Track Listing

1. Ten Little Indians
2. 1941
3. Cuddly Toy
4. She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune
5. You Can't Do That
6. Sleep Late My Lady Friend
7. She's Leaving Home
8. There Will Never Be
9. Without Her
10. Freckles
11. It's Been So Long
12. River Deep Mountain High
13. Good Old Desk
14. Don't Leave Me
15. Mr Richland's Favorite Song
16. Little Cowboy
17. Together
18. Everybody's Talkin'
19. I Said Goodbye To Me
20. Mr Tinker
21. One
22. Wailing Of The Willow
23. Bath
24. Introduction
25. 1941
26. Daddy's Song
27. Mr Richland's Favotite Song
28. Good Old Desk
29. Everybody's Talkin'
30. River Deep Mountain High
31. Sleep Late My Lady Friend
32. Don't Leave Me
33. Without Her
34. Together
35. One
36. Closing
37. As I Wander Lonely
38. Miss Butter's Lament
39. Sister Marie
40. Wasting My Time

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40254 in Music
• Released on: 2000-08-12
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, Extra tracks

Customer Reviews

Harry, he,s here to help.
Harry Nilsson,s debut album "Pandemonium Shadow Show" was released in 1967 on RCA ,the same year as The Beatles "Sgt Pepper" - a great album though a tad over rated( "Pandemonium Shadow Show " even includes a cover of "She's Leaving Home", recorded only ten days after The Beatles album was released )As if to prove that studio sorcery wasn't just the province of the fab four and their producer, RCA engineer Dick Bogert was able to assist Nilsson,s more creative ideas by syncing two four track machines together to in effect create an eight track recording system.
That's the thing about "Pandemonium", it's so chock full of all the ideas and musical influences that Nilsson had assimilated over the years that's it's some what daunting to listen to at first so eclectic are it's multi faceted surfaces. This may explain why it was somewhat over looked at the time, but there is no doubt that while it lacks the sheer song writing brio of The Beatles, or indeed The Beach Boys it's pushing the boundaries of pop every bit as far as those two leading lights. Having said that I personally find some of the album a little too florid, decorous and twee. It's saved by some cracking songs-"Cuddly Toy" , "You Can't Do That" "Sleep Late My Lady Friend ", Without Her","It,s Been So Long" and Nilsson's fantastic vocals .
"Aerial Ballet" is more reflective and restrained and is the better of the two albums for me. It contains the massive hit "Everybody's Talkin" made famous by the movie "Midnight Cowboy" but there are other excellent songs of enshrined pop magnificence. After the jaunty and rather annoying openers Daddys Song" and "Good Old Desk" the string led "Don, t Leave Me" ushers in a surge of quality. Other tracks like "Together", "I Said Goodbye To Me" , "Mr Tinker"( which sounds like it could have come off a Luke Haines album) and "One" showcase an artist engaging the audience with more subtlety and poise.
In 1971 after winning a Grammy with "Everybody, s Talkin" Nilsson, now unhappy with the first two albums, returned to the studio to rework many of the tracks, thus creating "Aerial Pandemonium Ballet". Some of the tracks were slowed down to match his increasingly deeper vocal timbre and he culled others of their excessive horn arrangements. Some of the songs definitely benefit from this approach "1941" is richer, less aggravating, and the same is true for "Good Old Desk" which is given added poignancy by a flattering string arrangement.
There are four bonus tracks. "As I Wander Lonely" is cello accompanied but prosaically morbid while "Miss Butters Lament" is another perversely vaudeville pop confection. "Sister Marie" originally a B-side to "One" has a psychedelic ambience and "Wasting My Time" is gentle piano led amble .This album outsold the previous two, the showcase for an ever evolving , under rated musician and singer who even now does,nt receive the plaudits he deserves.

Wild About Harry
Nilsson's first two albums (along with the bonus disc of later remixes) make an extremely welcome little package. These cds show what pop music might have been capable of if "Rock" had not got in the way, drawing effortlessly on soul, jazz and vaudeville influences. Nilsson records all the vocals on these albums layering his 3 octave voice again and again to stunning effect - and all this was recorded in the primitive days of four track analogue recording.
The albums sound light and poppy, but a thread of intelligence runs throughout. "1941" sounds autobiographical and is deeply thoughtful, "Cuddly Toy" is misogynistic but irresistable and "Sleep Late My Lady Friend" is just plain gorgeous. These three are from "Pandemonium Shadow Show" an album I was given by a friend some twenty five years ago and which has always occupied a special place in my record collection - to this day the thrilling version of "River Deep, Mountain High" reminds me why I rushed out to buy "Aerial Ballet" when I finally found a copy ( no Amazon then!).
I was slightly disappointed. "One" was a dazzling vocal performance of course and "Mr Richland's Favourite Song" was in the great Nilsson tradition telling the story of a singer slowly ageing and how his relationship with his audience changes.
It was true that the album not only contained the hit single "Everybody's Talking" but also "I Said Goodbye To Me" a haunting number about suicide and the infectious paean to losing one's virginity "Bath", but I felt slightly short changed.
The release of this cd makes up for that feeling with the inclusion of the marvellous "Daddy's Song" which had been pulled from the album by the time I bought it. This song makes me cry. It is wonderful. And if Nilsson's version is slightly fussy compared with the Monkees' cover, it benefits enormously from his tremendous voice. These albums still sound great and should be better known.
The bonus cd is fascinating, but ultimately the better versions are almost always those on the first cd.

