A DEGREE OF MURDER

Recording went on whenever possible through February 1967 (on the 11th B. Jones was at London’s Olympic Studios) while the film itself was premiered in Germany on April 19th 1967 in Munich with the German title, "Mord und Totschlag", directed by Volker Schlondorf. The story of the film is the story of a girl (A.Pallenberg) who accidentally kills her boyfriend with his gun and then hires two men to hide the corpse. On April 24th at the Cannes Film Festival Anita Pallenberg, and both Brian Jones and Keith Richards were present although after a brief discussion with Anita, Jones abandoned the Festival earlier. At that time Anita had already switched from Jones to Richards as a boyfriend and that probably contributed to Jones' personal drama and downfall.

This IMP release is a good one, images are quite clear since this is a copy from a Japan print discovered just this year, while the Soundtrack on the accompanying CDR has music that resembles at times some Stones 60's songs like “Sitting On A Fence”or “Ruby Tuesday” while the overall music feel brings to mind the albums from the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, except for some blues instrumental. That was the problem with Brian Jones at that stage of his career,as he wasn’t able to make original music, while very good in dressing songs with his multi instrumental playing ability. No Soundtrack album was ever released by Universal and this makes this film somehow legendary as it shows the only music self made by Brian Jones to have been recorded, apart from the Moroccan ethnic stuff that came out on the Joujouka LP.