Entertainment For Lively Minds
Word Podcast 171 - with very special guest Van Dyke Parks
The magnificent Van Dyke Parks enters the pod to deliver wry and extremely fond and funny memories of working with Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Randy Newman, Brian Wilson, Joanna Newsom and his brief membership of Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention. And reveals details of the devastating security leak that allowed The Beatles into the Beach Boys’ studio when their doomed masterpiece Smile was still under construction. He plays London's Union Chapel on Monday.
Also: "Magic" Alex Gold reveals his complex sleeping arrangements and introduces some highlights from the Now Hear This CD accompanying issue 100 of The Word (out today), while Mark Ellen and Kate Mossman pick some favourite moments from within its excitingly centennial pages.
You can follow this link to get the podcast every week or stream this new episode below.
Simply wonderful.
What a life!
Not heard it yet...
...but may I be the first person to make the 'Loved him in Mary Poppins/Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' gag, please?
Thank you.
Tech help with the Notcast
Is it possible to download this podcast so I can play it on my iPod? It seems to want to just open.
There's no download version
How the Notcast behaves on your computer is entirely dependent on what system you're operating and how you have your preferences set, but in the end it's a regular .mp3 data file, and there should be no reason why you can't extract it from the CD and onto your hard drive.
Notcast to iPod
If you're using iTunes, you can add the Notcast to your Music library.
On a mac, you can go File / Add to Library, and then find the "Podcast" disk which will appear in the list of devices, and be on your desktop. Click on the The Word Notcast.mp3 file, and it will import into iTunes.
Then you can transfer it to your iPod.
Appears under W, so sits between UK and XTC in my library.
Good grief!!
What a Zelig like character. At one point I thought it was wind-up but it was still extraordinary stuff, fantastically entertaining.
Wonderful
I genuinely didn't want this to end. What a gloriously entertaining, articulate, shrewd, gracious man he is.
Every line a quoteable soundbite
He should have his own column in Word.
The forthcoming SMiLE box set should be worth the entry fee alone for VDP's sleeve notes (which he was off to go and write just after this Podcast)
Picture Caption contest winner!
Ellen: " But I'm tellin' ya Van! Just keep on applying the Grecian 2000, and you'll soon be an even darker grey than me! "
What a wonderful Mississippi accent
Van Dyke Parks has.
Kind of a cross between Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons and Burl Ives as Big Daddy.
A Van Dyke Parks recommendation
Another fascinating podcast, which made me dig out the Van Dyke Parks records I have. They're all very interesting and quirky, in the best way, but if someone asked me to recommend one it would be Orange Crate Art, his collaboration with Brian Wilson from 1995. Van Dyke wrote the songs, and Brian provided the vocals. There are lots of Beach Boysesque harmonies, and the songs also have that slightly nostalgic end-of-summer feel that the best Beach Boys songs had. As a bonus, it has a very nice CD booklet illustrated with early 20th century paintings of California.
Won...won...won...wonderful!
Well wasn't that extraordinary, simply gripped from start to finish. I hate to sound defeatist but the bar has just been raised to a level insurmountable. Do you know at several points I had to stop and re-listen to certain segments, so bedazzled was I by the man's polymath shimmer. There is an alternative universe somewhere in which Van Dyke Parks occupies the breakfast slot on Heart FM.
"Polymath Shimmer"
...two yadda yadda yadda
Discover Van Dyke
Superb. Really Superb.
He's a brilliant man and I really do recommend him live. All the wonderful rambling word-play and yarn-spinning and some gorgeous music. Plus you'll almost certain to come away having learned something. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall last year he finished his set by wandering through the audience to shake our hands! Then he did a signing that went on for ages - because he actually chatted (at some length) to every sign-ee.
I've only really heard Smile.
Recommend me some Van Dyke Parks please folks...
His first two albums
Song Cycle and Discover America I think would be a nice place to start. Good luck!
The last three podcasts
Nick Lowe, Neil Tennant and Van Dyke have been exceptional. Keep up the good work.
I have an aversion to the version
Sublime.
Didn't think after Danny Baker and Neil Tennant you could get much better. I was wrong.
Yet another
entertaining podcast, although I suspect VDP got a little confused with his Zappa memories.
The Grandmothers (an occasional outfit based around former Zappa alumni) were formed as long ago as 1980 and if Jimmy Carl Black really phoned him a year ago as claimed it could only have been via Doris Stokes, as the erstwhile Mothers drummer shuffled off this mortal coil in 2008.
VDP
I kept an eye on the career of Jimmy Carl Black and I'm well aware he died three years ago (I wrote a piece about the Mothers for Word in 2009) but there are moments in podcasts when it just seems ungentlemanly to question someone's recollections and might interrupt the flow of a good story. If you've lived a life as dramatic as VDP's, I think you deserve a bit of artistic licence re the exact chronology.
Apologies
That wasn't intended to be quite such a "I think you'll find..." smart arse comment as it appears.
I should have sensed you were letting VDP run with it.
Interesting thing about the podcast in general.....
....is you're trying to get guests who don't need "interviewing" in the conventional sense. Van Dyke Parks certainly fits that mould.
If they do you end up with the usual "tell us about your new album" slot that clogs up the airwaves. What you want is people who can keep the bright red ball of conversation in the air, will happily talk about anything and don't start looking disturbed when you haven't asked them where they're going on tour.
