure genius. Every sonic enhancement engineered on a track was worshipped with religious fervour. In fact legendary players and engineers consistently achieved deity status.
I can't tell you what Robert's consumption of anything really was. He didn't drink alcohol or smoke weed that I saw. He kept pretty much to himself but I can say that, whatever he was on, he often attained the level of minimally deranged. He was capable of extreme highs and corresponding lows. He was probably a good engineer and certainly he had the courage of a good producer. But everything was SO far over the top all the time, not just with him, but generally, that it all became very hard to keep together.

All of this was incredibly new to me. Sure, there was lots of drinking and smoking weed at sessions in Australia in those days but no significant hard drug use. I'd never seen cocaine before these LA sessions, even though it had been around for a long time in the States way before I got there.
The album was finally finished and, apart from some very bizarre mixing decisions, we all felt that it was a successful recording. It wasn't anywhere near the style or execution of my Australian albums but it had some amazing playing on it and most of the songs seemed to work. I know now that what it didn't have was focus. At least, focus towards any specific commercial music genre. So in a way it was really an album of all my latest songs but had little relevance to what I'd been previously as an artist, certainly not to what I'd become as a live performer.
It was also blatantly 'pop'. All through my career the 'rock band member' has never been far below the surface with me. Arguably the best solo album I recorded in the Australian period was the eponymous Brian Cadd album containing 'Ginger Man. And that was principally recorded as a three-piece band live in the studio and then added to minimally before mixing.
This Capitol album was cut four-piece but then added to mightily before mixing. No kitchen sink, but in other respects much of it resembled the last half of 'The Real Thing'. Sometimes I thought I heard Molly channelling me, whispering 'it still needs something else'.
Obviously we were all making a different record. I wanted to make an extension of what I'd done in Australia with different great players and in wonderful American studios. Capitol Records wanted what I'd done in Australia but aimed at a musical genre in the US that they could market it to. Robert was desperate to achieve another 'Laughter in the Rain radio hit that contained lots of radio hooks and lavish production. None of us succeeded!

Then the battle for the cover began. We took some great shots, all centred around the title 'White on White', which was abbreviated from my favourite track on the album 'White on White Eldorado'. To that end I was decked out in white tails with a white top hat, white waistcoat and no shirt. Steve Kipner's girlfriend Candy, who was a model, and her model girlfriend came with me and we drove around LA in a white on white Eldorado with everyone's tops down, including the two models most of the time. There is an incredible shot on the inside cover of this book showing the car and myself with some palm trees in the background that finished up being the Capitol Records publicity shot.
However, the art department of a huge record company can be a hazardous area. The A&R people wanted it out on a certain date but the art people couldn't do the artwork I wanted in time. Fights broke out everywhere but, as we all knew, in the end it would get down to who held the dollars. The Capitol art guy dismissed our fabulous front cover concept and went with the cover you got if you happened to buy the album, which was also released through Festival in Australia shortly later. A white cover with white toothpaste on it writing out the title words 'White on White'. One of the least inspired music art pieces of any generation. In fact, right down there with the Axiom Sitmar cover!
I was still very optimistic. Management seemed very optimistic. Those who had heard the album seemed to like it fine.

It was now mid '77 and the single and album both got really good reviews, even a few great ones, and radio started picking it up. Unfortunately, the radio was sporadic and spread out over the entire US. If the album had fitted a specific music genre, it might have been able to be broken in a particular area— if it had been more rock, it might have been perfect to start in Texas or even farther south and, as it added radio stations, to break it regionally before going national.
Being aimed at a pure pop audience meant that it needed to really break across the board and quickly. So, even when we got radio in quite a number of states, it was never large enough or specific enough to break the record in any one area. Even live performances wouldn't have helped. It needed concentrated pop radio and TV and we didn't get it. When I listen to the album now, I hear country-rock songs in the main being produced like Neil Sedaka would have done them. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
Eventually Capitol gave up on the album and decided to have me start a new one. 'White on White' still served a useful purpose since it began to establish me as a writer there. I had some great publishing activity and wrote with a number of seasoned LA writers as a result. This increased over the years and I have enjoyed some lovely success in the U.S. and indeed around the world as a songwriter. I suppose, looking at my entire career, that's what I always really have been.
[Extract from Brian Cadd - From This Side Of Things, New Holland, 2010 p172-177]
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Brian also shares a funny story in his autobiography which relates to Jim Keays who was visiting him at the time, while he was promoting his White On White album:
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JIM KEAYS (lead singer of the Masters Apprentices): In 1976 when I was visiting Brian in LA, I went with him to Capitol Tower, whereupon the record company guys kindly invited me to accompany them on a promotional tour of various radio stations that had started to play tracks from the 'White on White' album. We flew to San Jose first up and did interviews there.

