Mark(Marc) Wirtz/Teenage Opera anyone?

Does it say Keith Weet?

 

Best answer so far - but not what we're looking for...

 

Getting warmer, but I suspect not in the direction you're about to head...

 

Does Side 2 actually play 'Where Will The Baby's Dimple Be' by Alma Cogan?

 

Again, warm and that would be great it was the answer...

 

Philwit instead of Wirtz?

 

Brrrrr! Very cold. Still with the quality of that shot it could be a different record entirely anyway.

 

Wirtz's "stage" name.

 

May I add that this reissue uses the 60s stampers...

...which may help you...

...or not...

 

What can I say? I'm disappointed.

Look just beyond the labels to the inner groove and you'll see - THE LABELS ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE

Now you're disappointed.


By the way how did people first get to hear/find TO stuff? For me I had read something in the past but not made any effort to track it down. I bought some surplus records from my local hospital radio and Extract... was one of them - the title was intriguing to me. I bought Sam because it also said it was from the TO. I wasn't very impressed when I first put the Extract single on - because of the label switch as it turned out. I picked up the singles about this time last year.

 

In the 80s a friend of mine bought Rubble and The Great British Psych Trip albums as they came out. I heard Grocer Jack then. I didn't think anything else about it until about 1999 or 2000 when I started getting on a Brit pop psych kick again. I bought the soundtrack and then around 2000/2001 the Fantastic story and that's when I wrote to Mr. Wirtz's email address in that CD.

 

- and somewhere down the line you end up with DATs of session acetates. Who would have thought?

 

I just picked up a copy of the 1996 RPM compilation of all the material, and I'm really diggin' it!

 

It's interesting, but realise that only Grocer Jack, Sam and He's Our Dear Old Weatherman are from the project. The others are just produced by him at a similar time. Mark has said - although Mafru2 may know otherwise - that Theme... was intended for the original project, but not in the form it appears. What are your favourite tracks so far?

 

Mike, where has Mark said that Theme was intended for TO? He's always maintained with me that it was never considered and in fact was a Mood Mosaic track they he just renamed. This is where things get dicey with Mark because he's the only one who knows for sure. EMI never even knew he wanted to do an album. However, John Carter told me that the musicians were under the impression that the tracks were part of a larger project.

 

Those three that you mention, the three singles, are sublime. The rest just sound like the outtakes or works-in-progress that they are, albeit rather fabulous. Except could never get into 'Aunty Mary's Dress Shop', nor anything by Tomorrow at all ("Three jolly little dwarves running round a meadow...").

 

Apart from the instrumentals of Sam and Grocer Jack the rest is released stuff that Mark produced and was released around the same time. None of it meant or written for the Teenage Opera.

 

The same time he "casually exagerated" about the edits on Grocer Jack as it turns out.

Did you know he has five legs?

 

I mean the tracks from TO Soundtrack on RPM, is that what you mean Mike or the other comp?

 

Yeah, I mean Soundtrack. It's funny, cos on the other comp there's the Theme... where it was used as a demo for someone's voice and not for release. Works for me though.

To be honest I rarely listen to the non TO tracks on Soundtrack except I quite like the other version of Theme, Barefoot and Tiptoe, and Dream, Dream, Dream.

 

'Festival of Kings' sounds like a great lost TV or advertising theme.

 

As it turns out the Soundtrack is on the table with me here. I have just put the track on and I heartily concur.

 

Hang on - yes he actually said it was a track just picked up for a b-side. However in addition he suggested that the theme would have been used in the project but not in that form.

We didn't discuss the number of legs he, or indeed I, have or have had.