Three. Part. Harmony.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
LP
RCA
LSP-4197
1969
Harry Nilsson - City Life (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Open Your Window (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Maybe (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Waiting (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Nobody Cares About The Railroads Anymore (Mp3)
"Harry" was Harry Nilsson's first album to break into Billboard's Top 200 album chart. It hit #120 and remained on the chart for 15 weeks.
The Monkees Demos
Harry Nilsson - Cuddly Toy (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Hey Little Girl (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Counting (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - The Story Of Rock And Roll (Mp3)
Recorded on March 17, 1967 while auditioning material for The Monkees and their producer Chip Douglas. (Thanks to For The Love Of Harry!)
Monday, August 20, 2007
LP
RCA
LSP-4289
1970
Harry Nilsson - Caroline (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - I'll Be Home (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Living Without You (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Dayton Ohio 1903 (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - So Long Dad (Mp3)
"Randy was tired of the album when we were finishing making it, because for him it was just doing piano and voice, piano and voice, over and over and over. But I needed that practice because I needed to learn the songs inside and out the way that he knew them, but do it my way so that it (stylistically) matched both of us. Once I got the take down, I knew what I was going to do with it later. He didn't." - Harry
Or, How 10 CD's for a Penny Could Change Your Life
I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for a deal. Send me ten DVD's for 5 bucks? I'm there. Netflix? Done deal. Peapod? Sure -- bring the grocs right to the front door. I think I've even joined Columbia House and BMG Music Clubs about 5 times each -- immediately completing the terms of the deal and canceling. I mean, fair's fair, right? I take them up on their offer, I get my CDs and move on to the proverbial next town.
But there's an odd downside to this transient Club joining, at least in the musical arena...eventually you kinda have what ya want in the ole LP/CD collection. It forces your hand to look to things you might perhaps just half like, or hell, even hear for the first time.
And that's how I found Harry Nilsson...rolling the dice for a penny and pulling the lever for The Best of Harry Nilsson. And I had every reason for optimism given previous successes of this sort with T-Rex and Thin Lizzy. (Two bands I'll STILL champion to this day - don't start with me...)
What I didn't expect was the sheer pervasive genius of the songwriting, the character of the vocals, the wit, humor, melancholy and longing wrapped up in one performer. How could I have missed this? No wonder John and Paul pronounced Nilsson their favorite in '68...hell it was all there...the 'American Beatle.' And then came that familiar feeling...that buzz...the knowledge that there's a wealth of material out there that's "new." Well, at least it was to me, then.
And now it's ten or more years on from that moment and I still feel the same way, reviewing my LPs and CDs for this week's tribute to Harry. There's plenty to be said about the man and his music, but as I noted in this week's teaser, there are quite a few online doing it already and who have done a wonderful job of covering each and every base. My thanks go out to the very fine harrynilsson.com as well as For The Love Of Harry -- wonderful sites that can fill in the blanks for the curious as well as the converted.
So, timely? Probably not. Timeless? For certain. Sit back, relax, and download...and indeed, run out and purchase.
"Long ago, and far away..."
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
TVD: Bred and Spread
Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes - I Don't Want to Go Home (Mp3)
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - Growin' Up (Live) (Mp3)
Sure, DC's been home for 22 years now, but home for 18 years prior was the Jersey Shore. Big hair, Camaros, thin slice pizza, Budweiser. AND -- Southside Johnny and the Boss. (Smell the ocean? I do.)
The Beatles - Medley: I) Within You Without You; II) Tomorrow Never Knows
The Beatles - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
The Beatles - Medley: I) Come Together; II) Dear Prudence; III) Cry Baby Cry (Transtion)
The Beatles - Revolution
The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
In about 2002, the bootleg mash-up was big news. A hopelessly named phenomenon that involved producers illegally mixing two unlikely old records together to make a third, the mash-up made celebrities of some strange figures - Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton and secretive producer Richard X among them - but the Beatles may have been the sub-genre's true stars. They were involved both in its artistic zenith - the Grey Album, on which Danger Mouse pitted Jay-Z's rapping against music from the White Album - and the moment when mash-ups meandered into pointlessness: Go Home Productions' Paperback Believer, which used two fantastic records, Paperback Writer and the Monkees' Daydream Believer, to make a noticeably less brilliant third.
Their bootleg explosion did not escape Paul McCartney's attention: mash-up producer Freelance Hellraiser DJed on his last world tour. Three years on, with the phenomenon entirely out of puff, the Beatles have finally released their own 80-minute mash-up, remixed by George Martin's son Giles for the Cirque de Soleil show currently wowing Las Vegas tourists.
Any notion of four mop-topped figures trying to clamber aboard a bandwagon that left town some time ago is blown away by the opportunity Love presents to hear their music in vastly-improved sound quality: even if you don't have the requisite equipment for surround sound. At risk of straying into the grim territory of What Hi-Fi? magazine, the original Beatles' albums were released on CD in 1988, with digital technology in its infancy. They sound tinny and desperately malnourished by today's standards. They should have been remastered, but they haven't; largely, you suspect, so Apple can flog one canny repackage after another, safe in the knowledge that sooner or later, the people who buy them will fork out again for the definite article.