It's a very difficult balance to bring off. Mostly I think it works, partly because our "studio" doesn't feel like a radio station and because we don't let anyone in the room who isn't actually participating in the process. In many cases we don't even bother doing the traditional "this is" and "that was" hosting duties during the podcast.
There are lots of times during the podcast when I say things that subsequently prove to be not verifiably true. I do the same thing in the pub, as do most people. It's also - believe it or not - very, very tiring to do. The amount of energy you have to inject to keep up the energy is surprising. And, unlike most radio, you're not going to a record or the news every five minutes.
And it goes without saying...
...that you do it brilliantly.
As I think I said here:
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/up-podcast-hill-backwards
P.J O'Rourke
put it succinctly recently saying that there were some stories that are "too good to check".
Thanks
Thanks so much to Mojoworking and all for the kind comments, much appreciated. I had two emails this morning reminding me of phrases used by VDP I'd forgotten. At one point he refers to Randy Newman and Brian Wilson as "RTDs" (ie Ready To Dies) and links to a thought about his younger days with "When I was a brunette...".
Fantastic
although the tagged on interview at the end was was just too much of a comedown. I'm sure he's a top bloke, but you could bump into a million Magic Alex's down the local - doesn't make for an interesting listen. Pete Doherty in shambolic acoustic gig? Really?
Yep
I was bit perplexed that anyone in 2011 would think any good would come from seeing Pete Doberty. And "I had to sleep under my coat" must be the the opposite of a "HORA" I would be surprised if there's anyone here who hasn't had to do the same at one time or other, ho hum really.
Enjoyed VDP though loved the way you could hear Mark having to steer him back onto topic all the time. Would have been one of the occasions when the odd snatch of his music would have been perfect.
Magic Alex
He's there to talk about the CD. It's not so much an interview as a regular feature of the podcast - we do the same every month - and rather than just have him reel off a list of tracks, which really would be dull, we ask him what he's been up to. Some may find it entertaining, some not, but we really hope you don't mind us talking about the magazine and the CD once a month. After all, these pay the bills, ensuring you continue to receive these "fantastic" recordings for free.
And, let's face it, we could have put anything on the end of this week's and it would have been something of a comedown.
Have absolutely no probs with
self promotion on podcast always surprised there's not more.
update: On reflection and having walked to the shop in the rain to buy some golden syrup, I can't really judge anyone as I did once sleep on Huddersfield train station after having been to see "balaam and the angel".
What was that
BEEEEP during your Libertines story though? Are you now protecting those of a sensitive disposition from industrial language, or was it on the advice of m'learned friends?
Naah
It was just there for comic effect.
Reeling off a list of tracks
Hmmm. We could be onto something here...
It was excellent
It would be interesting to hear certain areas expanded upon though of course his time is limited and you don't want to interrupt the flow as already said. I would be curious though to hear him explain the comment about the seventies, which seemed to suggest only the sixties really counted and also to hear what he feels about the quality of pop generally and now - he seemed to be saying very little of it had depth and meaning and was rather dismissive, which is fair enough but to what extent and who and what was good or bad? I guess the fact that it leaves you wanting more is a good a recommendation as any.
Excellent
Him and Nick Lowe. We've been blessed.
Great work from the Word team. Thanks.
I hate hearing
artists having to plug their own shows when they are of the calibre of Van Dyke Parks. He has played such an important role in the development of rock and roll from it's birth and just because he isn't a household name he can't sell out the Union bleeding Chapel!
Peers need to start singing the praises of those behind the scenes of their successes more.
I have had plans for quite a while for tonight but I am trying to rearrange so I can witness the legend in action.
Me and VDP
At my mate Michael Andrews' wedding in San Diego a few years ago. We danced together to Kid Charlemagne. What a gent.
You spoil us
I must confess to be in a state of catching up on my podcasts but they compliment very well the rounded interviews we read in the rag (?). Certain musicians/writers/artistes are genuine raconteurs with a gift for the gab, as we know the interviewers are. I really must unearth my full set of cassettes issued with the short-lived SFX magazine in the 1980's to copy onto CD, even if only to hear a stroppy Lou Reed having a moan.
What a lovely man...
he seems. I enjoyed that so much.
Kudos to the interviewers
Listening to this this morning while walking on the beach in a blasting Dublin wind confirmed suspicions developed during the previous podcasts with messrs Lowe and Tennant: Mark Ellen and David Hepworth are simply excellent interviewers. As someone who's interviewed quite a number of people for research, I could only envy Mark Ellen's ability to subtly steer Van Dyke Parks's hundred-mile-an-hour in a hundred directions recollections into a chronological sequence that made sense to this listener.
Proof of their abilities, of course, is the fact that I don't think I ever want to hear a Nick Lowe record, nor am I particularly interested in the Pet Shop Boys either, yet was riveted enough to consider restarting those podcasts and listening all over again once they'd finished. A simple recipe really: good interviewer, allied to interesting interviewee, makes for compelling reading/podcasting.
Add that to Rob Fitzpatrick's brilliant ability to get the most out of interviewees in print, and you have the reasons why I keep coming back to the Word. Keep up the good work.
Brilliant podcast!
What a dude!
"There are three types of people in this world..."
Neil Tennant podcast too. Generally, I love strolling around with The Word in my ears.
More of this kind of thing.