Capture the funky mood

Ben Blackmore recommends an essential soundtrack for lockdown listening. Having signed off on the anxiety-inducing score for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, David Shire began work next on The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, a stylish 70s potboiler starring Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau. But while The Conversation’s suspenseful soundtrack is an

Why did Billie Joe jump?

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay… So begins one of the greatest, and most mysterious, hit songs of the Sixties, ‘Ode to Billie Joe’, recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a part-time swimsuit model from the wrong side of the

Impossibly dreamy

To many theatregoers, the time is nigh to ‘right the unrighteable wrong’ … Later this month, after more than 40 years away from the London stage, the Tony-award-winning musical Man of La Mancha returns in a powerful collaboration with the English National Opera, with Kelsey Grammer (Dr Frasier Crane to many) in the lead

A celebration of film music

Let’s face it, everyone loves a list. We at The Record Album are no different. So, to mark the coming of the annual celebration of the film industry this weekend that is the Oscars, Pitchfork, the American online music magazine known for its ‘best of’ compilations, has put us in the mood by