The Styrous® Viewfinder: Patrick Gleeson

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September 21, 2025

20,000 vinyl LPs 399: Isao Tomita: Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

vinyl LP front cover detail

cover illustration – Stanislaw Fernandes

detail photo of album cover by Styrous®

On September 21, 1874, composer Gustav Theodore Holst was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Apart from The Planets and a handful of other works, his music was generally neglected until the 1980s, when recordings of much of his output became available.

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

vinyl LP front cover

cover illustration – Stanislaw Fernandes

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Some of his friends and influences were Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Bernard Shaw and fabric designer William Morris. Holst was also frequently inspired by literature, Max Müller, Walt Whitman, Thomas Hardy and Robert Bridges.

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

vinyl LP back cover

illustration – Stanislaw Fernandes

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Patrick Gleeson, who did several classical synthesizer albums using the Emu Modular synthesizer, released his own version of the Holst Planets on Mercury Records (link below). There was some consternation at RCA and Mercury that both artists had worked unknown to each other on a synthesizer version of the same piece. 'The Tomita Planets' was more than likely so named in the USA to avoid the confusion the record companies were fearful of.

The Planets was taken out of market for a few years by court order from the Holst's relatives. They claimed that Tomita had manhandled their father's great composition, and the record company withdrew some 30,000 records from the stores. Despite this, The Planets is Tomita's most complete and popular work, and was listed as one of the best keyboard albums by Keyboard Magazine. It was the last album to be released by RCA Records in the quadraphonic format.

There have been many interpretations of The Planets; Emerson, Lake & Palmer did a version of Mars The Bringer Of War.

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

vinyl LP back cover detail

illustration – Stanislaw Fernandes

detail photo Styrous®

There is more information on Holst and Tomita on a previous article I've written about the LaserDisc version of this recording (link below).

The illustration for the cover of The Planets was created by Stanislaw Fernandes who also did the cover for the Enchantment album by Utopia (to be a future article).

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

vinyl LP, side 1

photos by Styrous®

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets

vinyl LP back cover detail

illustration – Stanislaw Fernandes

detail photo Styrous®

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 - I. Mars, The Bringer Of War - 10:48
A2 - II. Venus, The Bringer Of Peace - 8:46
A3 - III. Mercury, The Winged Messenger - 5:28

Side 2:

B1 - IV. Jupiter, The Bringer Of Jollity; V. Saturn, The Bringer Of Old Age - 17:35
B2 - VI. Uranus, The Magician; VII. Neptune, The Mystic - 9:37

Companies, etc.

Phonographic Copyright ℗ – RCA Records
Copyright © – RCA Records
Pressed By – RCA Records Pressing Plant, Indianapolis
Published By – G. Schirmer

Credits:

Composed By – Holst*
Illustration – Stanislaw Fernandes
Performer [Electronically Performed] – Isao Tomita*
Producer [Produced By] – Plasma Music, Inc.

Notes:

Includes a poster of the front sleeve, and a poly-lined Red Seal inner sleeve.
Some copies have a Demonstration/Not For Sale gold stamp on the back cover.

Artist/title on front cover:
The
Tomita
Planets

Artist/title on spine:
Holst · The Planets – Isao Tomita

Artist/title on labels:
Holst
The Planets

Artist/title on back cover:
Holst
The Planets
Electronically performed by
Isao Tomita

Info on back cover:
TMK(S) ® Registered • Marca(s) Registrada(s) RCA Corporation • © 1976 RCA Records, New York, N.Y. • Printed in U.S.A.

Info on labels:
(Recorded in Japan)
TM(s) TCA Corp.—Made in U.S.A.

Runouts are stamped except the last letter or number is etched (e.g. A).