But from then on I have a hazy recollection of long-distance domestic unrest that seemed to overtake proceedings to the point that Brian had to urgently fly back to LA to attend to some kind of problem solving.It was then decided that I should continue on the tour as Brian Cadd because the record company guys figured that nobody would know the difference—we both looked similar with long hair and beards, and what's more I had a perfect Australian accent!
Only problem was I knew nothing about the album's tracks, recording details or anything else. However, I somehow managed to wing it in Oakland, San Francisco and in a number of other cities up and down the West Coast. I even succeeded in getting in a few mentions about this other hot Australian band I was a big fan of, the Masters Apprentices!   Priceless!
[Extract from Brian Cadd - From This Side Of Things, New Holland, 2010 p190]
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This post consists on MP3 (320kps) ripped from vinyl and includes full album artwork. In addition I have chosen to include an A-Side single from 1975 called "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" which was released on the Bootleg Label but has not appeared on any album. I quite like this album and especially like his revamped version of his 1972 hit "Ginger Man" and of course the title track "White On White (El Dorado)".

Track Listing
01 - I Can't Stand It    
02 - No Answer     3:24
03 - Heavenly Night In September     3:31
04 - Good Night Princess     4:15
05 - Pass On The Road     4:34
06 - All In The Way (That They Use My Face)     3:09
07 - White On White El Dorado     3:17
08 - Ginger Man     3:26
09 - W.C. I See     4:20
10 - Dance, Dance, Dance     4:19
11 - Longest Night    5:25
12 - Gimme Gimme Good Lovin' (Bonus Single) 2:27   
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Artists on Album:
Vocals, Piano – Brian Cadd
Bass – Dee Murray
Drums – Nigel Olsson
Guitar – Ritchie Zito, Steve Cropper
Guitar, Banjo, Jew's Harp – Ben Benay
Horns – Chuck Findley, Dick "Slyde" Hyde, Jackie Kelso, Jim Horn
Keyboards, Synthesizer – Billy Payne, William Smith
Pedal Steel Guitar – Sneaky PetePercussion – Gary Coleman
Backing Vocals – Buzz Clifford, Carmen Twillie, Danny Moore, Kathy Collier, Mathew Moore, Peter Beckett, Steve Kipner, Vennette Gloud
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Brian Cadd Link (105Mb)
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Brian Cadd - Selftitled (1972)

(Australian 1965 - Present)
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Brian Cadd is an Australian pianist, keyboardist, producer and singer/songwriter, and also known as Brian Caine, born November 29, 1946 in Perth, Western Australia. Brian has performed as a member of The Groop, Axiom, Flying Burrito Brothers and as a solo artist.

Brian released his first, selftitled album in October. It met with immediate success, as did the 'Ginger Man' single cut from it. His major breakthrough came in January 1972, when Ron Tudor, acting for Brian, obtained a contract for the release of the album in the US on the new Chelsea label.
Wes Farrell, the whiz-kid writer and record maker, owned the label. He showed immediate enthusiasm towards Brian. His first US single was 'Every Mother's Son' rather than 'Ginger Man'. But this may have been a tactical error as the latter track was probably stronger.
[extract from Noel McGrath's 'Australian Encyclopedia of Rock', Outback Press, 1978. p56]

The following is an extract from Brian's autobiography in which he talks about the making of his first solo album, as featured in this post. It certainly makes interesting reading and gives one a full appreciation of what goes into producing that 'debut album'.

