Vicky Leandros - Βίκυ Λέανδρος - Le temps des fleurs (vinyl)

This time I present to you something rare...the "Le temps des fleurs" of course is not rare, but the recording is: It's from the 1968 Vicky's first Greek self titled album (Cat. No Philips 630149 PL). This song has it's origins in Russia of the early 20nth century, as it was written by Boris Fomin and with Russian lyrics by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii (original russian title "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" - By the long road).
In 1968, became a huge No1 hit in both UK and U.S. charts by Mary Hopkin, with Paul McCartney as the producer. She performed it in English ("Those were the days" with lyrics by Gene Raskin) . Also she performed it in French, Spanish, Italian and German. The same year Sandie Shaw (that chick who stole from Vicky the first Prize...) covered it. Recently (2007), an other Greek singer, Helena Paparizou, an immigrant like Vicky and winner of 2005 ESC for Greece, covered "Le temps des fleurs" and included it in her "Yparxei logos" album, although it was planned to be included in its French version, which remains until today unreleased.
There's also a Greek and a German version with the title: "Hamena oneira / An jenem Tag" , but this time is performed not by Vicky but from Leo Leandros himself, released as singles in Greece and Germany respectively the same year and using the same mix. Those versions are today quite rare but thanks to hannygir123 we can now enjoy the Greek one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TujgoF8he3U. Thank you so much Hanny!!
In this video we see the front and the back of the LP cover, featuring a smiling, cute, almost a kid Vicky. For the German fans, it's obvious that the front cover photo is part of the same photo shoot with the one used in "Vicky und ihre Hits" German compilation LP of the same year. Both LP's have common some tracks. On the back, various known publicity photos of Vicky and a message in Greek which says: "She loves Greece, she adores our sea and sun, she feels 100% Greek, although she lived all of her life in Germany. Famous all around the world, the 18 yrs old Vicky 6 months ago made her entry into Greek discography and won immediately the love of Greek youth. The "Chameni Agapi" became a whisper on the lips of Greek teenagers and Vicky is now their favorite singer. Her biggest wish is to add to her repertoire - which consists of songs with English, German, French, Italian, even Japanese lyrics - songs with Greek lyrics. The success of her first record led to the creation of this album we offer you today. With her familiar sweet full of youth voice and her unique style she performs various world hits with Greek lyrics. It's a remarkable piece of work made by Vicky with so much love for all of you!". Vinyl's condition is quite good, given its 43 yrs and its past, probably tortured on some portable "electrophone" with those bulky heavy ceramic styluses in some teenager's bedroom.

The equipment used for the transfer is Pro-Ject Debut III turntable with Ortofon OM5E cartridge, a home made phono stage using Burr Brown OPA2134 dual op-amp and styroflex caps, carefully hand-picked for best accuracy of the RIAA curve, and the internal AC-97 soundcard of my desktop PC with Audacity as the recording software. Between line-in of the PC and the output of the phono preamp, I used a single vacuum tube home made line preamplifier. It was made with a single double-triode vintage RCA 12AU7 (ECC82) tube from the 50's and IRF610A MOSFET's.

Category:

Music

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• Vicky
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• fleurs
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• 1968
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• III
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