GLOMP GLUKKLE SHLIK SHLORP GHOMP GLUNK GLIK SHTORK.

There is a palpable nostalgia these days, shared by me, for those long-lost Lp covers of yore.  The art of the album cover flourished from the advent of the Lp in the mid-50's and died in the mid-80's, when the rise of the 5" by 5" CD reduced the canvas on which graphic designers plied their craft to a sub-postcard size.  Ever since I spent a sunny afternoon in May 1967 poring over the eye-popping cover for Sgt. Pepper, I have loved looking at album art.

Lately, I've found myself obsessing over old jazz albums.  The best of them capture a long lost era of Cool, and and crackle with the energy and optimism of the era.  The Blue Note covers of the the Fifties and Sixties, for instance, are legendary for their black and white photos and bold, often monochrome graphics.  Here are few examples:

Now, as for the bizarre title of this post. While recently adding some early 50's jazz discs to my collection, I came across three truly weird covers, all for famous jazzmen, all drawn by the same artist, extremely well known for his subsequent work but quite obscure at the time he did these. Let's see if you can guess who he is:

If you guessed Don Martin, your fabulous fortune is prizes is in the mail. That's right, Mad's maddest artist did the cover for a Miles Davis Lp back in 1955. Glorpf!

Looking for Harry.

Ask the average person who Harry Nilsson is, and if they're of a certain age they'll probably scrunch up their face and say, "The name sounds familiar..." and if they're under 40 they probably won't have the faintest idea.

But mention "Me and My Arrow," or "Without You" or "Everybody's Talkin'" or say "Put de lime in de coconut," and odds are good that no matter their age, their eyes will light up with recognition: "Oh, that guy! I love that song!"

Recently while digging around the Internet I stumbled across the fact that Harry, who died in 1994 just before the big L.A. earthquake, was buried at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village. I drive past that place all the time -- it's next to our local Costco, Pet Smart, and Staples -- and I never knew Harry was there.

A little further digging revealed that in the final years of his life, Harry lived right here in my hometown of Agoura Hills. Agoura seems a strange place for such a successful musician to have lived; it ain't exactly Malibu -- it's not even Westlake Village. On a little more investigation, I learned that Harry, whose career had taken a sharp downturn in the late Seventies owing to his general iconoclasticity, his refusal to tour or play concerts, and his notorious carousing with John Lennon, was financially wiped out when his business manager embezzled all his money, for which she did two years and never had to make any sort of restitution.

I never met Harry, but I've occasionally met people who knew him (including Lennon, and the great Van Dyke Parks), and my producer/co-conspirator on nine years' worth of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was Fred Wolf, who single-handedly animated Harry's film The Point, which is awesome and full of win and which you should see immediately. For some reason, discovering that Harry had lived here made me want to pay him a visit.

I'm not a terribly morbid person by nature. The only time I've been to a celebrity grave was to see Oliver Hardy, who's buried near the old Disney TV animation building, where I used to work. But as someone who has loved Nilsson's music his entire adult life, I felt compelled to pay him my regards.

And so Audry and I headed out this morning, armed with the exact GPS coordinates of the gravesite, and went looking for Harry. We found him at the top of this hill, just east of Lindero Canyon Road.



Audry put a flower on the stone.


The notes of Harry's song "Remember" were transcribed and hand-etched on the stone by Van Dyke Parks himself. Among the many musicians at the funeral was George Harrison.


Turns out the several famous people are buried here, including Artie Shaw, Jack "King" Kirby, and Karen Carpenter. On our way back, we encountered one of them:


Strange thing about being in a cemetery: you think about the people there, and wonder what their lives were like, what worried them, what was important to them, what upset or delighted or enraged them -- and you instantly realize that none of it matters now. It reminds you that whatever you're worried or upset or angry or afraid about ultimately is going to be meaningless. And maybe that's a good thing to think about once in a while. Gives you perspective.

Apropos of that, here is Harry's song "Think About Your Troubles," from The Point:

I have a new favorite restaurant.

So Audry and I went to a church in London called St. Martins-in-the-Fields. I have been aware of this place for decades, as it is the home base of the Academy of St. Martins-in-the-Fields, my favorite chamber orchestra. (You've heard them. They played most of the music in "Amadeus.")

