Harry Nilsson vs. Scott Walker

uhhh yeah you know i was deflecting your first ad hominem by trying to explain why this shit's annoying and why it makes ilm/ile more of a drag, because i think you're a cool poster with interesting things to say, but polls like these are geir-quality! i mean you have every right to start them without people complaining on them that they are sort of stupid but you know, be all that you can be and step up your game, i know you can.

but music isn't baseball though

another thing about nilsson is he sought beatle glamor (in the form of ringo and lennon out in la especially) that walker uh walked away from when he left the walker bros. that always informed how i heard them when i was first listening

I like making TS threads. I find that making comparisons between two things that maybe don't get compared that often (or do, in some cases) is a good way to look at something in a slightly different light. I'm not sure why Scott Walker has more in common with Tim Buckley, Frank Sinatra and Momus (referring to above threads) than he does with Nilsson - in fact I'm pretty sure he has less in common with all of them and I think that the Walker/Brel vs. Nilsson/Newman parallel is worth talking about because I'm a huge fan of all 4. I'm not really interested in stepping up my game to please strangers on the internet tbh. If nobody but me is interested in this, then nobody but me has to post on this thread, but imo random internet bitchiness is really what makes ilm/ile a drag, not boring polls.

the Walker/Brel vs. Nilsson/Newman parallel is worth talking about

to be fair I don't really know how to think about this, mostly because I don't know much about Brel (except through Scott Walker and Bowie). But my impression is that he was a self-consciously "arty" songwriter. Whereas Newman was pop all the way through. Or do I have Brel wrong?

I don't think you can say Brel is self-consciously arty, I think he falls pretty squarely in the French chanson tradition of Brassens, Piaf etc etc.

i think i went walker in that poll with him vs. that ice-pick-in-the-ear-drum waits, but here nilsson all the way.

i love harry, i don't really get scott

To expand on my Walker/Brel + Nilsson/Newman thing - I think Walker's Brel covers are pretty awful on a whole and probably because he'd agree witwh Euler. Brel *does* have his self-consciously arty moments - but he's also got a very present whimsical side that Scott Walker really doesn't. He also invests himself in the songs in a way that Walker (/Bowie) doesn't/can't. To bring this back to Nilsson - 'Without you' is a better cover of 'Ne me quitte pas' than 'If you go away' is, even though it's a completely different song. They're operating on the same channel, I guess.

Walker/Nilsson also are in the weird zone where they didn't really know if they were songwriters or performers and slowly moved towards the songwriter-first zone - whereas Brel and Newman are definitely songwriters first.

I am going to a puppet musical / theatrical rendition of Harry Nilsson's "The Point" tonight in Baltimore at the H&H Buidling. It's a full band, and sets and costumes and large scale puppets covering the entire album. I'm pretty stoked! Will report later on how it turns out.

i guess i will vote walker.

because i think the walker bros. earlier stuff comes quasi-close to being good at what nilsson does

but nilsson can't really do what walker is amazing at

walker sings newman?

yeah I was thinking about that, because there are a lot of brel songs that I imagine nilsson covering ('fils de'/'sons of' would be great for example - walker's version is so-so.) but the opposite is harder - for walker to successful cover newman he'd really have to take himself less seriously. which could lead to something interesting...I can't think of any fittings songs of the top of my head tho.

the closest Nilsson ever came to covering Brel was the Popeye soundtrack...

but imo random internet bitchiness is really what makes ilm/ile a drag, not boring polls.

You can't seriously believe this.

no you're right, dealing w/ bitchy strangers is the best part of this site

Okay, the puppet show / 12 piece band covering all of Nilsson's "The Point" LP was totally fucking awesome. Plus since it was the end of the weekend run they did a bonus round, adding some reinforcements and playing "Jump Into the Fire" afterward. Really fun, and gave me a warm fuzzy feeling about Baltimore that a bunch of kids just did this, practicing for two months straight and making sets and costumes and learning the whole damn show just to put it on for two days. Whoah. And Nilsson's tunes sounded great.

voted Nilsson; I do love 4 but Scott should have tried covering Badfinger.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm going with Nilsson, but only because Walker never wrote anything with a bassline as badass as "Jump Into the Fire."

Can you imagine if Harry didn't devote his life to curbing gun useage and made his own equivalent of 'the Drift'? Would this world be freaking exploded from goodness or what?

I went w/Harry bcz he is the best guy ever.

Also that show of The Point sounds rad & joyous.

Like a lot of Nilsson; have never got Walker.

^^ yep that pretty much describes me too

Had never heard of Walker before reading ILM. iTunes music samples don't sound particularly remarkable. Annoying voice.

<3<3<3

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

What. The. Fuck.

What. The. Fuck.

My sentiments exactly.

This was rigged.

Not surprised by the result, but a little puzzled by the margin of victory. I'm not a Walker fan myself, but he seems to be held in high esteem by many folks in these parts; maybe it is the faction that doesn't vote in polls.

I'm enjoying Walker a lot more these days. I'm surprised, because I never liked his voice. He's a little cold. I heard Nilsson as a kid. Nilsson doesn't make me feel like I'm some place else.

But that's part of Scott's appeal for me - listening to him is a totally transportive experience!

very surprised nilsson won this.

i like

this is kind of like declare-your-allegiances time for me. i gotta go with nilsson.