Barcode and Other Identifiers

Rights Society: ASCAP
Pressing Plant ID: I
Price Code (on spine): 0698
Matrix / Runout (Side A label): ARL1-1919-A
Matrix / Runout (Side B label): ARL1-1919-B
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 1): ARL1-1919A-1 I A0 3
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 1): ARL1-1919B-2 I AC C
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 2): ARL1-1919 A-6
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 2): ARL1-1919 B-10
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 3): ARL1-1919A-1 I ^0A
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 3): ARL1-1919B-2 I ^2B
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 4): ARL1-1919A-1 I A1 cC
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 4): ARL1-1919B-2 I A C D
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 5): ARL1-1919A-1 I Λ0 J
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 5): ARL1-1919B-2 ΛI L
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 6): ARL1-1919A-1 I A4C
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 6): ARL1-1919B-2 I A2C
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 7): ARL1-1919A-1 I A3 L
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 7): ARL1-1919B-2 I A1 L
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 8): ARL1-1919 A-6 I 1 Λ2B
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 8): ARL1-1919B-12 Λ1P
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 9): ARL1-1919 A-1 I A1H
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 9): ARL1-1919B-2 I A4D
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 10): ARL1-1919A-1 I Λ7 F
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 10): ARL1-1919B-2 I Λ7 C
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout variant 11): ARL1-1919 A-3 I A3 A1
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout variant 11): ARL1-1919B-2 I A10 K

Tomita – The Planets
Label: RCA Red Seal – ARL1-1919
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo, Indianapolis Pressing
Country: US
Released: 1976
Genre: Electronic
Style: Modern Classical

Viewfinder links:

Benjamin Britten

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Stanislaw Fernandes

Patrick Gleeson

Gustav Holst

Gustav Holtz ~ The Planets (LaserDisc)

William Morris

Edmund Rubbra

George Bernard Shaw

Michael Tippett

Isao Tomita

Walt Whitman

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Net links:

Cultural influence of Holst's The Planets

Playbill ~ Why Holst's Masterpiece The Planets Is Out of This World

SF Crow's Nest ~ The Tomita Planets by Isao Tomita

Synth Junkie ~ Mars The Bringer of War: Two Synthesizer Interpretations

Isao Tomita ~ The Planets

ypoiw ~ Isao Tomita - The Planets

YouTube links:

Emerson, Lake & Palmer ~ Mars The Bringer Of War

Isao Tomita ~ Gustav Holst ~ The Planets (complete)

Styrous® ~ Sunday, September 21, 2025

20,000 Vinyl LPs Archive
MAIN MENU - Blog Articles
~

November 18, 2021

Bruce Conner ~ photographer & so much more

Bruce Conner
date & photographer unknown

Bruce Conner was an American artist who was born in McPherson, Kansas, on November 18, 1933; he worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. I could have put him in any of those categories but it is his photography that I love, so, here he is.

In 1959, Conner founded what he called the Rat Bastard Protective Association. Its members included Jay DeFeo, Michael McClure (with whom Conner attended school in Wichita), Manuel Neri, Joan Brown, Wally Hedrick, Wallace Berman, Jess Collins, Carlos Villa and George Herms. Conner coined the name as a play on 'Scavengers Protective Society'.

He and his wife were living in Massachusetts in 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Conner filmed the television coverage of the event and edited and re-edited the footage with stock footage into another meditation on violence which he titled Report. The film was issued several times as it was re-edited.

He was an active force in the San Francisco counterculture of the mid-1960s as a collaborator in light shows at the legendary Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. He also made a number of short films in the mid-1960s in addition to Report and Vivian. These include Ten Second Film (1965), an advertisement for the New York Film Festival that was rejected as being "too fast;" Breakaway (1966), featuring music sung by and danced to by Toni Basil . . .

Bruce Conner ~ Breakaway - 1966
Toni Basil film still

. . . The White Rose (1967), documenting the removal of the magnum opus by fellow artist Jay DeFeo from her San Francisco apartment, with Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis as the soundtrack; and Looking for Mushrooms (1967), a three-minute color wild ride with Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles as the soundtrack. (In 1996 he created a longer version of the film, setting it to music by Terry Riley).

