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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re still listening to music featured in No Time To Die!

The Cuban band ‘Septeto Soprano’ was formed in 1924 and changed its name to ‘La Sonora Matancera’ in 1932. La Sonora Matancera’s sound can be distinguished by its use of two trumpets. Also, instruments such as bongos, the cencerro (cowbell), contrabass, piano, timbalitos, and tumbadora are significantly included in their music. The band is also known for its backup singers singing with a high-pitched falsetto delivery.

The group has experienced many different lineups of musicians while performing around the world over the past century. In fact, the Guinness Book of World Records named La Sonora Matancera “The group with the longest duration.” Some individual band members were active with the band for more than six decades

La Sonora Matancera makes our list with this 1965 album, ‘Presentando El Nuevo Sonido Fabuloso (Presenting The Fabulous New Sound).’ My copy is from Venezuela, but it was also released in Peru and the U.S. The song ‘Cumbia de Buenaventura’, which leads off Side B, can be heard at 44:49 into No Time To Die, just after Bond is handed his passport after arriving in Cuba and spots his competition by the docks. The music starts with Bond on the dock and continues as he walks down the street towards Bar El Nido. We only hear around five clear seconds of the song before more music starts, and street sounds also help drown it out. Five seconds later, new music is playing when we are introduced to Paloma.

Here’s the scene, the featured music plays at 28 seconds:

This track was more than 50 years old by the time it was included as incidental music in NTTD, it’s a great fit for Cuba.

155. La Sonora Matancera – Presentando El Nuevo Sonido Fabuloso (Presenting The Fabulous New Sound)

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re just listening to music featured in No Time To Die!

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973, Mark Anthony Myrie was the youngest of fifteen children. Myrie’s mother gave him the nickname Buju as a child, and he admired DJ Burro Banton (Banton being a Jamaican word for a respected storyteller). By age 12, Myrie had picked up a microphone and the stage name of Buju Banton.

Banton started releasing dancehall music in 1987, and by 1992, had the best-selling album in Jamaican history. Banton also broke the record for number 1 singles in Jamaica that same year, surpassing the mark previously held by Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Banton has become one of the most significant and well-regarded artists in Jamaican music history, collaborating with international artists across multiple genres, including Bob Marley’s sons.

A five-time nominee, Banton won a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album with his album Before the Dawn, just one day before going on trial for drug and weapons charges. He was convicted on multiple charges in the U.S. and imprisoned until December 2018. Banton was then released and deported to Jamaica.

Banton’s music makes our list with this 1994 12” single ‘Champion.’ The reggae/dancehall classic can be heard at 36:29 into No Time To Die, when Bond and Felix Leiter go into the Good ovr Evil club to play some three-coin spoof.

Here’s the scene, skip to around 3:00 for the featured music:

Though the track was more than 26 years old by the time it was included as incidental music in NTTD, it’s a great fit for the Jamaican nightclub scene.

154. Buju Banton – Champion

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music from all 25 EON Productions James Bond films. This includes the film celebrating its 10th anniversary next week, Spectre!

The album title ‘The Best of Bond… James Bond’ has been used for official compilation albums of music from EON Productions’ James Bond films since 1992. The original ‘The Best of James Bond’ CD was a one-disc compilation with music from each of the 16 Bond films released at the time. A two-disc 30th Anniversary Limited Edition compilation was also released in the US only, and added songs that had not been released to the public at that point, including tracks from the UK version of the Goldfinger soundtrack, the original version of ‘Goldfinger’ sung by Anthony Newley, Shirley Bassey’s version of ‘Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,’ the Thunderball suite, and some vintage radio spots.

The one-disc compilation later saw updated versions released in 1999 and 2002 that included music from some of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films. A 2008 release of the album was enhanced by the inclusion of a DVD featuring music videos and a ‘The Music of James Bond’ documentary.

In 2012, another two-disc version of the album was released, this time containing 50 tracks to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. While a single CD version contained main themes from all 23 Bond films at the time, the two-disc version added 27 more tracks of additional Bond music to complement the title songs.

