Point Schmoint
I don't know why I had never heard The Point!(w.) by Harry Nilsson until a few days ago when Paul Clifton loaned it to me as possible material for The Wonderful to cover, but please allow me to officially go on record that I find it to be delightful. All I really knew of Nilsson until recently was "Everybody's Talkin'" from the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. I used to have it on vinyl and it's a good song. But The Point! is something completely different and unexpected.
Apparently, the original incarnation was an animated made for tv thing, which I'd love to see, (even tho the cover art looks baaad) but I didn't know about the film at first, and the record stands on its own. It's basically a concept album in the form of a children's story. Nilsson narrates the story over background music, which, on every other track turns into a song.
The story is a (very) thinly veiled allegory about non-conformism featuring a kid named Oblio who is the only round-headed person in a land in which everyone is pointy-headed. Oblio's mom knits him a pointy hat so he'll fit in, but it doesn't work and he gets banished to the Pointless Forest, where he encounters a Pterodactyl, among other weirdos. (Nilsson pronounces it terro-dac-TILE(!) He then wanders back to the town he was banished from, where they let him back in and everyone's points melt off.
The whole story is ridiculous and it's pretty obvious that it was conceived on an acid trip, (Nilsson says this: "I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it.") In spite of all that, though, it's got that real 70's children's programming feel to it: drug-inspired, sort of socially educational, slightly subversive, wholesome and totally sincere.
It's so representative of the stuff I used to listen to on the old fisher price record player when I was a little kid that it brought back a lot of those memories even though I had never heard this particular story/album. I remember loving those kind of records; stories mixed with music that you could fall asleep to and have really nice dreams.
and the songs are really good.
Apparently, the original incarnation was an animated made for tv thing, which I'd love to see, (even tho the cover art looks baaad) but I didn't know about the film at first, and the record stands on its own. It's basically a concept album in the form of a children's story. Nilsson narrates the story over background music, which, on every other track turns into a song.
The story is a (very) thinly veiled allegory about non-conformism featuring a kid named Oblio who is the only round-headed person in a land in which everyone is pointy-headed. Oblio's mom knits him a pointy hat so he'll fit in, but it doesn't work and he gets banished to the Pointless Forest, where he encounters a Pterodactyl, among other weirdos. (Nilsson pronounces it terro-dac-TILE(!) He then wanders back to the town he was banished from, where they let him back in and everyone's points melt off.
The whole story is ridiculous and it's pretty obvious that it was conceived on an acid trip, (Nilsson says this: "I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it.") In spite of all that, though, it's got that real 70's children's programming feel to it: drug-inspired, sort of socially educational, slightly subversive, wholesome and totally sincere.
It's so representative of the stuff I used to listen to on the old fisher price record player when I was a little kid that it brought back a lot of those memories even though I had never heard this particular story/album. I remember loving those kind of records; stories mixed with music that you could fall asleep to and have really nice dreams.
and the songs are really good.
posted by Charlie B. at 9:00 PM
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