When I was a callow youth a buddy of mine turned me on to an NPR program called Wordjazz. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before (or since) and the genius behind it is “the man with the golden baritone voice”: Ken Nordine.
Using a unique technique of overdubbing a tinny sounding voice I always thought of as his subconscious, it was like he was having conversations with himself while pursuing stream-of-consciousness ramblings that usually culminated with a clever twist.
He recorded his Beat-like spoken word and poetry over diverse backdrops of jazz, rock and electronic music performed by some heavy rollers: He has collaborated with an incredible cast of musicians during his career including The Grateful Dead, David Sanborn, Smokey Robinson, and Fred Astaire to name just a few.
Coolest of the cool, hippest of the hip, Ken Nordine is the undisputed King of the Beatniks. His rich, golden baritone entrances you as he takes you on audio journeys charged with heavy psychedelic visual imagery, sometimes raising the tension to nearly unbearable levels before dissolving into quirky silliness.
His instantly recognizable voice has been featured in many commercial advertisements and movie trailers. One critic wrote that “you may not know Ken Nordine by name or face, but you’ll almost certainly recognize his voice”. The recordings of Colors are brief Beat-inspired explorations of the meanings of different colors (some of which were used in ads for The Fuller Paint Co.), and are among the most unique and innovative head trips I’ve ever experienced.
I was inspired by Ken’s Wordjazz to right a song in his honor a few years back called Kilroy Was Here. While it isn’t as cool as his stuff, it’s still kind of interesting, so if you want to hear it click here.
The thought struck me the other night while recording vocals: how many times have I looked at this view, or one similar to it? A mic, popper stopper and some wires and gear? thousands of times.
Turns out he writes poetry, and when I read one of his poems called The Dream I thought to myself, “that could be turned into a pretty cool song”. I was sitting by my Korg at the time that had an eerie piano with an arp patch happening, and hit a couple of chords and sang the first line of the poem and went, “whoa” – it happened that easily and that fast.
6 hours later (at 4am!) I was mostly done, and today I polished it up and sent it to him. He liked it and blogged about it, so I thought I would too, cos it’s actually a groovus laid back tune that I digs quite a lot:
Download it: The Dream (mp3, 320kbps, 4:25 duration, 10.1MB)
Here is a pic I took while recording it, with a little more info in the margins (click it to see full size):
Oh yeah, he turned the song and his lyrics into a video, too (did I mention how talented this guy is?):
When I was a kid, I loved watching Jacques Cousteau on National Geographic, I thought he was maybe the coolest guy that ever lived. So much so, that when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up (a question which is still asked of me to this day) I would answer, “I want to be a marine biologist when I grow up”. I actually wanted to be an oceanographer, but I thought saying marine biologist sounded cooler.
Well, like many of my dreams, that occupation was never to show up on my resume, but I still get to watch and feed my fish in my 60 gallon aquarium, which has an Oscar
Astronotus Ocellatus
and a 16″ Plecostomus (algae eater) which, aside from the pain in the ass of cleaning it all the time affords me a great deal of pleasure.
Plecostomus (genus Pterygoplichthys)
So then I saw one of my favorite all-time movies: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and a little germ of an idea grew in my head until finally I created this mini documentary of my aquarium of terror starring Tony the Oscar, Bob the Plecostamus and the carnivorous, motionless stone octopus (who, through his understated performance, nearly steals the show). In honor of Jacques and Bill Murray, I used my best phony french accent during the narration, I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it
1st off is new Radiohead (this could have been on Led Zeppelin’s Zoso AND/OR Jeff Buckley’s Grace and fit right in, at least to my ears…and that’s a very good thing.) And since I am always forgetting to provide an actual link to videos in my post, I humbly apologize to my RSS via email readers, and promise to not do it no more (no mo no mo):
And the 2nd video juxtaposes my well-known love of two things: Hockey and Rush! (Hey! you got your Peart on my St. Louis Blues – no, you got your Blues on my Peart! It’s….wonderful cheesy grins). It’s Neil Pearts take of “The Hockey Theme”, the music that has been used during the opening of “Hockey Night in Canada” on Canadian TV for the last four decades:
He shoots – He SCORES! (get it, like a musical score? I’m sorry, that was really weak).
Tom Baker was my favorite Dr. Who – and it’s funny, I’ve heard it said over and over by everyone I’ve ever talked to whenever I bring up the subject: “Tom was the definitive Dr. Who” or “Tom Baker was the only Dr. Who I ever watched”.
He was simply magic – it was the role he was born for.
Anyway, Tom is 76 today! Here’s wishing you many more future birthday candles on your cakes. Here are some cool pics of the great Dr. in all his scarfy glory:
This is very trippy, I remember seeing this at midnight on PBS with the classic music playing, it’s just great BTW the theme was created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and was considered quite innovative, and was a significant influence on modern electronic music.
And here is a graphic of the Tardis I made a couple of years ago with Photoshop:
I was working on the new flash header, and somehow came up with this silhouette when I magic tool selected and cut my image out – then I applied negative image effect and said to myself, “wow, that’s pretty cool”. I probably couldn’t duplicate this if someone stuck a gun to my head.
Probably the coolest, hippest cat to ever record rock music, the one and only Donald Fagen celebrates his 62nd trip around the sun today (and there is much rejoicing). Even better news for the hep cats hoping for a follow-up to the magnificent Morph the Cat, he will supposedly release another album sometime this year. Anytime Fagen releases anything I get excited, I mean how often can you buy music you haven’t even heard yet, and just know it’s gonna kick ass?
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