Moondog - More Moondog (Music CD)

Moondog's second Prestige album solidified his standing as a rare breed: a musician whose work was both highly experimental and approachable by listeners without a taste for the avant-garde. That's what enabled him to make a living as a street musician in Manhattan, after all. On this album he produced a variety of wonderful shaking percussion sounds and rhythms with an oo (a triangular stringed instrument struck with a clave) and even "Ostrich Feathers Played on Drum" (as the title on one track reads). The percussion is sometimes backed by sparse, Asian-sounding melodies, and there are also unpredictable interludes of solo piano, street sounds, and an eight-minute "Moondog Monologue." One of the round-like vocal numbers, the minute-long and inexpressibly sad "All Is Loneliness," found an unexpected second life in the 1960s when it was covered by Big Brother & the Holding Company. The album is now available as part of a single-disc CD reissue that also includes the whole of his subsequent Prestige album, The Story of Moondog (1957). ~ Richie Unterberger