Listen: Cheerful Little Earful / A Cheerful Earful
Cheerful

No. I do not know a thing about A Cheerful Earful. But I do know Command released endless muzak meets lounge albums in the early 60′s, some marketed and imaged as the sound of the future. They were all pretty good, the sleeves being particularly stunning.

Stumbled on ‘Cheerful Little Earful’ somehow long ago, only rediscovered while trying to immerse another box of haphazard, probably senseless 45′s into my library. But when played, I heard from a floor below “That sounds pretty out there Dad”. Yes, if a fifteen year old and her friends respond that way, it certainly reinforces a previously guilty pleasure.

Overall, ‘Cheerful Little Earful’ documents what many of those Command albums touted: the revolutionary new world of stereophonic sound, or some such technology of the moment, despite thankfully issuing the singles in mono. Comical as it may seem now, the single retains a purity of the period when indeed, nothing else sounded quite like this stuff. I dare say ‘Cheerful Little Earful’ could in fact have been the acid house of it’s day.