Monday, December 29, 2014

In Between the Go-Betweens

Brutal Youth:

I was a relatively well-behaved teenager, which meant I had a lot of time on my hands. So I’d think up little projects for myself to pass the time. Things that would never occur to my more fun-loving (or rather, fun-having) friends. 

I’d recycle my record collection, or total up the running times of my albums (40 minutes was my standard of excellence). Or pore over album liner notes obsessively (Hugh McCracken, anyone?)

See a pattern here? It’s okay, it helped cut down on the masturbation. Slightly.

Another one of the projects I’d assign myself was to go deep into an artist’s catalog - buying most if not all of their albums, at least until I noticed the law of diminishing returns kick in.

Well, some things never change. They may take a lot more time - or a lot less, depending on what you’re talking about - but I still find myself doing them. But let’s get back to music, shall we?


Once a Nerd...

I’ve been on this on-again-off-again quest to get every album by the Go-Betweens. The off-again aspect of it can be attributed to real life occasionally butting in, but it’s also due to a slight, but totally unreasonable, sense of disappointment.

It started with Go-Betweens:1978-1990 which, over the 24 years since I got it, has become one of my all-time favorite albums. (Good luck finding it, though.) 

This is an embarrassing admission. I always found it lame when one of someone’s top albums was a “Best of”. It smacks of laziness, middle age, parenthood and Merlot.

And when you start with a “Best of”, and then decide to go deep, aren’t you just bound to be disappointed by the original albums? Not necessarily.While “Best of"s purport to be the cream of the crop, no sooner is one released before fans begin to carp about the song selection.

Most of the time I find “Best Ofs” to be frustrating. You’d think they’d be fantastic, and sometimes they are. But sometimes the very variety of these albums make the individual songs not sit together well. Thus the original albums are the more satisfying. 

Or sometimes the song selection sucks.

Which should have been the case here, since GBs:1978-1990 is actually a best-of/compilation of rare cuts and B-sides. By definition, a mixed bag. The regular albums should be just as good, right?

There are about ten GB albums, so where to start? You want to get your money’s worth, so you avoid albums with a lot of the songs from the Best of. But then, doesn’t that suggest it’s a weaker album? What to do?

I finally got around to getting Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express - their fourth album, with only one song on the compilation - a few years later. Good, but not as hooky or stirring as I’d have liked, and so I paused.

About ten years later I got Ocean’s Apart, which came out after GBs:1978-1990 and an extended band hiatus. It’s one of my favorite albums of the 2000s. So maybe they were worth further exploration, after all.

Then came Spring Hill Fair - their third, with three picks. About halfway between Liberty and Oceans in terms of production and muscle, but just missing a little magic. So I put my toys away for a while.

I tried again last year with Tallulah - their fifth, which was very good! But it was clear that GBs:1978-1990 got the best songs - all four of the them! - from it.

Maybe it was time to stop. After all, what were the chances that the next one would have any revelations? And yet, spurred on by glowing on-line user reviews (let’s deal with that at another time) I was still intrigued enough to continue.


Always a Nerd:

So here's the latest installment in my undiminished, yet still slightly disappointing quest:

Before Hollywood.jpg


Their second record, more or less. Quiet, bare. But propulsive. Purported to be a significant leap forward from the debut.

One thing that always set the GBs off from other singer/songwriter bands is the engine they constructed under each song. It always had a lot of horsepower. Forget about being female, Lindy Morrison was simply one of the best drummers around. And their guitar-bass interplay always made them a band rather than just a bunch of musicians standing around and playing with the songwriters.

This was necessary, though, since Robert Forster, who wrote intriguing songs, was never big on singing pretty. David Byrne seems to be his inspiration, but things aren’t weird enough here to warrant such  mannerisms.

And I wish they stuck to their guns with the arrangements. For some reason, they throw in an organ, even though the best songs here - “Cattle and Cain” and “Dusty in Here”, both of which naturally appear on
GBs:1978-1990 - are the ones that are the very barest. Given how everyone was dabbling in synthesizers at the time, it must have been their half hearted attempt to stay “current”.

