WBCR Loves You

The last few weeks on and off Karin and I have been reorganizing, organizing, anatagonizing etc…over our massive vinyl library. Basically it consists of me working for ten minutes then screaming out and getting distracted by some gem I find. It’s kind of fun actually.

I figured that though I try to highlight our newer releases it doesn’t hurt to acknowledge all the old great stuff we have too. One artist in particular I wanted to talk about is Harry Nilsson. We have pretty much every LP he ever put out (even some of the schmaltzy later work) and it seems so strange to me that we have so much of work of one artists who today is so vastly underappreciated (or doesn’t get as much attention as his talent warrants)

For those of you who don’t know him, Harry Nilsson started as a pop songwriters writing hits for early mid 60s acts like the Monkees, Yardbirds, and the list could go on. The brilliant thing about Nilsson is that even if you aren’t aware of him as an artist almost every American is surely aware (whether they know it or not) of his sound. His music is marked with unbelievably catchy hooks and the kind of melody that sticks with you. As for lyrics, Nilsson’s music often comes off at first as a bit twee or saccharine but listen to the lyrics more closely and there’s always an underlying darkness in his work.

During his time Nilsson was the songwriter’s songwriter. Someone who was not necessarly always a chart success himself but the songwriter that the “big ones” admired.  Paul McCartney and John Lennon both named him as their favorite artist. Nilsson was the epitome of hip at the time. He knew how to write pop hooks that sold but paired with lyrics that screamed authenticity and went beyond the typical shallow pop format. 

On his solo albums Nilsson’s sound still holds up remarkably well today. At the time though Nilsson often overturned his successes with his more poppy tunes to lean towards experimentation. That’s one of my favorite things about him as an artist is that undeniably he always stuck to his guns. His most well known and popular album “Nilsson Schmilsson” is a brilliant slice of late 60s folk-pop craftwork. I even dig some of his weirder albums like the John Lennon produced “Pussycats” or the soundtrack to a children’s film of the same name, “The Point”. Nilsson combined the pop craftwork of the Beach Boys, the complex songwriting of the Beatles and the rock and roll attitude of the Stones to create what to me is a quintessential 60s pop sound.

Despite his moderate success in the 60s and 70s as far as a musical touchstone Nilsson has seemed to fade away in music for the last few decades. I think though that anyone can see there’s a resurgence towards his style whether in the dreamy pop songs of Beach House or the pop-folk of artists like Blitzen Trapper. 

So the point of this is…don’t forget there are loads of some of rock and roll’s greatest artists just waiting in our back room, waiting to become the band you can’t live without.

(Bebe)

P.s. I felt obligated to post this photo of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson grabbing ass. Sorry.