Working Backwards, Part 2

I was about 550 words into a screed on the genius of Blackalicious’ 2002 album Blazing Arrow, using the record as a foil to the snotty summer theme of last week’s post, when I found myself swayed by a divergent musical current, changing gears altogether. This is not to say that Blackalicious couldn’t hold my attention and it certainly doesn’t diminish my opinion of the album as one of the best that the early aughts produced. As a matter of fact, I have Gift of Gab and his cohorts in Blackalicious to blame for my columnar change of heart. Here’s what happened:

I had started writing about how summer isn’t just a season spent dodging the heat, that it also holds the promise of long days that pour into cool nights, punctuated by barbecues and the smell of cut wet grass and the singular experience of pruning yourself in swimming pools. I moved from what we might enjoy in summer to the sort of music that might soundtrack our road trips and our afternoons spent reading in the park, and how Blackalicious’ posi-hip-hop masterpiece is just about as good a summertime companion as one might hope for.

In disseminating what makes the album so good, I started writing about the sample source material they used for the record, most notably on the second track on the album, “Me and My Arrow.”

The song is one of the best on the record, and is built around samples taken from three songs written by Harry Nilsson as part of a song cycle he created for the 1977 animated movie The Point. The prominence of the samples stirred up a very minor renaissance for Nilsson, sending sample grabbers digging into the bins and turning many an ear towards Nilsson’s unique gift of simple melodies that are whimsical and poignant and just downright pleasant to listen to.

I started writing a little bit more about Nilsson’s contribution to the timbre of that particular Blackalicious song, which is only bolstered by Gift of Gab’s lyrical acrobatics, and found myself watching more and more scenes from The Point.

Watching scenes from The Point gave me an urge to listen to songs from one of his best albums, Nilsson Schmilsson, which in turn got me thinking about all of the people he has influenced and how he has remained unsung even in death, and even further, what a damn shame that fact is. Nilsson is one of those artists whose melodic touch has rippled throughout pop music and whose influence can be heard loud and clear in current indie threads, with singers like Sufjan Stevens, Ian Cooke (listen to Nilsson’s song Without Her – track 11 below, and tell me that doesn’t sound like a portent of Cooke’s own melodic gift), and Neko Case all owing him a debt of gratitude for laying the groundwork.

As a pianist, the songs he wrote were fairly simple but he had a knack for writing songs that cut to the bone, and he did so with humor and pathos wrapped in catchy and simple lines. His work has been copied and covered and made famous by plenty of other folks, with the general populace completely ignorant of the material’s author and creator. Three Dog Night, Fred Neil, Aimee Mann, Grandaddy, The Monkees, The Yardbirds, Neko Case, and Astrud Gilberto have all had hits that were originally penned, and in most cases first performed, by Nilsson.

For his efforts, Nilsson has become one of those fabled “musician’s musicians”, held in saintly regard by those who create with melody as their raw material, recognizing that he was one of the songsmiths who made it look so effortless, who made it an integral and necessary manifestation of his own soul. Blackalicious fits in there somewhere, creating a scaffold out of Nilsson parts and erecting a great hip hop album around the support they lend. So here, let’s stop and give Nilsson the old Cleveland Chili treatment and take it three ways. We have Blackalicious above slicing and dicing, we have Neko Case reinterpreting a Nilsson classic, and below in the playlist we have Nilsson giving it unfiltered and as it was meant to be heard, straight from the cool, clear flowing source. Enjoy!

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1. Everybody’s Got ‘Em (from the album The Point)
2. Me and My Arrow (from the album The Point)
3. Poli High (from the album The Point)
4. Think About Your Troubles (from the album The Point)
5. Life Line (from the album The Point)
6. P.O.V. Waltz (from the album The Point)
7. Are You Sleeping? (from the album The Point)
8. Think About Your Troubles (from the album The Point)
9. Life Line (from the album The Point)
10. Down In The Valley (from the album The Point)
11. Without Her (from the album Pandemonium Shadow Show)
12. One (from the album Aerial Ballet)
13. Don’t Forget Me (from the album Pussy Cats)
14. Early In The Morning (from the album Nilsson Schmilsson)
15. Without You (from the album Nilsson Schmilsson)
16. Let The Good Times Roll (from the album Nilsson Schmilsson)
17. Jump Into The Fire (from the album Nilsson Schmilsson)
18. Gotta Get Up (from the album Nilsson Schmilsson)

P.S. I’ll be spinning records at the Sputnik on Sunday July 25th from 7 to 10 pm as part of the 10th Annual Denver Post UMS. If I thought it would be appropriate for me to categorize the event as being off the chain like an escaped rabid dog or as having the potential to remove itself from any sort of hook that may tether it to a likeness of lesser events, I might do so, but seeing as how it would not be appropriate for me to do so, I’ll simply relate to you that I think it’s going to be really really neat. Really really really neat.