#Roger cook movie#

#Roger cook movie#

The story song 'Greta Oscawina,' about a fan's connection to a far-away movie star with a surname that suspiciously sounds like 'Oscar winner' ('Greta Oscawina, I'm in love with you and everything you are'), is enjoyably light, with smooth saxophone woven throughout the song. Though a brief snippet of the title song is reprised to bring continuity to the LP at its mid-point, Meanwhile otherwise isn't much of a concept album but rather a collection of songs with a similar feel. Those strings bring a sound reminiscent of prime Elton John, while Cook's vocals have a slight Neil Young tinge. The title track opens the John Burgess-produced, Jimmy Horrowitz-arranged album, a 7+-minute opus with impressionistic lyrics ('I feel that you're aware/I feel you're there/Somewhere.' or 'People are tryin' to reach me/Then there's people tryin' to be where I am/Just as if it was something you could see.') and a sprawling musical canvas that includes both simple acoustic instrumentation and ornate strings.

The duo wrote every song, with co-writers on just a couple of them. On Meanwhile Back at the World, Cook and Greenaway must have been determined to shake off any notion that they could only turn out three-minute pop songs. Though these albums lack the pure pop that made Study one of the most delightful surprises of 2011, they show Cook heading into uncharted and often interesting territory as a songwriter and vocalist. Rat Pack brings together two of Cook's released LPs (1972's Meanwhile Back at the World and 1973's Minstrel in Flight) and adds a previously unreleased album recorded by Cook and Blue Mink bassist/session stalwart Herbie Flowers. session crew that brought to life albums from Blue Mink, White Plains, The First Class, Edison Lighthouse and so many other groups both real and fictional. The Rats in question aren't Frank, Dean and Sammy, but rather the U.K. The label has just continued the Roger Cook story with a new 2-CD anthology, Running with the Rat Pack (RPM RETRO D921). In summer 2011, RPM Records issued Cook's complete solo tenure for EMI's Columbia label via an expanded edition of Cook's 1970 album Study.

As one-half of David and Jonathan (with co-writer Roger Greenaway) and a member of Blue Mink, Cook was a familiar vocalist, and as a background singer, he added to the distinct sound of Elton John's earliest albums. The songwriter of such nuggets as 'You've Got Your Troubles,' 'I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing,' 'My Baby Loves Lovin'' and 'Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress' had long balanced his work as a behind-the-scenes songwriter with a singing career. The rules of pop music were changing, and Roger Cook didn't want to be behind the times.