Conner was among the first to use pop music for film soundtracks. His films are now considered to be the precursors of the music video genre. They have inspired other filmmakers, such as Conner's friend Dennis Hopper, who said, “Bruce’s movies changed my entire concept of editing. In fact, much of the editing of Easy Rider came directly from watching Bruce’s films." In 1966, Hopper invited Conner to the location shoot for Cool Hand Luke which starred Paul Newman; the artist shot the proceedings in 8mm, revisiting this footage in 2004 to create his film Luke.

Conner photographed many of the punk bands in San Francisco. During the 1970s he focused on drawing and photography, including many photos of the late 1970s West Coast punk rock scene. His 1978 film used Mongoloid by Devo as a soundtrack.

The Bruce Conner papers are held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Conner's 1976 film short, Crossroads, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with the Pacific Film Archive, in 1995. The film features 37 minutes of extreme slow-motion replays of the July 25, 1946, Operation Crossroads Baker underwater nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The event was captured for research purposes by five hundred cameras stationed on unmanned planes, high-altitude aircraft, boats near the blast, and from more distant points on land around the Atoll. The location was selected in part because the network of islands formed an almost complete ellipse around the detonation site, allowing for a comprehensive documentation of the event from numerous angles.

Bikini nuclear blast - July 25, 1946
photographer unknown

The documentary film featured music by electronic artist Patrick Gleeson and minimalist composer, Terry Riley.

Bruce Conner had twice announced his own death as a conceptual art event or prank; he died on Monday, July 7, 2008, of natural causes, the last survivor of the Bay Area Beat era art scene.

From 2016 to 2017, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art featured an exhibition of Conner's multimedia work entitled, It's All True, which was derived from a letter that the Conner wrote to his friend, collaborator and art collector, Paula Kirkeby, in 2000, listing the many ways he had been characterized in the media (link below).

Viewfinder links:

Toni Basil

all things Beatles

Bruce Conner

Miles Davis

Jay DeFeo

Devo

Patrick Gleeson

Dennis Hopper

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Michael McClure

Terry Riley

Net links:

Academia ~ Bruce Conner

The Brooklyn Rail ~ Tribute to Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner ~ Crossroads

KQED ~ Artist who Twice Declared Himself Dead

LA Times ~ Conner worked in assemblage, film, sculpture

The New Yorker ~ Bruce Conner’s Crusade of Reinvention

NY Times ~ Bruce Conner, SF Artist With 1950s Beat Roots dies

SF Gate ~ Prolific Beat era artist Bruce Conner dies

SFMOMA ~ It's All True

Smithsonian ~ Bruce Conner papers

University of Chicago ~ Bruce Conner’s thinking of you

YouTube links:

Atomcentral ~ Crossroads Baker

Bruce Conner -

Atomic bomb (edit)

Breakaway (documentary)

Mongoloid

A Movie (documentary)

It’s All True

Museum of Contemporary Art ~ Bruce Conner: Mongoloid documentary

Styrous® ~ Thursday, November 18, 2021

Photography

Photographers
MAIN MENU - Blog Articles

September 21, 2020

20,000 vinyl LPs 241: Patrick Gleeson ~ Beyond The Sun: An Electronic Portrait of the Planets by Gustav Holst

Patrick Gleeson & Gustav Holst ~ Beyond The Sun

vinyl LP front cover detail

detail photo by Styrous®

Today is the birthday of Gustav Holst an English composer, arranger and teacher whose most famous work is the orchestral suite The Planets written between 1914 and 1916. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the solar system and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst. The concept of the work is astrological rather than astronomical.