Oh Harry! What went wrong?
Oh Harry! Where did it all go wrong? I was just wild about Harry in the late 1960s. I secretly quite liked his Schmilsson sessions in the 1970s - in which he did some surprisingly classy versions of a set of standards - in TV and recording sessions masterminded by popchestra maestro Gordon Jenkins. But soon after that - so far as I knew - it all went quiet. I did make a note of the news that Harry died of a heart attack on Saturday 15th January 1994. But, in 1967 it really wasn't meant to be like that.

Back in 1967 Harry first came to the attention of the music buying public in the UK through airplay on manic jock Kenny Everett's BBC Radio One show. I think Everett started playing tracks from Pandemonium Shadow Show - I think he played 1941 which is featured on this collection and of course later he played the immortal Everybody's Talking.

When Everett's run on the radio came to an end he actually had Harry live in the studio doing a live 'goodbye' jingle. Of course, Everett was soon back on-air with a new series and by then Harry seemed to have joined the Everett, Beatles, Jonathan King set. The Beatles had famously inducted Nilsson to the USA pop hall of fame by quoting Nilsson as their favourite group(sic). I had always half expected that the fab four would cut a Nilsson track at some stage - though I don't think they ever did. However, there are perhaps detectable influences from Harry's talent for charming whimsy in the Beatles "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" - a song out of British music hall but with heavy Nilssonic overtones.

Looking at the fossil record of those days - chart books and old cuttings - Harry's commercial success was probably far less than it seemed at the time. But his influence on some of his contemporaries - albeit fairly transient - is pretty huge. If you were making hip pop records in 1967/1968 you had better have listened to teh two Harry Nilsson albums cuddled up together here on this CD. Lots of people did listen to those songs, and cover versions of the most commercial of them appeared by the dozen - as to a lesser extent they have done ever since (I haven't checked to see how many versions of Everybody's Talking I have on my shelves). There were large number of covers of songs like the aforementioned "1941", "Cuddly Toy" (later included as an album track by the Monkees) and "Without Her" of which - even in my meagre music library - I have about 5 versions by such 1960s luminaries as Lulu and Cilla Black et al.

In 1969 Nilsson released his album "Harry" which continued the trend of bitter and sweet collections of original and off the wall songs. It seemed as if Harry's place in the hearts of the music buying public was assured. But then he released the album "The Point" which despite much airplay - and having the ingredients as before - failed to go mainstream. Then came "Nilsson Sings Newman" - a loveable but curiously spineless, for Nilsson, set. I was taken aback when I first played "Nilsson Sings Newman": The superb first 30 seconds of "Vine Street" has the makings of a great pop single, but fizzles out miserbly. I Don't I ever got past the disappointment of that moment. Though Nilsson and Newman's collaboration produced some excellent tracks, they just weren't electric enough to be real Nilsson!

Then, in 1972 Harry picked up Pete Ham and Tom Evans' (both of Apple band Badfinger) "Without You" and took it to number one in the USA and most points around the globe. He could probably have retired on the radio royalties of that single alone. But he did not.

A series of increasingly lacklustre follow-up singles followed through to the mid 1970s. That's when "A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night" came about. Of course we 1960s escapees mostly pooh pooh'd this - but our parents were impressed (and so, perhaps, were we in secret!) to hear an icon of the 1960s (goodbye Hoagey Carmichael) warming over all the old 40s and 50s standards in some style. It was done and it was done well, and it was successful. Then, Harry teamed up (in 1976) with John Lennon to record the patchy album "Pussy Cat" (I always reckoned "Kojak Columbo" from this period). Then more Schmilsson and then..... hmmm

Harry's familiar tale of drink, drugs and decline kind of seeped through to me - but no more music. Then one day early in 1994 the news that the man was dead. I still play "There Will Never Be" (if you've never heard it, do) and "Maybe" and I think they're great - as are his two major hit singles. Harry was never going to be McCartney or Clapton or any other kind of elder statesman of pop, but (to borrow from James Taylor) I always thought that I'd see him again, and now I won't. Thanks goodness for compilation re-issues.

Honorable mention should also go to George Tipton's superb arrangements of Harry's songs and the wonderful jazz feel he sometimes brings to the songs. One almost gets into Steely Dan territory at a few points in these tracks - oh that synchopation!

Alan T.

(I was there - listening with my eyes closed)