Wired for Sound

The cheesecake cover of Wired for Sound, which shows a leggy beauty surrounded by circuit diagrams and vacuum tubes, has led many an observer to mistake it for an early electronic album. Orchestral pop conductor and arranger Marty Gold is no Perrey-Kingsley, though, nor even a Ferrante & Teicher. Wired for Sound, an entry in RCA Victor's Living Stereo line, has no electronic instruments or bizarre effects associated with the aforementioned duos, but rather a dozen imaginatively arranged orchestral instrumentals slathered in reverb. As a result of Gold's treatments and tape manipulation, some of the instruments are not easily identifiable, but the effect is applied more subtly than on Ferrante & Teicher's oddball treated piano albums that came out the same year. Gold tackles many well-known pop and jazz tunes like "Blues in the Night" and "Mood Indigo," while the one original composition, "Lonely Guitar," has a melody similar to Dee Clark's 1961 hit "Raindrops." The most unusual arrangement on the album is reserved for the Disney song "Whistle While You Work," an amusing selection that would stick out on an album of standards regardless of the arrangement. The 2002 CD edition is a straight album reissue of the stereo LP.