Pound by Robert Downey Sr featuring Robert Downey Jr

Did I ever tell you about this record I bought a while back called Pound? It's a curious little thing, a 10" that has "Edition of only 500 copies" written on it. I found it a few months back in a record shop (I can't remember which one exactly though I think it was Sister Ray in Soho) and between the price (it was under a tenner), the limited nature of it and the fact that it said it was from a 1970 movie by Robert Downey Sr, it was in the bag in double quick time.


I never knew there was a Robert Downey Sr. I mean, I guess if I'd thought about the fact that there was a Robert Downey Jr then the logical conclusion would of course have been that there was a Robert Downey Sr. But I'd never had reason to dwell on it before. Anyway, a quick Wiki later and it turns out he's a bit of a cult movie maker and gave us Robert Downey Jr, in both a natural sense and also a film sense, as the clip below shows a 5 year old Jr on film for the first time. And what was the film? It was this Pound of course. Apparently the movie's about a bunch of dogs in a pound, all played by people. Very early 70s.

In addition to this record's other attributes, it's also got some great music on it - kind of straight ahead garage rock with a touch of the theatrical about it. I don't really know who it's by - it says on the back "Music: Charley Cuva" (but there's a whole band on the go) and the only thing I can find out about him (after not much of a research effort, I must confess), is that he did did the music for Downey Sr's most famous movie, Putney Swope. No, me neither. But two of the track's are called Lame Motherfucker and Godboy, so that was another reason to buy this record.





So there it is - now you know as much as I do about this curiosity of a record. A welcome addition to my collection.