And so I began my first solo album....... My diary shows that I usually booked time during the day for other projects and then recorded my own songs at night.
This album was a huge leap for me. Even though I had spent all those years performing and recording with The Groop and Axiom, I had only ever sung one song all the way though: 'Show Me the Way'. Admittedly, enough people liked it to make it a hit, but I was very much lacking in confidence starting out on this new scary adventure.

Recording in those days was usually accomplished with a reasonably large rhythm section: often several guitars, bass, drums, piano and maybe even percussion. Even though it was a long way from the everybody in at once' sessions of the '50s and '60s, much of the recording happened during the rhythm track. Overdubs were usually confined to vocals, solos and orchestral instruments.
In The Groop and Axiom, we always recorded pretty much live' band tracks and then added solos and vocals afterwards. That meant there was less control as each instrument strived to make a statement within the whole, often making for very full crowded tracks with not much light and shade.
For the album, as I always had, I wrote using a piano. I wanted the piano and vocal to be the centre point of the recording, which would leave opportunities later for interesting guitar lines and other performances to embellish rather than overpower the piano and vocals.

John Sayers started out as the engineer for the project. We had done so much recording together that I trusted him completely to help realise my dream. Early on in the project it became obvious that we were definitely working as a production team so John assumed a co-producer role.
I really loved the way Coxy and Barry Sullivan played together.
Barry is the finest bass player Australia has ever produced in my opinion and it was so sad for all of us when he passed away. On paper you wouldn't imagine that Coxy would particularly suit Barry, who came from a blues/soul background, while Coxy was pure rock'n'roll and pop. In fact, deep down where he lives, Coxy's favorite song is probably Ahab the Ayrab'. But there was a beautiful fluidity in whatever Barry played that seemed to marry perfectly with Coxy's powerful driving style—at least for the songs that I was writing.

So we just went in as a three-piece, which gave us so much space in each song to play together because there weren't any guitars grinding away to obstruct our view. I'm not being unkind here. Most great session guitar players will agree that often the best way to come up with functioning lines or rhythm patterns is after they hear what the rhythm section has laid down.
Certainly, this was the case with this album and each night we would get tracks that were relatively sparse and that could then accommodate vocals and solos and strings without cluttering.
The other thing that happened was that, because it was only the three of us and we became so tuned to each other's playing, we started to act almost as three parts of the one person. If Coxy and I went back to a basic structure at the beginning of a verse, it would allow Barry the space to play one of his beautiful, often spectacular bass runs without us disturbing or compromising it.

If I had to nominate which I thought was the purest and the most natural of all my recording experiences, I would say unconditionally that recording the band tracks for that first solo album was the one. Sayers helped so much by creating this amazing ambient world for us to play in each night.
Plus nobody, particularly me, knew what a Brian Cadd album should be like, so there were no rules. There were only the three of us and we went wherever the music took us. And it wasn't until all the band tracks were done that we even thought about overdubs. We never thought, 'oh, a guitar would be good here' or 'a sax would strengthen that line'. It was when we considered overdubs that we discovered how little else needed to happen to them. There really weren't enormous opportunities for guitars or other electric instruments. However, the two things the tracks screamed out for were vocals and strings.

In the pop corner, everyone in the recording industry had been bowled over by Elton John's first album, and none more than me. The space in the recordings, the prominent piano and vocals and the very cool rock-string arrangements were right there as an example of how a pop piano player made a record.
And over in the rock corner was the incredible Leon Russell who, with and without Joe Cocker, made stunning rock'n'roll records with so much power and groove. He showed us how to use serious rock'n'roll playing to make hip pop/ rock recordings. And he used women to sing behind the singer. I'd just spent eight years where the guys in the band did all the harmonies.
These two enormous forces met right in the middle of my head. Subconsciously, I was given the tools and shown the way.

Peter Jones was a jingler. He made lots of jingles, usually with his writing partner Bruce Smeaton. And he was an arranger whose time was about to arrive. He was also pretty crazy, which I considered somewhat of a bonus. When I first went out to his place, he was sitting at a piano in a makeshift music room surrounded by stacks of bottles of home brew. Somewhere around that period he crossed over the line and discovered grass. I met him during the transformation.
And Peter got it! He immediately heard the total difference in attitude and voicing that made Elton's strings different from traditional arrangers. So when we played him our band tracks with rough vocals, he became enthused and away he went with no basic brief for the arrangements other than to be non-traditional and to be cool.

