Orienta : The Markko Polo Adventurers
When I dig around tag sale boxes for LPs, I’m generally pretty ignorant about what I’m looking at. The only things I’m informed by are whether or not I’ve spotted a jazz record (which are usually gone by the time I get there), or how hot the chick on the cover is. There’s little else I concern myself with, as I’m not blessed with the encyclopedic knowledge necessary to know which album, amid the usual sea of Christmas junk and Herb Alpert madness, is worth anything. I enjoy buying things obliviously and tracing their stories later.
So, when I hit the Kent Library book sale this past weekend, I bought three records at a dollar apiece. Sure, it was no Cold Spring Library book sale with their ten-cent records, but it sufficed. One of the records I was attracted to was ‘Orienta‘ by The Markko Polo Adventurers. Usually, I make an educated guess about which LPs I’m buying have been released on CD or not, and this one didn’t look like it made the successful transition into our modern age – a principle that increases their inherent value to me, and which usually helps increase their monetary value also. Plus, it spelled things funny.
My guess was incorrect, and as I explored, it seemed that 1959’s ‘Orienta’ was actually a standard among the current hi-fi lounge / exotica crowd, and did exist in CD format. The album itself is an imaginary adventure amid the Asiatic countries, with the exact path of the expedition written out as a narrative in the liner notes on the reverse of the album cover. The record’s previous owner, TJ from Scarsdale, did me the favor of marking off their three favorite songs with blue Xs. While I ultimately could have just downloaded the thing or bought the mp3s, the record itself is worth around 5 bucks, and I was more interested in hearing it as it was originally heard anyhow – and it’s not nearly as hip.
Of course, if I’d found the alternate pressing of ‘Orienta’, which has a black bar across the top of the jacket that reads ‘Living Sounds’, I would have netted an $85 find. As it was, I was in it for the music. And a little bit for the redhead on the cover.
I discovered that this record had more connections to my proclivities than I’d anticipated. Further exploration revealed that the album’s musical content was composed and/or arranged by Gerald Fried, who was a noted composer for over 111 TV shows and movies. The most well-known piece of music that he composed was the very-oft-repeated Kirk vs. Spock battle music from the original Trek episode ‘Amok Time’. You know, the scene where Shatner finally finds an excuse to show off his man-chest via a well-placed cut across his Captain’s uniform? That scene
Even if you’ve never watched Star Trek, you’ve heard this music, as it finds itself used and re-used anytime there’s a mock-dramatic battle (usually between two friends) in any show of quality. You can also hear Fried’s work during some episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Lost In Space, and even in horror movies like the weird, expressionist ‘I Bury the Living’. Fried had even won an Oscar, so he knows his stuff.
While talk about ‘Orienta’ seems to focus on the fact that this was recorded as something of a parody of the exotica albums of the time, the music stands up well enough on its own – not unlike recent death metal parody band Dethklok’s superb pseudo-album. It’s not ‘real’, but it sounds so good that you don’t even care. ‘Bands that don’t really exist’ is another collecting theme I tend to pursue, as it were. So, throw on a copy of ‘Orienta’ during your next backyard barbecue, put up the tiki heads and light the torches – it’ll all go together swimmingly.
