Βίκυ Λέανδρος - Vicky Leandros - A bord d'un Apollo (vinyl)

We talked previously about the 1969 releases of Vicky. The Canadian one "Zoom sur Vicky" (Cat. No. RCA Victor PCS-4005) released about the same time with the Greek one. Back then, the Canadian market was a major one for Leandros team, Vicky was very popular there and If I'm not wrong got her first platinum record award in Canada. In the Canadian LP, oriented mainly to the Quebec french speaking part of that country, we find the French versions of all the known 1969 tracks, which are very beautiful indeed. One of them is "A bord d'un Apollo", obviously inspired from the American Space program, which was at its zenith of development and at the center of the global public interest during those years. The Greek version lyrics ("Mi me rotas giati") are loosely related to the French ones, as they speak about traveling to the moon. The German version is "Dann geht die Sonne auf"..now the trip is towards the sun, not the moon...Vicky and the Space Age.
In this video I used a previously uploaded on YT by the user jackretro (and of course all the fans we thank him so much for this rarity) video recording of Vicky singing the "A bord d'un Apollo" from a Canadian TV Special of 1970. I kept only the video part, while the sound track is from the original vinyl transfer. Then I synchronised both of them carefully. At the end we see the front cover of the original Canadian release. A joyful groovy Vicky sings and dances the shake, while on the background are projected various photos from the American space program and a spinning mock-up of the moon. Vicky at her best, is so beautiful, sweet, innocent and fresh, and seems to enjoy it!! Notice that in this video she wears the same "ethnic" shirt she wears on the photo of the Canadian "Comme je suis" 1970-71 album. My opinion is that this video recording was made around the same time with the production of "Ich Bin...Vicky Leandros" TV Special, while at the same time the recording sessions for the 1971 releases were ongoing.
The equipment used for the transfer is the venerable vintage from the 80's Dual CS-505-3 turntable with Ortofon OM10 cartridge, a home made phono preamplifier equipped with OPA2134 op-amp and polystyrene caps, carefully hand-picked and matched for best RIAA curve accuracy 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 stage I used a single vacuum tube line preamplifier. It was made with a single double-triode vintage GE 12AU7 (ECC82) tube and IRF610A MOSFET's.
The sound quality of the Canadian release, in general is not what exactly I expected to hear. There's a lack of mid-lows and too much treble, although most of the times the highs are well detailed. Comparing it with the German pressing, the Canadian one is not up to the standards. My old Dual tracks quite well this pressing, better than the newer Pro-Ject Debut III and brings out more midrange, making more pleasant the listening experience. I must note here that in the Canadian release, there's an audible distortion, like some kind of hard audio clipping in some parts of the music track of this particular song, especially on the percussion section..This phaenomenon is not observed in the German and Greek versions, which have identical the music track with the Canadian one, and I suspect some kind of mastering fault there, or just severe inner groove distortion due to wear in the case of my personal copy.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Βίκυ
• Λέανδρος
• Vicky
• Leandros
• bord
• d'un
• Apollo
• Mi
• me
• rotas
• giati
• Dann
• geht
• die
• Sonne
• auf
• (vinyl)
• 1968
• Zoom
• sur
• 12AU7
• GE
• OPA2134
• phono
• stage
• Dual
• CS-505-3
• Ortofon
• OM10

[evarlam]

A last hour note: At the end of the video I wrote 1968 instead of 1969, which is the correct release year.

[kodiak631]

OMG, thank you so much for posting this song along with some of Vicky's other tunes. This song was so popular when I was a kid in French elementary school in Quebec back in the early 70's, we learned the lyrics. I have this album still (Zoom sur Vicky) with all it's scratches. Havent played it in over 30 yrs. I always hoped to be able to get a CD copy of it.  Thank you so much again.