Those string sessions were an epiphany to me. I had been cursed by traditionalism for so long that I'd stopped believing I was ever going to get anything new from an orchestra. But after the sessions were all over, everyone there realised that wed just taken a huge step forward.
Peter Jones has never received the credit he is due in my opinion. He changed the way we all thought about strings and during those few years, both with the various Bootleg albums and the arrangements for Morning of the Earth, Alvin and many other outside projects, he could always be depended on to add just the right amount of coolness to a track so that the strings never sounded cloyingly sweet. They always had a kind of rock integrity about them.

And those Leon Russell singers ... Americans had soul music. Their typical structure, even as far back as the black 'race' recordings and their subsequent white pop imitations, allowed for a separate singing group within the recording to sing the harmonies. Leon showed us how to do that. Particularly with the Cocker recordings, the background voices are so powerful that the choruses double in intensity from the verses just by virtue of the vocals.
I was solo now so I could have one of these singing groups if I chose to. And I chose to. So we formed a pool of great girl singers and hit the harmony trail. We had so much fun and we were simply making most of it up as we went. In fact, the whole record was like that. If you listen to it now, its principal parts are the three-piece rhythm section, the strings and the singers. Everything else is decoration in some form. I never achieved exactly that again, and in some respects I regret it.
John Sayers mixed it superbly and, although he has made some other wonderful recordings in his long and illustrious career, I think the mix on that album still stands up today as being extremely powerful and unique. 

I remember when we finally agreed it was finished, we took a copy back to his flat where he had this wonderful set of speakers. As was the custom back then, we wound the system up, turned off the lights and listened all the way through. At the end, we both realised, maybe for the first time, what we had achieved. I know the album isn't to everyone's taste and music and, indeed, recordings have moved a long way since then in some regards, but I'm still most proud of that record and I believe that it is unique. And 'unique' has always been my yardstick. My favorite artists remain those who, when they arrived, were like no others around them up to that point in time. Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry. It could definitely be said of The Band, certainly of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen. The Beatles, the Stones, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash. The list feels like it could go on forever but it's surprisingly short, given that we can now look at more than 50 years of pop music and rock'n'roll.

I'm not sure how much of the album Ron Tudor actually understood. His mantra was 'show me the single'. There were some hooky songs on there but there wasn't one that screamed 'single' to me. However, as we played it around to our industry mates, 'Ginger Man soon became the favourite, although 'Silver City' also got some serious votes.

In the end I think it got down to the radio guys Trevor Smith, John Torv and Rod Muir, with perhaps an additional, experienced level-headed vote by John Brennan, who decided on 'Ginger Man.
So it was released along with the album and, most luckily for me, 'Ginger Man' and 'Silver City' were both hit singles, and the album too. I say 'most luckily' because if they hadn't, I would probably not have made another recording and would have been satisfied to stay a record producer and writer. [extract from 'From This Side Of Things'by Brian Cadd, New Holland Books, 2010. p119-123]
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This post consists of FLACs ripped from my trusty vinyl which I bought as a teenager - and was my first record on the commercial 'Bootleg' label. Full album artwork and label scans are also included. As a bonus, I have chosen to include Brian's 1973 single "Every Mother's Son", but take note that the American release of his selftitled album (on the Chelsea label) actually included this track. (see alternative covers below)
This is a great debut album from Cadd and a must for any serious collector of Australian music.
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Track Listing

01 - Fairweather Friend
02 - Tell The World To Go Away
03 - Where The Music Is Playing
04 - Josie McGinty
05 - Tell Me About Freedom Again
06 - Ginger Man
07 - Pappy's Got The Blues
08 - Silver City Birthday Celebration Day
09 - Suite For Life
10 - Every Mother's Son (Bonus A-Side Single)
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Artists:
Brian Cadd (Piano, VOcals)
Barry Sullivan (Bass)
Phil Manning, Billy Green (Guitars)
Geoff Cox (Drums)
Bruce Woodley (Acoustic Guitar)
Graham Lyall (Wood Winds)
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Brian Cadd Link (256Mb)
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Rock On Vinyl Turns 5 Today - Happy Birthday