Patrick Gleeson & Gustav Holst ~ Beyond The Sun

vinyl LP front cover

photo by Styrous®

Almost everybody has recorded The Planets! In addition to Holst himself, one of the great recordings was by Sir Adrian Boult with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; they were the first to perform the work on September 29, 1918. Leopold Stokowski with the NBC Symphony Orchestra did the first American recording (he was brilliant in the film, Fantasia (link below). Some of the great conductors include, Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy and Seiji Ozawa who, while conducting the San Francisco Symphony, advanced modern works and discarded the traditional formal tuxedo dress shirt for a white turtleneck.

Patrick Gleeson & Gustav Holst ~ Beyond The Sun

vinyl LP back cover

photo by Styrous®

Hollywood as well had a shot at the planetary work: the great film composer, Bernard Herrmann, took a turn at it, André Previn and John Williams had their interpretations.

Patrick Gleeson & Gustav Holst ~ Beyond The Sun

vinyl LP back cover detail

detail photos by Styrous®

The world of electronics had to get in on the act as well. The first one was for the Moog (pronounced mogue) when Isao Tomita adapted The Planets for Moog and other synthesizers and electronic devices. The original LP release prompted legal action from Holst's estate. The composer's daughter, Imogen Holst, worked hard to prevent the recording being distributed in the UK. Patrick Gleeson recorded this electronic version in 1976 but titled it, Beyond the Sun.

Patrick Gleeson & Gustav Holst ~ Beyond The Sun

vinyl LP back cover detail

detail photo by Styrous®

The distinctive compositional style of Holst was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine his individual style.

HIs works were played frequently in the early years of the 20th century, but it was not until the international success of The Planets in the years immediately after the First World War that he became a well-known figure. A shy man, he did not welcome this fame and preferred to be left in peace to compose and teach. In his later years, his uncompromising, personal style of composition struck many music lovers as too austere, and his brief popularity declined. Nevertheless, he was a considerable influence on a number of younger English composers, including Edmund Rubbra, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten. Apart from The Planets and a handful of other works, his music was generally neglected until the 1980s, when recordings of much of his output became available.

Holst died in London on 25 May 1934, at the age of 59, of heart failure following an operation on his ulcer. His ashes were interred at Chichester Cathedral in Sussex, close to the memorial to Thomas Weelkes, his favourite Tudor composer. Bishop George Bell gave the memorial oration at the funeral, and Vaughan Williams conducted music by Holst and himself.

Patrick Gleeson & Gustav Holst ~ Beyond The Sun

vinyl LP labels, side 1 & 2

photos by Styrous®

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 - Mars, The Bringer Of War - 7:03
A2 - Venus, The Bringer Of Peace - 7:37
A3 - Mercury, The Winged Messenger - 3:04
A4 - Jupiter, The Bringer Of Jollity - 8:20

Side 2:

B1 - Saturn, The Bringer Of Old Age - 9:34
B2 - Uranus, The Magician - 6:39
B3 - Neptune, The Mystic - 6:51

Companies, etc.

    Manufactured By – Phonogram, Inc.
    Distributed By – Phonodisc, Inc.

Credits:

    Composed By – Gustav Holst
    Synthesizer [Eu Systems Polyphonic] – Julian Priester, Patrick Gleeson

Notes:

This album is dedicated with affection to Robert Moog and W. Carlos.

Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, etched): SRI-80000-A3 -A-
    Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, stamped): KENDUN
    Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, etched): SRI-80000-B-3
    Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, stamped): MASTERDISK

Patrick Gleeson ‎– Beyond The Sun: An Electronic Portrait Of Holst's The Planets
Label: Mercury ‎– SRI 80000
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1976
Genre: Electronic
Style: Modern Classical

Viewfinder links:

Leonard Bernstein

Benjamin Britten

Fantasia

The Mothers Of Invention ‎~ Absolutely Free

Partick Gleeson ~ The Planets

Bernard Herrmann

Gustav Holst

Eugene Ormandy

André Previn

Maurice Ravel

Ken Russell ~ The Planets