3 things we all like – music, sex and nostalgia
Radio 2 ain’t what it used to be. That might be a little harsh, but let me step back in time to explain…
Delia Derbyshire, Dudley Simpson, Brian Hodgson and David Vorhaus – Theme from The Tomorrow People
There was a time when the younger ears of a 20jfg writer were overexposed to the Radio 1 playlist, and tuning into that other station was a joy of what I used to call Middle of The Road, Easy Listening and Exotica, all with the added bonus of being at my Nan and Granddads – who totally spoilt me.
Novelty records from the past blasted forth, from scary satanic Barbara Cartland styled couple of Peters and Lee to the wonders of Herb Albert and a whole host of Granddad and Grandmas post WW2 swing alongs from the likes of The Andrew Sisters. As times passed by the Radio 1 presenters drifted over to Radio 2 and their daytime playlist is full of half remembered tracks from my childhood, instead of my Grandmothers.
We search further for our exotica now – and Trunk Records has been our long term aid in this, from Basil to Quantum, Deep Throat, George A. Romero, The Wicker Man, The Clanger’s and Psychomania! Long term readers will have experienced our fetishistic joy at the re-release of many of these. Uummmmmmmmmmm…………
I remember with great joy picking up a copy of the Dirty Fan Male record on a trip to London, and still drag it out on the odd occasion. Whenever searching for odd references to artist we always ran into the Trunk Records rather cheeky site.
Trunk managed walk a very English line of nostalgia and downright filth, with impeccable taste and a sense of humour – as John Waters said “you got to have good taste to know bad taste” – which sometimes turns out to be that 70s suburban behind closed doors boredom that Genesis and the krew were delving into…
Trunk dwell in land of disturbing oddness where titillation, zombies, and sci-fi walk hand in hand with an english forgotten childhood soundtrack. Now Trunk Records have been subsidising our lust for sex, horror and oddness for an unbelievable 10 years!
We are lucky enough to have some works from Trunk founder, Jonny Trunk on why he started the label, so over to Mr.Trunk….
There are lots of reasons I could have started a label. But only one really made me do it. I had come to the end of a musical journey, and reached a bit of a dead end. You see I’d collected film music voraciously since I was a kid. While all my friends were into the charts, and indie pop and new hairdoos and that, I was digging around in charity shops buying film music like ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and dreaming of psychedelic parties full of groovy girls, oil projections and acid.
My ears and brain craved funny music from TV, like underwater music, and the sort of sounds they used when late night science programmes talked about microbes and germs. That sort of twiddly, plinky plonky whirring odd stuff – funny electronic sounds you’d expect to hear in the future. My local record shop had no idea what I was on about, no one I knew understood either.
I’d chased film music as far as I could, got all the records that at the time I knew I wanted, and then realised than the next few steps in my sonic voyage were impossible.
There was no internet back then, no books on fucked up records, no reissues of freaky sounds. There were 60s albums, 70s albums but always the same sorts – classic rock and roll, R&B, Northern Soul or funk and disco. The sonic situation for me was desperate, frustrating. But one afternoon in yet another charity shop I came across a very plain looking album called ‘Bosworth Backgrounds’. The tracklisting mentioned electronics and had cues called ‘Lunar Probe’, ‘Dramatic Underwater Scene’ and ‘Slow Rising Cosmic Excitement’. Instantly I knew it was exactly what I’d been craving. After a little research I found out this style of recording was known as ‘library music’, basically non-commercial music made privately for TV companies and film makers. These records were pressed in minute quantities, 50 copies, 100 copies maybe, and then sent to editors and producers for use as and when they needed it. This music also had very specific themes, like love, science, space. So, if you were making a TV programme all about sex in space and needed some instant music, you’d go to your library records and look up ‘love’ and ‘science’. Dead easy.
I used the information on the back of the record and contacted the Bosworth company. They were in large dusty office just outside Soho. I made an appointment and when I got there it looked like no one had been in the office for about 50 years. Piles of dusty sheet music and old records were everywhere. And the men who worked there seemed to have been there all their lives. But I found them welcoming and fascinating, and within about ten minutes I had talked them into letting me issue some of their weird science electronics and futuristic jazz sounds to a new, commercial audience. I just believed that if I wanted to hear this weird stuff there must be other people in the world who’d like it too. The old guys at the Bosworth library laughed at me in a nice way, and told me I was very welcome to waste my own money.
Trunk Records Archive – The Ladies Bras
With the library music licensed I officially started Trunk Records with the first ever release called ‘The Super Sounds Of Bosworth’, a compilation of killer background sounds and noise. Producing the album required the help of several mates, and it was a very steep learning curve but well worth it as 3,000 albums sold very fast indeed. And its influence spread quickly – within a few months the album had been sampled worldwide by a major hip hop artist and those old big beat trip hop sorts.
The small success of this first album made it easy to produce a follow up of similar sounds, and this led to the first ever issue of the legendary Wicker Man soundtrack. What I realised is that I’d started a record label for my own personal musical reasons. I’d begun to put music out that I wanted on vinyl, that was not available unless I’d issued it. Trunk Records had become a new old label, not a reissue label but an original company finding dead, lost sound. And I discovered that if I followed my musical instincts and refused to follow fashions.
Trunk Records highly recommended Now we are Ten compilation is available for the princely sum of £4.99 from the
Trunk Records website – naughty, but nice.
Jonny Trunk broadcasts on one of our favs Resonance FM too.
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