(Various Artists)
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HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY!
Rock On Vinyl turns '5' today, starting way back in 2009, on May 31st.
My first post was Cold Chisel's ultra rare 12" E.P 'You're 13, You're Beautiful and You're Mine'. (As WEA reissued the complete Cold Chisel catalog on CD recently, this posting is now disabled).
I'm proud to say that this has been my stance from day one, to only post music released on Vinyl which is not currently available on CD. Of course I sometimes question the validity of the pricing advertised on Amazon for some CD releases, with prices reaching into the 100's of dollars. This is sheer greed in my opinion.
Anyhow, back to the party at hand. So, what about some stats for the blog - since June, 2009 there have been:

- 828,000 Visitors

- 1.6 Million Page Views with visitors coming mostly from United States, Australia, the UK and Germany

- 477 Posts covering over 350 artists / bands

- Most popular posts being Bruce Willis (WOCK on Vinyl), The Runaways (Legend) and Deep Purple (Powerhouse)

- At present, the blog has 172 followers contributing to more than 1100 comments
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So thanks everyone, for your support over the past five years. I hope you've found a few gems along the way and I will endeavor to keep delivering the goods for at least another five!
Remember, I'm always open to suggestions on what to post, as long as they fit the 'unavailable' criteria. Just leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.
OK - I'm off to have some of this yummy 'birthday cake' now and work on my next post. But as a small birthday present to you, I've posted a compilation of Birthday songs for your enjoyment in MP3(320kps) format. Keeping in the spirit of this blog, the number and total length of the tracks on this compilation would actually fit on a vinyl pressing. And so the party begins......
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Track Listing
01 - Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder)
02 - Happy Birthday Lisa (The Simpsons/Micheal Jackson)
03 - Silver City Birthday Celebration Day (Brian Cadd)
04 - Birthday (The Sunnyboys)
05 - Magician's Birthday (Uriah Heep)
06 - Happy Birthday Helen (Things of Stone & Wood)
07 - Happy Birthday Rock & Roll (The Pirates)
08 - Happy Birthday To Me (Ross Ryan)
09 - Celebration (Kevin Borich)
10 - Celebrate (Dragon)
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Happy Birthday (MP3 / 110Mb) New Link 29/09/2025
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Various Artists - The GTK Tapes Vol 3 & 4

(Various Australian Artists 1969-75)
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The series title was an abbreviation of the phrase "Get To Know". GTK is one of several significant popular music programs produced by the ABC, and like the later establishment of Double Jay, GTK was created to address the perception that the Australian youth audience was being poorly served by commercial radio and TV and that much important international music and especially Australian popular music was being ignored by commercial TV and radio at that time.

GTK premiered on 4 August 1969 and ran until 1974, after which it was superseded by the even more successful weekly show Countdown. The first series of GTK was directed by noted TV and event director Ric Birch, who was at the time the youngest director in Australian television. Because colour television was not introduced in Australia until early 1975, most of GTK was shot on black-and-white film or videotape, although segments of programs ca. 1974 are known to have been shot in colour.

GTK ran for ten minutes and was broadcast daily from Monday to Thursday, at 6.30 pm just before the ABC's popular rural soap opera Bellbird. GTK's magazine-style format—which gave strong emphasis to local Australian rock and pop music—included interviews, reports, music film-clips (music videos) and occasional footage of local and visiting international acts in concert.   

GTK (1969-74) aimed to introduce 'new teens and twenties … to the world of trendsetting fashions, records, movies and events’. The first program included a profile of Sydney rock band The Cleves and most episodes featured a live performance filmed for GTK at the ABC’s Gore Hill studio in Sydney.

A feature of every episode—and one that makes GTK a unique document of that period of Australian music—was the daily live-in-the-studio performance segment, especially recorded by GTK. These segments featured hundreds of notable and lesser-known Australian acts of the period. The band chosen as featured group for the week would often record their own 'cover' version of the GTK theme (composed by Hans Poulsen), which was played at the start of each of the programs.

