- ReleaseProduct
- The 70s Albums: Balloon / Hothouse Smiles
- Artist
- Mark Wirtz
- Label
- Think Like A Key Music
- Catalogue Number
- TLAK1242
- Release Date
- 10 julho 2026
-
CD 2×CD
Pré-encomenda $22.99The "Walt Disney of Music" 2-CD Edition
Ler MaisTLAK1242.2
- Mini-LP gatefold packaging with printed inserts restoring original album covers
- Both 1973 Capitol albums restored to their original configurations for the first time, plus the non-LP B-side "Nothing To Do"
- Remastered by Prof. Stoned
- Limited pressing — Wirtz spent a lifetime trying to reach the widest number of people possible. Here's your chance to be one of them.
Data Prevista de Lançamento: 10 julho 2026
He won an Ivor Novello for an opera he never finished, then signed to Capitol, moved to Silver Lake, and made two of the strangest pop albums of 1973 — both released only in America, and never reissued in their original form until now.
Mark Wirtz was the producer Mojo once described as "Phil Spector scoring Camberwick Green" — the man behind A Teenage Opera and a studio auteur who worked alongside the Beatles at Abbey Road. By 1973 he was stepping out from behind the desk. Balloon was cut at Apple Studios with Geoff Emerick and introduced Wirtz the vocalist: thin, characterful, unmistakably his. Hothouse Smiles arrived six months later, skewering consumerism, suburbia, and the Burrito King on the corner through a British music-hall lens. Chris Spedding, Albert Lee, Larry Knechtel, and Jim Gordon played. Critics couldn't decide if it was saccharine or brilliant. Fifty-two years on, the verdict's in.
He wanted to be the Walt Disney of music. He was closer than anyone noticed.
- 1 The Song I Sing 5:57
- 2 Trambouline 3:36
- 3 Long Long Way From Home 3:06
- 4 Balloon 2:55
- 5 Mellow Man 3:25
- 6 Satan Took A Tram Ride 2:53
- 7 Ev'rybody Needs Someone Somebody 4:11
- 8 Spring 3:38
- 9 Am I Me 3:53
- 10 What Now Poor World 2:35