An updated version of the album with music from all the Daniel Craig Bond films was originally planned for a 2020 release to coincide with the theatrical release of No Time to Die. Though the NTTD single came out in February of 2020, the full soundtrack was delayed with the film until October of 2021. The latest version of this album was also delayed until October of 2021 and features a gun barrel design on the cover, arriving on both a 2-disc CD and, for the first time, this 3-disc vinyl version. There have now been more than 100 versions of this album released in the past 35 years, when you include international variants, and it sure is great that it keeps getting updated when the latest music is released. The latest rendition features 26 tracks on both the CD and vinyl, one from all 25 EON-produced Bond films, with an extra track for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I’m so glad to have this one in the collection. 🍸

153. The Best Of Bond… James Bond

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music from 18 different James Bond films. This includes For Your Eyes Only, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, and Skyfall!

Born in England in 1960, David Lewis Gedge studied at the University of Leeds, and within a few years of finishing school, started a band with fellow alumni called ‘The Wedding Present.’ As the guitarist, lead singer, and songwriter, Gedge has been the only constant member of the band during the past 40 years. More than thirty other musicians have been officially affiliated with the group during this time.

The band’s most commercially successful year was 1992, when they released twelve 7” singles throughout the year. Each one reached the Top 30 in the UK singles, matching Elvis Presley’s record for the most chart hits in one year.

During the 2020 pandemic, the band recorded acoustic versions of their previous tunes, with each musician recording their part from home. The band also teamed up with assorted former band members to release a 20-track compilation album of James Bond theme cover versions, ‘Not From Where I’m Standing.’ Proceeds from the double LP, which included a CD, went to the UK mental health charity CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably.

While the album title is a callback to a retort delivered by both Sean Connery in Thunderball and Roger Moore in The Man With The Golden Gun, the delivery of the covers on the record is anything but familiar. Some titles do well with flipping the gender from the original versions, such as the acoustic version of A View To A Kill; other songs are just in a different key when the new artist has a different range, like the cover of Adele’s Skyfall, and some songs are just way out there.

Unfortunately, the songs are not in chronological order, and the Timothy Dalton era is skipped over to double-dip on music from Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It’s an interesting listen, and while I appreciate new takes on these familiar tunes, I wouldn’t recommend this album as a “must-buy” for the casual fan of James Bond music.

152. The Wedding Present & Friends – Not From Where I’m Standing

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music from GoldenEye!

When it comes to music on vinyl records, most 12” albums are classified as long-plays (or LPs for short). Typically, a single is found on a 7” record and has one song per side. An Extended Play record (or EP) is a musical recording that is longer than a single but shorter than a full album.

An EP usually includes three to eight songs total, with a runtime of 15 to 30 minutes for both sides. Artists would normally use the EP format to release new material more frequently without the larger commitment of creating a full-length album.

I really don’t have much to say about this 12” vinyl ‘The James Bond EP..’ Released only in Germany, the artist’s moniker ‘Guns & Ammo’ doesn’t have other album credits that I could find. The A-side features a pair of techno remixes of the James Bond Theme written by Monty Norman that run just under 10 minutes. The B-side (labeled here as the AA side) features another pair of remixes than total around nine minutes. This side, however, covers the song ‘GoldenEye’ written by Bono and the Edge and originally performed by Tina Turner.

It’s interesting to me that this cover debuted in 1995, when the GoldenEye film and the soundtrack with the Tina Turner single weren’t even released until November of that year. Also, the EP format was likely the best way to put out this selection of Euro house music recordings, as a full-length album is probably not necessary. 😄

151. Guns & Ammo – The James Bond EP

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music from A View To A Kill!

In 1985, English pop rock band Duran Duran’s opportunity to record the theme for A View to a Kill came about most unconventionally. Bassist John Taylor, a lifelong James Bond fan, encountered the series’ long-time producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli at a party. Reportedly under the influence, Taylor brazenly approached Broccoli and asked, “When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?”

