The mid 1970s pairing of Mariangela, a promising young singer/songwriter, and the Greek composer/musician/producer Vangelis might have seemed illogical on paper, but the result was a unique album that, unfortunately, didn’t get its due.

At age eleven, Mariangela Papaconstantinu began playing guitar, and by the time she reached thirteen, she was writing songs. Before long, she started appearing weekly on a music television program in Greece (Mariangela is half Greek, half Italian), singing her English-language material. This led to her signing with a major label, Polygram, and beginning work on her debut album—all before she turned fourteen.
 

 
In the mid ‘70s, Vangelis Papathanassiou was becoming increasingly famous in Europe. He first achieved prominence as a member and chief composer of the prog rock band Aphrodite’s Child, with their 1972 double-album rock opera 666 getting a lot of attention, though he was still years away from the worldwide success he’d achieve with the soundtrack for Chariots of Fire. Vangelis had released three solo records when he was hired by Polygram to produce promising acts on the label; he quickly chose Mariangela.
 

Mariangela and Vangelis.

Before recording of her album in London commenced, Mariangela sang back-up vocals for a group Vangelis was producing, Socrates. The band returned the favor by playing on Mariangela’s self-titled debut.

As producer, Vangelis selected the tracks that would appear on the Mariangela record. He picked four of her songs, with the remaining seven tunes coming from various writers, including four by an obscure figure named Denny Beckermann. His “Honalulu Baby” kicks off the album and was chosen as the lead single.
 

 
The Beach Boys-esque number, like much of the album, is lavishly arranged, filled with strange synth sounds. The first of the Mariangela-penned numbers to appear on the LP, “You Are the One,” resembles an ABBA production, and is just a gorgeous pop song. Mariangela sings confidently throughout the record, and proves to be a talented songwriter, seeming older beyond her years. This is especially apparent on the melancholic “Memories of Friends,” which includes such lyrics as “good things never last for long” and “loneliness is meant to be my friend”—fairly introspective for someone barely in their teens. Other highlights include “What You’re Doing to Me” (think Olivia Newton-John gone weird), and the glorious “Rainbow,” a throwback to the sunshine pop of the 1960s.

For reasons that are unclear, Mariangela (1975) was only released in select countries, and those didn’t include England or Western Europe. The album quickly sank without a trace. Mariangela wouldn’t release a follow-up full-length until the ‘90s.

Mariangela is now a sought-after collectible. In 2012, a sealed copy of the original Canadian pressing sold for 300 bucks. 
 

 
At long last, Mariangela’s adventurous debut will be reissued on vinyl, courtesy of Telephone Explosion. Due May 1st, you can pre-order it via the label’s website.

With their announcement of the remastered record’s pending release, Telephone Explosion posted one of the songs from the album written by Mariangela, the out of this world, “My Dear Life”:
 

 
For Dangerous Minds readers, the label has uploaded the aforementioned “You Are the One”:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Meet Chandra, the pre-teen who released a fantastic post-punk record in 1980
Unheard new wave track from 1983 by teenage artist Chandra (a DM premiere)
Vangelis stars in the most synth-tastic footage ever committed to videotape

 
Vangelis was born in Italian-occupied Greece during World War II with the moniker Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, but quite understandably, when he came of age said to hell with that and went by plain old Vangelis (or Vangelis O.) most of the time. A true pioneer of synth prog music, Vangelis made his name with Aphrodite’s Child in the late 1960s before breaking out on his own some years later. In the 1980s his relatively tame soundtrack for the Oscar-winning flick Chariots of Fire propelled him to wider fame; you might also know his music from Blade Runner.

In 1974 he appeared on a French TV show called Melody and the results were frankly mind-blowing. This is quite simply a totally righteous 1970s jam (man) in the best sense of the word. The footage is broken up into a few different parts but the throughline is Vangelis burning it up on the synth as well as various percussion instruments, accompanied at various points by a quartet of bongo players and an enormous drum circle of young people bashing the bejesus out of a dozen or so kettle drums. 

The material here heavily emphasizes Vangelis’ 1973 album Earth. The second song in the set is called “Let It Happen” and is almost certainly a track that the French electronic act Air pillaged for their own uses a good 20 years later. The third track is a cheery number called “My Face In The Rain” and resembles a satisfying mashup of mid-career Flaming Lips and Genesis in the days right after Peter Gabriel left.
 

 
Vangelis would soon record his masterpiece Heaven and Hell, which ended up furnishing the music for Carl Sagan’s 1980 PBS series Cosmos and also represented his first collaboration with Jon Anderson of Yes. The two men would later release several albums under the name Jon and Vangelis.

The joyous and infectious jam sessions in the show are fantastic, but what pushes this video into must-see territory is the audacious video effects knob twiddling that director Marion Sarraut demanded for the occasion. Basically there seems not to have been a back-projected visual effect that didn’t get used here, and indeed, the final takeaway is that the technician in the booth was improvising right along with the musicians. Vangelis and his singer spend much of “My Face in the Rain” floating around on individual magic carpets (take my word for it; you’ll see) over footage of the Iguazu waterfalls in Argentina and Brazil and similar natural wonders. Those effects and Vangelis’ brazenly open jacket, revealing a multitude of Greek chest hair and at least five ostentatious medallions (couldn’t tell if any of them was a coke spoon but I would be none too surprised), are the clearest markers of the year this footage was produced.

More after the jump…

 
This vintage footage of Vangelis playing around on his synthesisers at Nemo Studios in London, is equal parts beautiful and terrifying. What an incredible, intense, truly psychedelic sound he is creating! And what a crazy head space he must have been in to live and work in this environment every day.

According to YouTube uploader Nimanty:

[The] recording of this performance took place [on] Spanish Television in 1982, [and] also when Neuronium (Michel Huygen) visited Vangelis to perform together.

Some enhancement of the original video tape with denoising, contrast improvement and color correction.

Sound remastering for better clearity and stereo imaging.

The sound on this is great - thank you Nimanty!
 

 
I love it when European directors try to wrap their heads around America in the Sixties. I’m thinking of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, Godard’s Sympathy For The Devil and the film I’m sharing here, Henry Chapier’s Sex-Power. Revolution has never been sexier, more romantic, existential or just plain goofy when seen through the prism of the nouvelle vague.

Sex-Power is a sweet bit of candy-colored psychedelic fluff with an astringent dose of agit-prop militancy in its chewy center. While most of the film is in English there is occasional French dialog without the benefit of English subtitles, but you hardly need to know French to get the gist of what is happening. This is the tale of a young Frenchman who arrives in Northern California looking to forget a lost love (Jane Birkin) and ends up encountering various forms of feminine power as embodied by Bernadette Lafonte as Salome and Catherine Marshall as “la fille moderne.” The film moves through space and time in an impressionistic, lysergic dreaminess.

Directed by film critic and journalist Henry Chapier in 1970, Sex-Power has a lovely soundtrack by Vangelis and luscious cinematography by Edmond Richard.

Released the same year as El Topo and Zabriskie Point, Chapier’s film has some striking desert imagery that can’t help but recall those films. More than likely a case of cosmic synchronicity as opposed to influence, given they were all made at the same time.