Certainly the nightly viewers -always devoted and dismayed in equal parts - were served up the readily familiar likes of Zoot, Axiom, Doug Parkinson In Focus, Autumn, Jeff St John, Sherbet, Country Radio, the La De Das, Blackfeather, Billy Thorpe, Chain, Hush, Max Merritt & The Meteors, Russell Morris, Daddy Cool, Spectrum, and Flake, but they were also exposed to new, challenging contemporary acts such as Company Caine, Captain Matchbox, Pirana, Tamam Shud, Bakery, Sun, Third Union Band, Syrius, Glenn Cardier, Kahvas Jute. Band of Talabene No Sweat, Gungan Dim; Mother Earth, Human Instinct, Langford Lever, Duck, Jeannie Lewis, Friends, Wendy Saddington, Wild Cherries, Band of Light, Gary Young's Hot Dog, Moonstone, Mighty Kong, Home, Buffalo, King Harvest, Headband and Carson.

These live performance segments were filmed in Studio 21 at the ABC's Gore Hill complex, which had originally been used for drama during the early days of live-to-air production. Groups were called in early on Monday mornings, and four songs/pieces were recorded, with one segment broadcast each day. Another aspect that makes this GTK footage important is that many of the bands were asked to play material from their live repertoire—including cover versions—rather than their current or recent hit song/s, since it was felt that the groups would perform these better and because it would show off other facets of their music. It is believed that because these live performances were filmed (and later transferred to videotape for broadcast) most of this footage was preserved, despite the fact that many of the broadcast master tapes were later erased.

It was thought for many years that most of the videotapes of the program had been erased during an ABC economy drive in the late 1970s, but recent discoveries at the ABC, notably during and after the closure of the old Gore Hill studio complex in Sydney, have revealed that much of the series (including location pieces and in-the-studio performances) was shot on film and then transferred to video. Recent estimates from the ABC indicate that as much as 90 percent of the series has survived, although regrettably most of the first year of the show was only videotape, which has since been erased.

Recent discoveries have included Mick Jagger discussing his role in Ned Kelly (1970), an exclusive GTK interviews with Pete Townshend and Marc Bolan and unique colour footage of Lou Reed's 1974 Sydney concert (including one of the earliest known films of Reed performing "Walk on the Wild Side") and his legendary Sydney press conference, which features noted Australian television journalist Ian Leslie.

GTK's final show was broadcast in late 1974 and was superseded by the highly successful ABC pop music show Countdown (1974-87).  [extracts from Wikipedia and Australian Screen website]
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This post consists of MP3's (320kps) most likely ripped from YouTube snippets of GTK episodes (and sourced with thanks from Deutros) along with full CD artwork.  Vols 1 & 2 are also available on my blog. The GTK tapes are a wonderful chronology of the diverse and highly talented Aussie musos that dominated our music charts in the early 70's.
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Vol 3. Track Listing
01 - Who Said What (Carson)
02 - Blow In D (Chain)
03 - The Devil's Disciple (Coloured Balls)
04 - Mango's Theme (Blackfeather)
05 - Winter Song (Country Radio)
06 - If Only (Ted Mulry)
07 - Only You And I Know (Doug Parkinson)
08 - Woman With Reason (Company Caine)
09 - Poem Of Joy (Healing Force)
10 - Lucille (John Farnham)
11 - 64,000 Dollar Question (Daddy Cool)

12 - Launching Place Part II (Spectrum)
13 - Way Out West (The Dingoes)
14 - Gee (Daddy Cool)
15 - Private Eye (Skyhooks)

GTK Tapes Vol 3 Link (83Mb)
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Vol 4. Track Listing
01 - Don't You Know That I Do (Sherbet)
02 - Ginger Bread Man (Brian Cadd)
03 - Munge (Chain)
04 - Boogie (Friends)
05 - Down At The Station (Daddy Cool)
06 - Nile Song (Human Instinct)
07 - Johnny B. Goode (Johnny Farnham)
08 - Message (Renee Geyer & Sun)
09 - Wishing Well (Sherbet)
10 - Sunset Song (Mighty Mouse)
11 - I've Grown Tired Already (Syrius)
12 - Speak To The Sky (Rick Springfield)
13 - Come Back Again (Daddy Cool)
14 - Make Your Stash (Spectrum)
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GTK Tapes Vol 4 Link (121Mb)
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