What I didn't know was that St. Martin's is in the heart of London, right next to Trafalgar Square. Because of its name, I had always pictured it as a pastoral church out in the English countryside somewhere. Audry pointed out that the church is so old that it probably was surrounded by verdant fields when it was first built!



Across the street is the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Nelson's Column.





Ah, but inside St. Martin's lurks the best restaurant I've eaten at since we left home...inside, and underneath the church. It's called The Crypt because...well, that's what it is -- the church's former crypt.


In the Crypt you walk and dine among ancient gravestones.


And the food! Hot pork sandwiches with applesauce, pickles, and strong English mustard. Sounds hellish, tastes heavenly. Audry took this picture of her cheese-laden vegetarian dish and Victorian lemonade (real brewed lemonade, with alcoholic content):

For my sister Juliet...

...probably the only person reading this blog who -- well, probably the only person reading this blog, but even more probably the only person reading this blog who will get the following. It's a Tweet I somehow ran across this morning (dear God don't ask me how) by Curt Smith, who is half of the band Tears for Fears.



Here's the link, if you must.

Twenty-one Fairly Obscure Desert Island Discs

So like any good music freak, I keep a perpetually evolving list of Desert Island Discs in my head. I've been meaning to write it up for years, but when I finally sat down to do it for this blog, a little voice in my head -- correction, a big voice -- kept interrupting me. "There you go, with all the same predictable choices as a People Magazine Top 25 list. And you call yourself a music geek! But what if you couldn't pick the obvious choices? What if you were denied all the albums that made the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest of All Time list? No Sgt. Pepper's, no Blonde on Blonde, no Let It Bleed, no London Calling, no Goodbye Yellow Brick Road! Only the unexpected albums! Now that would be a list! Oh, and no albums from your Top 10 Live Albums of All Time [forthcoming]. And no jazz, classical, or pre-rock singers such as Nat King Cole or Bing Crosby because, let's face it, we don't have all day." (Yes, the voices in my head are extremely long-winded.)

So without further adieu, here are my Top 21 Relatively Obscure Desert Island Discs (in no particular order, with some commentary):

1. The Youngbloods, Elephant Mountain (1969) A classic gem with unbelievable range, from the searing terror of the opener "Darkness, Darkness" to the soaring grace of the closer, "Ride the Wind." Does not include the Youngbloods' most famous song, the 60's anthem "Get Together," nor does it need it.






2. Grateful Dead, Anthem of the Sun (1968) The most psychedelic of all the Dead's albums, combining multiple live songs with trippy studio soundscaping. And you can dance to it!







3. Harry Nilsson: Nilsson Schmillson (1972) One great song after another, with killer production and an amazing lineup of musicians: "Without You," "Coconut," "Jump Into the Fire" -- and not a drop of filler.






4. Bonzo Dog Band: The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse (1970) The Bonzos were quite literally the missing link between the Beatles and Monty Python: They worked with several Beatles and appeared in the "Magical Mystery Tour" film, then later appeared on the British show "Do Not Adjust Your Set" with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam just a few months before they formed Python. And head Bonzo Neil Innes appeared in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (as Sir Robin's minstrel); he also wrote and performed the songs for Eric Idle's Beatles parody "All You Need is Cash," the soundtrack to which is the greatest album the Beatles never made. (And which, frankly, I should have put on this list.) This album is their masterpiece. If Tristan Tzara were a rock band, this is what he'd sound like. UPDATE: Holy schnickey! Tristan Tzara IS a rock band! (The Bonzos will forever kick their ass, however.)

5. Bob Dylan/The Band, The Basement Tapes (1975) Weird, moody, elegiac -- and hilarious. No, really. This album cracks me up every time.

6. Brian Eno, Another Green World (1975) Arguably Eno's best album, combining great art-rock songs with short proto-ambient experiments.









7. New Order, Low Life (1985) Eighties dance music as art; one of the greatest albums of all time. Its one failing is that it doesn't contain "Blue Monday," the greatest dance single of all time.









