A Dinner Date with Melachrino

George Melachrino... a mainstay of the RCA "Living Stereo" series, and a very lush arranger and composer. The music here is very much background dinner type stuff, but is still very very nice to have around when you have that certain lady over for a romantic repast.

What ever happened to casual dinners with good wine, and ladies wearing gloves, and men in suits, and dinner music such as this... the last time I was in an upper-scale dinner restaurant (a VERY nice steak-house for a romantic dinner), there was some cudgel-brain a couple of tables over in short pants and a polo shirt. If I have to wear a suit and tie, then, by golly.....

I guess it is a sign of times gone by, then, maybe that makes me an old poop... but every once in a while, I still like having a REAL dinner with REAL music and REAL manners.

Sigh...

Anyways, this is a 1958 RCA recording, recorded in England, and pressed by Telefunken-Decca GmbH in (at that time) West Germany. THe recording is brilliant, but the TelDec pressings have a VERY close groove pitch, which almost necessitate a different stylus (narrower than the usual stylus used for stereo groove playback) to get the stylus well into the groove. If I stil had my very skinny stylus for US Victor microgroove 45s and EPs, maybe I could have gotten an better encode... this one is good, but there were a few more groove pops than I would have cared for.

On the inner sleeve, which is from the UK, there is an interesting bit, which I'll repeat for you here:

NOTE: When held at certain angles the surface of this Stereophonic record looks different than that of a monaural disc... it may even appear to be worn. Of course, this is only an illusion caused by the unusual way in which the grooves of this record are cut.

It's still good for the dining music though, Music for Dining with your favourite Someone.