VA - The Many Names of Eva (Net, 1982) [Library]

This is, as far or more distant still than I can tell, a library record with a softcore theme, perhaps it was actually a bona fide soundtrack for a movie-- yet the generic style descriptors on the back suggest these tracks did not make it to an actual trenchcoated cinema.  I was forced to cut off the bottom half of the front image due to its highly suggestive nature and the provincially small-minded censorious government in my area.  Yet when I was young in the eighties our very liberal local TV cable (and even more liberal parents) carried many European channels which ineluctably after the 11 PM hour chimed played endless succulent softcore porn productions ex Euroland.  And like others perhaps my approximate age I might be forgiven for remembering with fondness those lavish productions full of beautiful castles and costumes, the endless Emanuelles, the classic Story of O, the repetitive undressers Nastassia Kinski, Edwige Fenech, Laura Antonelli, and the pedophiliac tendencies of David Hamilton including Bilitis my favourite ridiculis title (cum beautiful music though) -- any one of whose movies today would be castigated as pedophiliac dross due to the teenage actresses featured therein.  But I remember going to the local bookstore or University library and being able to go through David Hamilton's many books of 'art photography' which were as beautiful esthetically as they were unarousing libidinally due to the interference between the intellectual brain and the hormonal brain.  How I am led to wonder that in my lifespan women went from being fully naturally hairy to, currently, completely shaved.  It was surprising to me already some 20 years ago when the fashion arose to shave the area albeit it was a logical development both for esthetic reasons, practical reasons (underwear or swimwear), and for evolutionary reasons (the imperative for women's desirability in our patriarchal society is always to spend time and effort to beautify themselves... many times I have reflected on how women risk their lives applying makeup in the morning commute's rear-view mirror, driving while applying sundry adherent chemicals to their faces-- it's that important to them, a matter of life and death).  Yet I was surprised some years back to find grown adult women now shave completely (in my line of work a side effect of learning).  Then again this also seems logical to me, as a reductio ad absurdum, but also given the prevalence of oral sex.  I wonder what will happen 20 years from now, since as I said, this evolution occurred entirely within my lifespan-- what new technologies will be brought to bear on female dermatological corrections, or what even could be invented given that depilation has achieved totality?  (Yet perhaps a rising incidence of oral cancers will curtail the habit of oral contact... or could vaccines bring about a breakthrough in commonality?)  Surely it comes as a shock now when we see a 1978 classic like "La Fille" (Cosi Come Sei) in which a teenaged N. Kinski plush with her mammalian hair, runs around naked in front of a married man (Marcello Mastroianni) old enough to be her great-great-grandfather and of course inevitably falls in love with him and has repeated sex with him by the end (though at least her axillae were shaved).   Amazingly, the music was by Ennio Morricone, and in my opinion one of his best-ever scores.   And without a doubt the high production values (compared to current porn), plus the work that went into these Euro-movies, the music, all these elements created a kind of genre that is classic in its own way, now sadly gone and forgotten.  So this album that I present to you today is kind of a soundtrack to exactly this style of movie, in which beautiful young women in Capri or Nice shed their clothes moderately while discussing who is sleeping with whom and engaging in the same.  Some time back I saw that one 1982 Spanish movie that I always remembered fondly from childhood called Faustine ou le bel ete, featuring a teenaged Isabelle Adjani in a supporting role, had been rereleased to DVD so I bought it and watched it with my wife.  It was boring, for both of us, and believe me this is not a sad reflection on the state of our marriage, but the actresses were stunningly beautiful and it was a joy to see such a beautiful young Adjani long before she became a true mega-star in France.  As a bonus I have included a long lost disco classic also previously available (along with the current offering) on the great discobasso's record store, growingbinrecords.

Mandy:


Kathy: