Friday Arts

It’s all music this week. After Rather Large Bronx, who had time for movies?

Save the Last Dance for Me (alternate version), Waiting, I Will Take You There, from Sessions 1967-1975, plus Jesus Christ You’re Tall from Sandman, and Zombie Jamboree from That’s the Way It Is, Harry Nilsson—This has been a big Nilsson week. The Sessions collection is a bunch of odds and ends, many of which I’ve got on various regular albums, since when I was buying certain CDs back in the day they seemed to throw every tape they had on the shelf at them, including not only alternate takes but radio ads and, of course, songs not good enough to make the cut. Those songs are mostly still not good, and Sandman, one of his later albums, also isn’t top drawer. But then again, I am a major Harryhead. I came to him late. Aside from The Point, I never owned a single album of his when he was alive. “Everybody’s Talkin’ “ was his most famous song, which I figured he had written, which while I liked the singing, was a little over the pop line for my tastes back then. Then I stumbled on to a tribute album (For the Love of Harry), which has some great cuts, and then I bought a greatest hits album, and then I bought everything he ever recorded. When Nilsson was good, he was really really good. An amazing songwriter. When he was bad, he could be bad in so many different ways. If you have any interest in him at all, watch the movie Who Is Harry Nilsson (etc.)? For some reason I don’t have any of the classic Nilsson in the playlist yet, a major failing on my part. I will be rectifying that. (By the way, my favorite version of "Zombie Jamboree" is from Spike Lee's Do It A Capella soundtrack, sadly missing from Spotify.)

Lay Down Sally (Clapton), Running on Empty (Browne), All the Young Dudes (Hoople), She’s Gone (H&O), What a Fool Believes (Doobies), You’re No Good (Ronstadt), from a playlist "70s Road Trip" — Spotify obviously has more playlists than you can shake a stick at. They’re a good way to find hits you may have otherwise missed from groups in which you have no interest, like Hall and Oates or Mott the Hoople, or people you just haven’t gotten around to auditing much yet, like Clapton and the Doobie Brothers. These are all sort of the AM side of the playlist.

Return the Sender, Elvis, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Hugo Montenegro, from Nipper’s Greatest Vol 2 — While these songs speak for themselves, being more nostalgic than anything else, the rest of this RCA collection bordered on the painful. These were one after the other: We’ll Sing in the Sunshine, Ringo (from Lorne Greene), The Ballad of the Green Berets, and My Cup Runneth Over. Talk about four songs you never wanted to hear again, or even in the first place (although I will admit joining in the background chanting of “Ringo”). My toilet runneth over. You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs, as they say…

Speaking of Morricone (TGTBATU), one of the albums on my very heavy rotation is the album of his work by Yo-Yo Ma. Wonderful stuff. If you get a chance, check it out. And if you know nothing of Morricone, check him out, too. Very interesting character.