But despite such awkward corners but there is a personality emerging that would result in some of the best songwriting in the 80s. This may be their best balance of band and song without production. The GBs have almost arrived! B+


Best of the Best ofs:

So the GBs don’t make it easy. Each album has high points that keep you around long enough to hear the rougher stuff. The funny thing is that GBs:1978-1990 was like that too.

And now that I’m a few albums into the catalog my estimation of GBs:1978-1990 - which I’d already marked as my favorite non-Christmas holiday album - just keeps going up.

Which makes me think that while there are at least two more of their records I’ve got my eye on, I should slow down a bit.

After all, what’s the big deal? I don’t have Yellow Submarine yet, either.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Tom, Dick, etc.

In 1968, when the Beatles were asked who they were listening to, they responded “Nilsson!”. And America said, “Who?”.


America would eventually catch up to the Beatles. First it was “Everybody’s Talkin’”, which won Harry Nilsson a Grammy. Then some people may have caught “The Point” - an hour long cartoon he essentially conceived and wrote the songs for. But it was Nilsson Schmilsson, which had the huge hit “Without You”, that really put him on the map.

He went on to make many more records - some very good, some not so much - while out carousing with John Lesson and many, many others.

And then a few years ago, he passed away a few years ago, and was genuinely mourned by his fellow carousers.

The End

For a fuller picture, you might want to check out the documentary “Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?”  Definitely worthwhile.




But what were the Beatles so excited about? Mainly his first couple of albums.


Well, if it’s good enough for the Beatles it’s good enough for me.


Harry Nilsson.jpg


These two CDs represent Harry’s first two real albums recorded during 1967 and 1968. The first disc contains those two albums. The second disc is comprised of his attempt to make a single record out of those two records, and partly failing, but with some spectacular results, plus some bonus cuts. Got that?


Nilsson is an extremely talented singer and songwriter who sometimes dabbles in genres I’m not all that crazy about. Which results is records that are very good but that could have been (my definition of) great.



First, there was Pandemonium Shadow Show, which looks like this:




This is clever, intricate pop music. “1941”, written by Harry, is brilliant, beautiful and heartbreaking. The rest of the record is very entertaining all the way through, so it takes a while to realize that while the covers are good but unnecessary. “She’s Leaving Home” is perfect but wouldn’t replace the Beatles’ version.  Same for “River Deep, Mountain High”.


Was this just the record company’s way of marketing him?  Maybe they thought including those titles would draw some people in. Kind of like what they did with a lot of singers from the pre rock era. And they were striving to showcase a singer at least as much as they were a songwriter.


And Harry could do both in spades. He could write and sing Sinatra type ballads, music hall ditties, cabaret ballads. All very skillfully done, but not my cup of tea.


It’s hard to find fault with this record, and it’s certainly pleasant enough as it goes by, but I want more Harry! B+


So then came Aerial Ballet:




And we get him! Almost all Harry compositions. Some, like “Daddy’s Song” and “Good Old Desk”, that begin the record are almost as great as “1941”. And the others that end it, like “I Said Goodbye to Me” (which I thought was about a breakup, but may be about suicide) is. It’s also got “Everybody’s Talkin’” and Harry’s version of “One” (the big hit for Three Dog Night), and “Bath”, which are fantastic.


An almost classic. A-


A couple of years later, after he wins a grammy for “Everybody’s Talkin”, he goes back into the studio and tries to combine these two records into one, which resulted in:


Aerial Pandemonium Ballet:




And he almost gets it right.

The results - the best of both records and all Harry with the exception of Everybody’s Talkin could have been a truly great album,



But again, because he’s as much a singer as he is a songwriter, he includes “River Deep, Mountain High” when he could have included a couple of other of his own songs.


I would have done a better job compiling it, and it would have gotten an A or even an A+.


But Harry only gets a A-.


But unlike the John Cale set I got last year - another 2 CD set comprised of three albums - I could easily let this one play all the way through, repetitions and all,  without stopping. It’s that good. My caveats are more on principle than on sound.  

And the bonus cuts are excellent.


So, overall this set gets a strong  A-




But that’s Harry for you. He was nothing if not a bit frustrating.


Whimsy, melody and not a small bit of pain. a very impressive set of music, and it serves to remind us that Harry was doing great work long before Nilsson Schmilsson.

Right, yet again, Beatles!