Brother JT
Take off, Zebra, Baby - Music for non-existent Film Vol. 1
Apartment

Seen any good non-existing films lately? Take off, Zebra, Baby! maybe? I doubt it. This movie was supposedly never released (in 1965-66), and shortly after the making director Guy Roe (Guy who?) took his own life. One Giovanni Teorema is given the musical credit, while actress Jo(e)y Bang (name of birth, huh? Sounds like a Blue Movie star...) plays "the Woman". The male ("the Man") actor, Hurd Hatfield, is real enough. He seemed to be headed for stardom after playing the leading role in The Picture of Dorian Grey (1945), and has been in seen in other films like Joan of Arc (1948), King of Kings (1961, as Pontius Pilate), and The Boston Strangler (1968). However, his career never took off. Like Take off, Zebra, Baby maybe...

Brother JT (John Terlesky) is the man in charge of presenting this obscure score. He's known from various releases of acid-psych-pop-rock content on alternative labels like Twisted Village, Bedlam, Siltbreeze and Drunken Fish, as front-man in Original Sins, or as Brother JT (or Brother JT & Vibrolux). This time he's more cruising in laid-back surroundings. The music on this 9 song 10" mini-album is a mixture of instrumental lounge Muzak, French cabaret/casino-Hammond Easy listening, plus some crisp and tearstained ballads. Everything spliced together by pieces of film dialogue.

Not really that interesting altogether, but there's a couple of decent moments. The ballad song Bittersweet is by far the best, plus the crooner ballad Everybody's Gone to the Moon (quite suitable here at Luna Kafé , right?), originally by one Jonathan King. Most amusing moment: Last Tango in Newark, a funny little bossanovian piece of kitch reality.

The film never took off, and, well, not really the music either, but I'm not sure if that's fully intended from the start. Maybe the flight was canceled due to a bad weather forecast. Or, they could still be waiting out there on the runaway for the clearance to go.

Copyright © 1999 Håvard Oppøyen