You may think it strange, but I enjoy listening to the type of soundtrack music you might find on a film like Get Carter, Bullitt or The Ipcress File. Much crime drama TV produced during the ’70s used these films as their model, and a huge number were produced all requiring incidental music.
During this period, a number of companies such as De Wolfe, KPM and Peer International Library Limited produced a huge amount of library music often using musicians who were usually session or backing artists for folk such as David Bowie, Elton John, and others. They are quality recordings, and still often used in contemporary dance and rap remix tracks.
We’ve all heard them without knowing it. To put it another way, these are the type of tracks the director Quentin Tarantino will chuck on one of his soundtracks.
Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of these recordings. I also have a strange fondness for the Triumph TR7, a car that I know many loathe. When I was little, they were everywhere—and they were cool.
Before I bought my own TR7, I would often watch the old ads on the internet, taking in the visuals, the period detail, the music, and one day I suddenly understood that a track I loved—and had been listening to for some time—was coincidently the very track some advertising director 30 years previous had chosen to accompany the American TR7 promotional material.
This was a delightful thing to discover: had I tried deliberately to find the library music on a 30 year old commercial, I would have ended up tearing my hair out. Therefore, the music and the TR7 images on my website are there for anyone curious enough to discover them. I like the thought of those sounds & that imagery—and am delighted to share them with Petrolicious readers.
You can look at Geoffrey’s artwork here and follow him on Twitter as well!
View the full track list for Peter Dennis Orchestra ?– Zenith here
Image Sources: curbsideclassic.com, imcdb.org, forum-auto.com