Aside from a lovely new string arrangement on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the only thing the Martins have added are sound effects. Some of these are fair enough - the vocals from Because float hazily amid bucolic chirping - but others are worryingly prosaic. When Henry the Horse dances a waltz in Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite!, his arrival is heralded by neighing: useful clarification for those listeners under the misapprehension that when John Lennon sang about Henry the Horse, he was referring to a squirrel. Worse, the guitar figure from Julia is overlaid with an ambulance's siren. As anyone who has read the late Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head knows, Julia may be the most emotionally complex Beatles track of all, an outpouring of Oedipal longing wrapped up in a tender expression of new love. If you stick an ambulance siren on it, you suggest it's just a song about John Lennon's mum getting run over, which isn't the same thing at all.
In theory, Love's other big idea - overlaying sections of different Beatles songs to create new pieces of music - is more controversial, but the results are largely fantastic. Overlaying Mr. Kite's closing bars with the churning coda of I Want You (She's So Heavy) cleverly highlights the similarity between the swirling, cut-up calliope of the former and Paul McCartney's remarkable shivering bassline on the latter. The drums from Tomorrow Never Knows are matched to Within You Without You: suddenly, Sgt Pepper's most ethereal moment sounds claustrophobic, oppressive and nasty. This seems weirdly fitting, given that the song's lyric features a 24-year-old millionaire smugly congratulating himself for being so much more civilised and enlightened than everyone else.
It's debatable whether I Wanna Hold Your Hand - recorded specifically to sound fantastic blaring from a Dansette or a transistor radio's solitary, tinny speaker - gains much from being remixed into 5.1 surround sound, but elsewhere, the benefits of the sonic upgrade ring out. The quiver of desperation in Lennon's voice on Help! is almost unbearable. The thwack of strings against guitar neck adds an undercurrent of anger and frustration to Yesterday. But no one profits quite like Ringo Starr. Strawberry Fields Forever's thunderous finale now sounds like something produced by the Chemical Brothers, but it's the bits you've never noticed that really give you pause. Who - other than Ringo, obviously - previously paid any attention to the fills on Here Comes the Sun or the scampering hi-hat patterns that decorate Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds?
You could, of course, have discovered this without anyone mashing up anything. The question of whether anybody would listen to Love more than once if the original Beatles albums were available in equivalent sound quality is a nice one. But it doesn't seem to matter much when you can almost feel the spit flying from John Lennon's mouth during Revolution, or when A Day in the Life's orchestral swell comes surging from the speakers. After all, it's hard to ask questions when your breath has been taken away.
(--Alexis Petridis, Friday November 17, 2006, The Guardian)
Thursday, August 16, 2007
TVD: For the Vinyl Voyager
Our pal JC points us toward a damn fine link to a damn fine site -- Record Store Review, "the worldwide directory for serious music buyers featuring stores from over 600 cities."
As they explain on the site, "The premise is simple. Most record buyers travel around from time to time and their first concern in a new city is to find where the best stores are. Often, this isn't even about the records themselves, but the fact that record stores are often located in the more interesting parts of town and are run by people knowledgeable in local fringe interests."
A search for DC area stores reveals some hits and misses...while they locate the new-ish Red Onion Records, they still have Smash in Georgetown, two (?) listings for the defunct Revolution Records, while there's no listing for Som Records at all. But, all in all, minor quibbles for such an exhaustive global resource. Cheers to Gunnar Van Vliet for his efforts. Go show him some love and hell, buy a shirt while you're at it.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Prefab Morning:
Prefab Sprout - Dragons (Mp3)
Prefab Sprout - Goodbye Lucille #1 (Mp3)
Prefab Sprout - He'll Have To Go (Mp3)
Prefab Sprout - When Love Breaks Down (Mp3)
Prefab Sprout - The Devil Has All the Best Tunes (Mp3)
The: Heads or tails once I forget / I'm trying to master a new alphabet / Far too obliging to ever admit / I've never been keen on this 'here boy' and 'sit' ...Edition
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
...with a mega-pixel look at the cover art for "Wings Over America." Those were the days, kids.
Paul McCartney & Wings - Maybe I'm Amazed (Mp3)
Harry Nilsson - Without You (Mp3)
Jim Croce - Operator (Mp3)
10cc - I'm Not in Love (Mp3)
Elton John - Blues For My Baby And Me (Mp3)
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Vinyl District Remembers Tony Wilson (1950-2007)
Tony Wilson, co-founder of Factory Records, has died at the age of 57.
Born Anthony H. Wilson on February 20, 1950 in Salford, England, he went on to become a renowned broadcast journalist, band manager, record label executive and night club owner. As the Factory Records boss, he was responsible for signing legendary bands including Joy Division and New Order to his label. Also, as owner of the renowned Hacienda nightclub in Manchester, he played a key role in the Madchester scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s that mixed indie rock and dance music and included artists such as Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses.
The Hacienda, which hosted Madonna's first UK television appearance in 1983, was forced to close in the late 1990s as it was losing money allegedly because its patrons were taking ecstasy rather than buying drinks at the club. Wilson reportedly became involved in the Manchester music scene in the 1970s when hosting the culture and music programme 'So It Goes' on Granada Television. After covering a Sex Pistols performance at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976, he described the experience as "nothing short of an epiphany" and booked the band for one of the first television broadcasts of British punk rock.
These aspects of Wilson's life were later chronicled in the semi-fictional 2002 feature film '24 Hour Party People', in which he was portrayed by British actor Steve Coogan. More recently, Wilson was involved in In The City, a yearly music festival and conference that takes place in Manchester and New York City, which he co-founded with his partner Yvette Livesey.
In 2005 he launched F4, the fourth incarnation of the Factory Records label. Earlier this year, the music mogul was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery to have one of his kidneys removed. From signing the likes of Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays, to being a general support of exciting an innovative music, Wilson established himself as a true indie hero.
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