Snore & Guzzle Radio Hour #20

Snore & Guzzle Radio Hour #20

This radio hour covers portuguese guitar, primitive blues, French soundtracks, Argentine chorale music, West coast pop, British chamber pop, French impressionist, and Northern Soul, to name a few. I hope you like it; this one was 4 months in the making. I’d say this radio hour would be a good soundtrack to accompany the study of the anatomy of flight and bird migration patterns.

Tracklist

Andres Chazarreta - Gato Cordobes
Big Bill Broonzy – Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen
Neil Young – Motion Pictures
Carlos D’Alessio – India song
Josephine Foster – Hells Bells are Ringing
Ariel Ramirez – Misa por La Paz y La Justicia: Credo
Van Dyke Parks – Laurel Canyon Blvd
Blue Boy – Clear Skies
Faure – Pelleas et Melisande: Sicilienne
Roedelius – Le Jardin
Daniel Rossen – Waterfall
Beach Boys – Do You Like Worms
Ella Jenkins – Where Has My Little Dog Gone?
Vivaldi – Concerto for Mandolin and Strings
E.T. Mensah – Day by Day
Bill Callahan – Sycamore
Judee Sill – There’s A Rugged Road
Hardingfeletrioen – Fjell
Little Ann – Deep Shadows
Gino Washinton – Puppet On A String
Kronos Quartet (Foday Musa Suso) – Tilliboyo
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (George Sibanda) – Guabi Guabi
David Darling & The Wulu Bunun – Ku-Isa Tama Laug
Harry Belafonte – Goin Down Jordan

Click image for slideshow

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Down Down Down: The Music of Harry Nilsson

Snore & Guzzle Radio Hour #19

I’ve listened to a lot of Nilsson. Some might say too much. In fact, a couple people have declared a moratorium on his music due to my repeatedly plattering Harry Nilsson records. My copy of The Point looks like it has gone through the wash one too many times.

What is the allure? First and foremost, it’s his talent for melody and harmony. Harry Nilsson songs contain some of the most rhapsodically colorful melodies I’ve ever heard. It’s little wonder that the Beatles declared him their favorite American artist. At a press conference in 1968, John Lennon was asked to speak about his favorite American musician. He laconically said, “Nilsson.” Paul McCartney was then asked to name his favorite American band. He replied, “Nilsson.”

If Nilsson were only interesting for his melodies, his discography would not warrant an entire radio show. But Nilsson’s career only gets more interesting the closer you look at it. The name of Nilsson’s second album, “Aerial Ballet,” comes from an act his Swedish grandparents performed in the circus. I can only imagine that some of Harry’s vaudevillian style and vocal acrobatics were influenced by his heritage.

Nilsson’s career was characterized by wild swings of ups and downs. He started out the gate strong as a songwriter and attracted the attention of Phil Spector and The Monkees. As a solo artist, he had a string of hits in the late 60s and early 70s and racked up a serious level of acclaim. From there, things got loopy. It’s almost like he approached his career with kamikaze abandon. He pursued whatever styles he liked and approached showbusiness with a wicked sense of black humor and cynicism. That said, he simultaneously evinced a child-like playfulness, a quality that allowed him to contribute to films like Popeye, The Point, and Skidoo. It’s only fitting to Nilsson’s career that all of these films tanked. The soundtracks however, are — to me — some of the best vocal soundtracks produced in the 1970s.

I won’t go much further into Nilsson’s life and work, except to say it’s fascinating, and warrants a thorough and thoughtful biographical treatment. His relationship with John Lennon, Paul Williams, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, Hollywood, women, and substance abuse all deserve a solid exploration.

Nilsson’s work has recently been revived by the likes of P.T. Andersen (clearly a fan), Jon Brion, Quentin Tarantino, Andrew Bird, Brian Wilson, and Aimee Mann. Nilsson left behind a scattered portfolio of demos, commercials, out-takes, and unreleased recordings–most of which are only just now beginning to be unearthed. For further research, I can recommend For the Love of Harry, which has lovingly and exhaustively assembled everything you would ever want to know about Harry Nilsson. For this podcast, I tried to sample at least one song from every one of his 15+ albums. To relieve ear fatigue, I introduced a few interpretive tracks where Nilsson is not singing, but either wrote the song, or contributed to its recording.

One of the most interesting themes in Nilsson’s career is the repeated motif of slow-motion descent. There are at least half a dozen Nilsson songs that introduce the idea of falling down into the depths, usually in an aquatic environment. It would appear that he was obsessed with this theme–even in The Point, you hear a very personal statement in his song Lifeline, even though it’s cloaked in the context of a children’s film…

Hello (Hello, Hello, Hello)
Won’t you throw me down a Life Line?
I’m so afraid of darkness,
And down here it’s just like night time.

Down,
And there isn’t any hope for me,
Unless this dream which seems so real,
Is just a fantasy.