8. Malcolm McClaren, Duck Rock (1983) After inventing punk rock and Adam and the Ants, Malcolm McClaren created this aural trip around the world, combining hip-hop, African and Cuban rhythms -- oh, and square dancing. The "Sgt. Peppers" of the 80's.








9. XTC, English Settlement (1982) That rarest of rarities, a double album with no filler. Every song could be a hit single.










10. Fatboy Slim, On the Floor at the Boutique (1998) 50 nonstop minutes of massive beats and crazy cuts; not for the faint of heart.










11. Air, Moon Safari (1998) If I were to tell you that one of the most gorgeous albums of all time was a French band's modern-day take on 60's soft-rock bubblegum psychedelia, you'd probably think I was nuts. You'd be right, of course, but so would I.



12. Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun (1999) Hoo boy, where do I begin with this one? The Boredoms are a Japanese noise band, but with this 1995 album they started experimenting with ways to make noise...well, beautiful. And that's this album: noisy but beautiful.




13. Alexander Spence, Oar (1968) The most legendary obscure album of all time. "Skip" Spence, of Moby Grape, suffered an nervous breakdown (he was developing paranoid schizophrenia), and after he checked out of Bellevue he hopped on a motorcycle, rode straight to Nashville, and cut this haunting album on a 3-track recorder, playing all the instruments himself. I was one of maybe a thousand people who bought this album when it came out in 1968. I think I must have read the entire Ballentine Adult Fantasy series (that would be guys like Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, William Morris, Lovecraft, etc.) to this album when I was 14.

15. Tom Rush, The Circle Game. Boston folkie Rush has a laser-accurate eye for talent, and this 1968 album features first-ever recordings of songs by Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne (he is, as someone once said, the only man who should be allowed to sing Joni Mitchell songs), capped off by the double-whammy of Rush's own "Rockport Sunday" and "No Regrets."

16. The Incredible String Band, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. (1968) The ISB are a highly acquired taste, but you've got to love an album with a 13-minute song about an amoeba!

17. Autosalvage, Autosalvage. (1968) This is officially the most obscure record on this list. Autosalvage was a short-lived Greenwich Village art-psych-avant-rock band, whose one album was bought by me and maybe three other people back in 1967. The singing's a bit weak, but it's one of the most musically inventive Lp's of the Sixties, and features medieval instruments amidst the wailing guitars.

18. The Beastie Boys, Paul's Boutique. (1989) The BB's least commercially and most artistically successful album, thanks to the Dust Brothers' incredible production. No music, just an endless construction of samples from Hendrix, Curtis Mayfield, the Beatles, to name a few. (Plus, I felt it was essential to have two albums on this list with the word "boutique" in their title.) [UPDATE: Oop! This one actually is on the Rolling Stone Top 500 list. Oh, well, I'm allowed one. Although truthfully I might have put The Band (1969) in this slot had I known!]

19. Frank Zappa, Hot Rats (1969) There was a lot of Zap to choose from -- "Uncle Meat," "We're Only in It for the Money," or "Burnt Weenie Sandwich" could easily have made the list. But this one, perhaps the first example of jazz-rock fusion, rocks the hardest. Mostly instrumental, with chopmeisters like Ian Underwood, Sugarcane Harris and Jean-Luc Ponty wailing their brains out. Plus Captain Beefheart on vocals!

20. Buddy Holly, The Buddy Holly Story (1959) My brother Jeremy gave me this album when I was 13. Although I was completely obsessed with the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Dylan etc., this collection of music from a decade earlier completely blew me away. The greatest 50's rock and roll, with apologies to Elvis. And speaking of Elvis...

21. Elvis Costello, Armed Forces 1979) Hard to pick a best Elvis C. from his Stiff/Columbia peak years, but this one wins because it's got Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" on it.

Is this where Stephen Moffat got it from?

Fans of the Doctor Who two-parter "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" will know what I'm talking about.

Seriously, "River Song" (by Beach Boy and Brian brother Dennis Wilson) is one of my favorite songs of all time -- it easily eclipses anything the Beach Boys did post-"Heroes & Villains," with great BB harmonies and an awe-insiring arrangement that washes over you with crescendo after crescendo. You can listen to it below. (And I bet it is where Moffat got the name from!)