dog, Rare Material CD 1 Blast Off 2:33 New York 3:28 Paris 3:26 Bumbo 3:10 Heath On The Heater 5:01 Torisa 4:08 Shakespeare City 12:19 Frankanon 4:40 You Have To Have Hope 2:06 A. Sax 1:58 Reedroy 2:08 The Cosmicode 3:10 Black Hole 3:48 Invocation 10:06 CD 2 Guggisberglied 2:01 Friska 6:26 Magic Ring 2:12 LogrŸndr XV In B Major 1:26 Gygg 7:57 LogrŸndr XVIi In E Major 3:54 Log In G Major 1:50 All Is Lonliness 1:19 Dog Trot 2:25 Frog Bog 2:10 Surf Session 6:56 Trees Against The Sky 0:51 Single Foot 2:51 Be A Hobo 0:52 Rabbit Hop 2:19 Why Spent The Dark Night With You 1:03 Moondog Symphony 1 1:55 Lullaby 1:21 Avenue Of The Americas 1:29 Moondog Monologue 8:24 ------------------------------------- Moondog, Rare Material **** (Roof Music) John L Walters Friday July 28, 2006 The Guardian This double CD brings together two divergent strands from Moondog's career: early recordings from the 1950s, and big band sessions from the mid-1990s. Moondog, aka Louis Hardin, left the streets of New York City for Germany in 1974 (as the useful timeline in this package makes clear), but the image that sticks is of the blind Manhattan "street musician" with his Viking robes and home-made instruments. We get a taste of that era on the disc two, which includes scratchy, manic tunes such as Rabbit Hop (from the 1955 album Moondog and his Honking Geese), Avenue of the Americas (1953), complete with passing car noises, and the beautiful All Is Loneliness (1949), his first record. Article continues The first CD features the scores he recorded with London Brass, London Saxophonic and classical saxophonist John Harle, nicely recorded and often accompanied by the composer on a solemn, pumping bass drum. Tunes such as Heath on the Heater (dedicated to bandleader Ted Heath) and Shakespeare City provide more fascinating footnotes to Moondog's life and work. ------------------------- In 1999, the blind American street musician and composer Moondog died in hospital in Germany. He was 83. For almost 50 years Moondog influenced and impressed artists such as Benny Goodman, Leonard Bernstein, The Beatles, Charlie Parker, Igor Stravinsky and Frank Zappa. His songs and orchestra-pieces, canons or madrigals, symphonies or suites, works for organ or chamber ensembles, were all based on unusual rhythms, demonstrated by Moondog on a triangular drum, using his principle of "the beat to the counterpoint". On what would have been his 90th birthday - Roof Music release a 2CD anthology of rare material, recordings that remained unknown as they were only available decades ago or only for a short period of time. 'Rare Material' has a remarkable musical spectrum. It extends from rather minimalist works of the early 1950s, to arrangements for string quartet of the 1980s and to opulent orchestrated big band productions of the 1990s. CD 1 is a collection of material Moondog carried out under the project title "Big Band" in 1995. In cooperation with producer John Harle, Moondog again proves his outstanding talent as a composer. CD 2 presents the beginning of Moondog's career by reconstructing many of his first releases from 1949 and 1956: partly only accompanied by his drum, Moondog plays (and sings) minimalist early compositions, plus material he realised as the conductor of the Swedish string quartet FlŠskkvartetten. Today a new generation of artists are discovering the music of Moondog, and posthumously this exceptional musician is receiving an unusual renaissance. ---------------