Word: songful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...NILSSON (RCA Victor). While most rock singers sound like so many caterwauling cats conjugating the verb "to be," Nilsson, 25, sings with clear honesty and lack of pretense. He has composed a highly creative rock-vaudeville show with all the acts: a tap number, a cowboy ballad, a torch song, and an acrobatic display of vocal jazz scatting. Altogether an excellent performance despite an overlying, oddly out-of-place air of melancholy that sometimes threatens to spoil...
...SONG CYCLE: VAN DYKE PARKS (Warner Bros.). Van Dyke Parks sings a surrealist's dream in a voice so innocent as to draw any listener into his experience. He has experimented with the usual recording technique by taping voice upon melody upon stereophonic sound effects, then mirroring it back at varying speeds until it becomes a collage of sound light-years away from a "live" performance. What does it matter if the lyrics are opaque at times? The effect is all shimmering beauty...
...lonely little freedom march up Fifth Avenue. Needless to say, nobody even noticed me. Why wasn't there more response? Because protesters are programmed to protest "liberal, new-left, pro-revolutionary, antiwar" causes, and this didn't quite fit. You can't sing the song if you don't know the words...
That's the folk in the music; you take all the things that bother you and sing a song about them, but a happy song...
This mere outline is not enough and the song has to be listened to for the total experience, full of dark and slippery suggestion, to understand the Who's near-total mastery of this medium they have created for themselves...