Broccoli, intrigued by the sheer nerve of the successful New Wave star, surprisingly took the challenge seriously. This exchange led to an introduction with Bond composer John Barry, and the deal was soon finalized. Duran Duran then collaborated with Barry to create the track, which became the only James Bond theme song to ever hit number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, cementing the Band’s place in 007 history.

This UK-only version of the 7” single comes with different cover art from the standard release, a black die-cut inner sleeve, and white vinyl. The sleeve opens to reveal a gatefold with James Bond artwork and a center hole on the right side that shows the vinyl label art of Roger Moore during the typical Bond film opening sequence. When the record is removed, bullet artwork represents the gunshot audio.

150. Duran Duran – A View To A Kill

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Recommended music:

For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music featured in From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Never Say Never Again!

Solomon Schwartz was born in Whitechapel, England, in 1913. The son of Polish and Romanian Jews, he started taking piano lessons at the age of seven, training at a music school to learn piano and composition. By age 12, his first classical composition was broadcast on BBC Radio.

By the early 1930s, he was employed in dance bands and took on the professional surname Stanley Black. “Black,” being a literal translation of the German word for his birth name, “Schwartz”. During World War II, Black joined the Royal Air Force and was assigned to manage entertainment for servicemen at his base. After the war, Black was selected as conductor of the BBC Dance Orchestra, broadcasting up to six nights a week for the next nine years.

In the early 1950s, he was regularly one of the most heard musicians on the radio. Besides his conducting, Black arranged and composed music for nearly two hundred films. He was able to keep conducting and directing broadcast sessions at the BBC studios well into the 1990s.

While Black is known for writing numerous scores for films, radio, and television during his career, my favorite recording of his conducting is this 1987 Canadian release, ‘Incomparable’ (it also came out in Germany, the UK, and the US). For the compilation album, Black led the Mantovani Orchestra (see Bond on Vinyl 104) to play some great film music, including a ‘007 Suite’ of Bond film tracks. These include the common covers like the James Bond Theme, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger, as well as the less heard theme to Never Say Never Again written by Michel Legrand. The whole medley sounds great, and the non-EON Bond track feels right at home with the John Barry music.

149. The Mantovani Orchestra Conducted By Stanley Black – Incomparable

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music from Octopussy!

Eric Nathan Robertson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1948. He began his musical journey by learning music theory, organ, and piano in Scotland. Still, he was enrolled in the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada, at the age of fifteen.

Robertson began his professional music career as a teenager while still a student, serving as the music director for a church in Toronto, and playing organ in the R&B band Majestics. Before long, Robertson was composing music for both the church and the recording studio and became active as a studio musician. Robertson’s career also saw him become a record producer, a composer for film and television, and record his own albums of popular songs and movie themes. His ‘Magic Melodies’ album sold more than 1.25 million copies worldwide.

In total, Robertson composed more than sixty film scores, including TV films such as A Muppet Family Christmas. He has also written a substantial amount of choral and organ music, occasionally with instrumental or symphonic accompaniment. His 1983 album ‘Piano Hits’ reached number six on the Australian album charts, selling well enough to garner a follow-up album the next year. ‘All New Piano Hits ’84’ features sixteen tracks from TV shows of the era, such as ‘Love Boat,’ but also ‘Eye of the Tiger’ from Rocky, and ‘All Time High’ from Octopussy. Not the most common song to find covers for, this piano version of John Barry’s title track sounds great, even without any Rita Coolidge vocals.

148. Eric Robertson – All New Piano Hits ’84

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re still listening to music from Moonraker!

Neil Norman is a versatile figure in the music industry. Known as a musician, producer, and the current president and CEO of GNP Crescendo Records, which was founded by his father, Gene Norman, in 1954.

In the 1980s, GNP Crescendo bought the master tapes from Star Trek: The Original Series, which enabled them to begin producing Star Trek soundtracks. Norman was responsible for this expansion into film and television soundtracks, eventually leading to releases including Farscape, Forbidden Planet, and Stargate.