My automatic feeling is that it was contrarian-ass motherfuckers. I like Nilsson but I respect him more than I like his music, whereas I both respect and love what Scott does.

drunk but in at least one instance correct

My automatic feeling is that it was contrarian-ass motherfuckers. I like Nilsson but I respect him more than I like his music, whereas I both respect and love what Scott does.

― emil.y, Friday, October 26, 2012 7:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why would you assume that those whose tastes in this very narrow category are slightly different from yours are being "contrarian"? maybe they just like harry nilsson's music a bit more. it's not outside the realm of possibility.

It was more that it felt like a kick-back against a certain universal lauding of Walker's oeuvre. Having said that, I have no idea of the status of Nilsson in the States, but he would definitely be the underdog to support in the UK.

Nilsson more popular in the UK (certainly more successful) than Scott in the US surely? I love both but they have nothing in common with each other whatsoever.

... apart from the booze, of course

the one major thing they'd seem to have in common is their main influence and disposition being pre-rock musical idioms

... and a great set of pipes, though Nilsson wrecked his over time

They both made a seemingly gigantic string of albums no one really talks about. Stretch v Duit on Mon Dei??

I have no idea how anyone can consider Walker a more universal or obvious choice

I dunno also the accepted wisdom that Nilsson wrecked his voice:

1) It got better again (ref: All I think about is you)

2) Everyone's singing voice gots 'worse' over time.

disagree with (2). I'll offer Van Morrison of an example of someone whose voice just got deeper and richer over the years

(1) - yes, it did come back but he'd obviously lost some of the top range. Still better than, uh, me for example!

(2) - mostly true but by no means always.

OK, I generalised, but yeah.

God I hated Scott Walker for ages. I like singers of the sixties but I guess I didn't like the hard sell and the "spin". I mean people rate him but not sixties pop records. But maybe my mood has changed.

i feel like nilsson is an interesting sell for a lot of Self-Identified Music Fans

like walker, he made his pop records and got weirder, then had some years in the wilderness, then came back all ART FIRST, we know this story

nilsson you get to go 'god but really there's something amazing about a little touch of schmilsson in the night you know'

people who prefer harry nilsson to scott walker will, nine times out of ten, claim either that their favourite beatles track is 'rain' or that their favourite stones track is 'we love you'

people who prefer harry nilsson to scott walker will usually prefer 'inauthentic' mexican food, say, or disregard the virtues of sicilian pizza

people who prefer harry nilsson to scott walker will take public transport, regardless of socioeconomic class and local standards, but try and persuade themselves they don't like 90% of the other people who take public transport

italians suck at making pizza

IATEE WHO DID YOU VOTE FOR

nilsson

people who prefer scott walker to harry nilsson will take public transport, regardless of socioeconomic class and local standards, but try and persuade themselves they do like 90% of the other people who take public transport. But they don't.

i was right!

about what?

nilsson types

I had to listen to more classic "canonical" stuff and world music at my old job, maybe that's why.

When I was a college kid reading the papers and feeling stupid because I remember the Walker Brothers, what a dork. And I don't want to be a wanker like that guy in "High Fidelity". And who doesn't remember Nilsson. But I like David Bowie and the Cure so I'm giving it an autumnal go.

like walker, he made his pop records and got weirder, then had some years in the wilderness, then came back all ART FIRST, we know this story

What we know from this story is that you know nothing about Nilsson.

what we know from that joke is you have poor reading comprehension

Ah, I see now, though I think it's your writing that is to blame. If you are using "like" as a discourse article it's usually helpful to follow it with a comma. Nevertheless your various comments betray that you really don't know a lot about Nilsson's music do you? Be honest.

like if you think people here voted for Nilsson because "there's something amazing about a little touch of schmilsson in the night" then I think you are incorrect.

It got zero votes in the Best Nilsson Album poll on ILX by the way.

Nilsson cos im more familiar with his work. Also, he just seems far less pretentious than Walker, which is a win in my book.

can't remember if i voted in this, but would have chosen Nilsson for the simple reason i listen to him more, and probably hum him more when I'm not thinking about it.

Both guys have an element of "we have a secret about this music and we're not telling you what it is", which rings more deviantly in Nilsson to me because he never really went off the experimental music deep end. imo Experimental music has that element built in, where maybe even the artist doesn't understand the "secret" behind the music. In pop, it could seem like the act of "hiding" something, of not being upfront, transparent, easily applied to some listener's daily life background, is I dunno, antisocial, dishonest, manipulative. I find it easy to see how someone could find Nilsson subversive and be turned off by that, but think the same of Scott Walker and count it as one of his selling points.

yeah i don't find myself going back to scott walker LPs half as much as nilsson LPs. maybe that's because many of the former are "difficult listening" or whatever.

anyway i voted nilsson because srsly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5jviTEOaw

also lots of singers retain their chops for decades. i was just listening to a live luther vandross LP from a year before he died and holy shit did that man still have it. prince can still sing real good. etc etc etc.

yeah chalk up Michael Girl and Peter Hammill as a couple of guys who you'd think had destroyed their voices over the decades and yet are as good as ever, even in the year 2012

All I was saying was that Nilsson didn't ruin his voice forever..

i dunno the last few years of stuff he did before his death, his voice is pretty damn croaky, e.g. "camp candy."