Tracklist

Open Your Window (Harry)
Miss Butter’s Lament (Aerial Pandemonium Ballet)
Jon Brion – He Really Needs Me
Goin’ Down (Knnillssonn)
Everything’s Got ‘Em (The Point)
John Lennon – Only You
Everybody’s Talkin’ (Ariel Ballet)
She’s Leaving Home (Pandemonium Shadow Show)
Wasting My Time (Aerial Pandemonium Ballet)
Dawn Landes – Lifeline
Turn On Your Radio (Son of Schmilsson)
Counting (The Monkees Demos)
Shelley Duvall – He Needs Me
Ban Deodorant Radio Commercial
How Can I Be Sure Of You (Nilsson Schmilsson)
I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now (A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night)
Learning From You (Hollywood Dreamer)
Living Without You (Nilsson Sings Newman)
One (Aerial Ballet)
The Moonbeam Song (Nilsson Schmilsson)
Everyone’s Got To Eat (The Popeye Demos)
Mucho Mungo (Pussy Cats)
Me And My Arrow (The Point!)
Blackalicious – Blazing Arrow
This Could be the Night (30 second acetate demo)
The Modern Folk Quartet – This Could Be The Night
Buy My Album/Down To The Valley (The Point!)
Paul Williams – Nilsson Sings Newman
That Is All (Reprise) (…That’s The Way It Is)

Snore & Guzzle Radio Hour #18

Why, what do we have here? It’s a new radio hour! This one only took 3 months to assemble. Hey, we’re up to #18. Only 6 more to go in this finite series of 24 podcasts.

What is this one good for? I’d say this one is good accompaniment for:

• embarking on an all-night train ride
• reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• curing leather
• riding bicycles at night at the same exact speed
• synchronizing with the film L’ascenseur pour L’echafaud
• eating rum balls
• dreaming of galloping horses
• smeary scribbling in pen & ink
• marow-warming hot toddies
• restless nights

Selections include: a neo-folk mash-up cover of an iconic disco track, a chamber-pop cover of a classic Genesis single, Greek rebetika, new new age, Pacific Northwest drone, needle-in-the-arm country, slow-burn Icelandic chamber-pop, Argentinian experimental, Krautrock, Japanese new classical, summertime songs from Isle of Wight, African mass, Mbira music from Oregon inspired by Bolivian melodies, Field recordings made in a studio.

Track list embedded in image.

1. The studio I work for, Second Story, made a website for the AIGA design archives. You can find a detailed case study I wrote about the process right here. You can find the design archives and all 20,000+ records at this address: http://designarchives.aiga.org. The image above is a Toy box made by Chermayeff & Geismar.

2. We made New Year’s cards for friends & family. The cards are crafted from scratch with hand-made teabags tucked in the pouch.

3. Typical Day in the Pacific Northwest, no. 1

Click for larger image.

Click for larger image.

This edition of the Snore & Guzzle radio hour is dedicated exclusively to my favorite female Brazilian vocalist — perhaps my favorite female vocalist period — Nara Leão. The mix focuses on the decade of the 60s, but also bleeds into the early 70s. I tried to sequence a representative cross-section of selections across her 30 some odd albums. These albums are exceedingly difficult to come by in North America, and it’s rare to come across any of them in a record shop. For whatever reason, Nara’s music was neglected in the tropicalia renaissance. However, she would not be particularly disappointed by these circumstances. Although she in many ways inspired the tropicalia movement, she never committed herself politically or culturally. Musically, she straddles the more traditional bossa nova with the latter progressive psych-leaning era of tropicalia.

I predict that this music will see a rebirth in the coming decade. There’s something classic about her style, relevant in her philosophy, and enspiriting in her compositions that I think people will find undeniably compelling. It is just a matter of getting the stuff out there.

Below you will find a number of snapshots I took of a booklet I designed to house an article about a small family farm in western New York…

Click for larger image.

Click for larger image.

NEWSFLASH: There will be a brief intermission from Snore & Guzzle updates in the month of November. The show will resume come December 1st. There’s a groundswell of activity in the substrate, but these projects are a wee more labor-intensive than the standard; thus the delay. Here’s what is going on just beneath the surface. I’m writing a non-fiction piece about Delmore Schwartz + Lou Reed + Saul Bellow. I’m assembling a profile and extended interview with Norman Greenbaum. I’m starting to compile the materials for a graphic arts project involving classroom charts. I’m in the midst of working on a visual music micro-cinema program involving the films of the Whitney Brothers and musical accompaniment by Adam Forkner, to be staged in Portland, Oregon. These projects will start to see some light over the next couple months.

THIS MONTH: While there are no major updates, I did create the next installment in the series of podcasts. This brings us up to Snore & Guzzle Radio Hour # 16, in a finite series of 24. The Radio Hour this month is a pair of flushed cheeks. These are sounds good for ushering in hibernation, songs that hold hands with bourbon sipping, ember-gazing, quilt-wrapping and chapped lips. One of the big inspirations this month was a quote from a music review for Broadcast’s most recent album. Of the record, the critic said that it was, “Like a nursery rhyme trapped in amber.” There is much more to be found in the graphic I designed to accompany this set of music. See above.

LASTLY: As something of a ruse, I thought I would experiment with posting to Tumblr via a mobile phone, mostly as a way to get a summer’s worth of photos off the thing. I’ve been having fun with the device, and below is a selection of the results. If you want to see a continuous string of this stuff, check in at Faff&Natter on tumblr. I think of this as a little pet-project of Snore & Guzzle, to be managed on a much more micro level than this site.

~Michael R. Neault