As a musician, Norman is most celebrated for his work with Neil Norman & His Cosmic Orchestra, which has become a leading authority on science fiction-inspired music. His music style is largely based on performing arrangements of significant themes from sci-fi films and television series, often featuring synthesizer ensembles and full orchestras.

This 1983 German-only compilation album by Neil Norman and His Orchestra, ‘Die Größten Science Fiction Hits’ or ‘The Greatest Science Fiction Hits’, features music from two dozen films and TV shows. Even though many of the tracks included are not from what you’d call ‘sci-fi’ franchises, these electronic jazz covers are a ton of fun. That includes a disco-sounding cover of Hal David and John Barry’s main title theme for Moonraker.

147. Neil Norman And His Orchestra – Die Größten (The Greatest) Science Fiction Hits

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Here is the gatefold art, as this is a double LP release.

Recommended music: [Skip to 10:00 for The Spy Who Loved Me]

For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re listening to music from The Spy Who Loved Me!

Born in 1915, in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian immigrant parents, Marty Gold spent his early musical career in regional novelty groups, including the Schnickelfritz Band and its spinoff band the Korn Kobblers. Gold co-founded, composed, arranged, and played piano for the Korn Kobblers, describing them as “America’s most nonsensical band” with performances incorporated comedy and odd instruments such as car horns, jugs, mouth harps, and washboards. The band played clubs in the New York area from 1939 through the mid-1950s and starred in one of the earliest weekly television shows, Kobb’s Corner,’ broadcast on CBS.

Gold used orchestras consisting of New York’s best musicians, often including lush string sections and with as many as 50 or 60 players, he pushed the boundaries of ‘easy listening.’ His arrangements of familiar tunes featured extensive original passages mixed in, added intricate counter melodies, and even applied unexpected styles and instrument combinations. Gold frequently included improvised sections, which helped distinguish his music from the more predictable sounds within the covered genre.

Beyond his own albums, Gold arranged, produced, and conducted for recording sessions of singers such as Lena Horne, pianist Peter Nero, and many others. He even joined forces with artists who were popular with his audience’s children, writing music for recordings by the television host Shari Lewis and author Theodor Geisel, best known as Dr. Seuss.

One album by Marty Gold and His Orchestra is this 1978 release by Peter Pan Records ‘Themes From The Movies.’ Originally released the year before as ‘Music From Star Wars,’ the album re-released with more of a comic book style artwork on the cover than just a large Star Wars logo. The record includes covers from films released in 1976 and 1977. Not all of these were hits with all ages like Star Wars, such as the inclusion of the theme from the Jaws rip-off film, Orca: The Killer Whale. Thankfully, the album includes a jazzy cover of Marvin Hamlisch’s theme from The Spy Who Loved Me.

145. The Marty Gold Orchestra – Themes From The Movies

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For tonight’s Bond on Vinyl post, we’re moving on to Moore era Bond tunes, and listening to music from Live And Let Die!

While Paul McCartney and Wings’ iconic rock version of ‘Live and Let Die’ served as the main theme and opening credits song in the 1973 film, BJ Arnau’s rendition appears later in the movie as a cabaret act at the fictional “Fillet of Soul” club in New Orleans.

Interestingly, the film’s producer, Harry Saltzman, had initially sought a talented soul singer for the opening titles, not realizing McCartney insisted on his group, Wings, performing the main track. Arnau, born as Brenda Burton in 1941 in Cleveland, delivered a distinct jazz and soul-tinged take on the Paul and Linda McCartney composition, differentiating it from Wings’ famous bombastic recording. Her performance in the film enhanced her profile, leading to a record deal, cabaret work, The Benny Hill show, and other television appearances.

Arnau’s rendition appears in the medley track called ‘Fillet of Soul – New Orleans/Live and Let Die/Fillet of Soul – Harlem’ on the B-side of the Live and Let Die soundtrack album. The full version of the George Martin-produced track can also be found on this 1973 German 7” single. There is also an alternate version of the medley found on the Live and Let Die 50^th anniversary CD set, but this single is still the best way to jump right to Arnau.

144. B. J. Arnau – Live And Let Die

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