Moondog - Moondog 2 (1971)
This may be Moondog 2, but it's hard not to feel like it was a step back from simply Moondog. Gone was the orchestral, epic, and lyrical breadth of the latter (a singular third stream masterpiece, which did full justice to the man's uniquely syncretic musical personality, and to his headgear as well - gearing you to ride up to snowed-in norden castles and warm up to aloof ice princesses, with Benny Goodman as your squire), in favor of a return to (up to that point) more traditional Moondog fare, caught in a nonsensically playful somewhere between Dada and Lear (Edward, not King, et pour cause), that included him having recorded with Julie Andrews.
So, significantly joining forces with his young daughter June and not so much a band of horned musical assailants, we are left here with an eccentric collection (almost experimental, given the formal microscale of the compositions and skeleton crew aboard) of contrapuntal sketches, domestic rounds, and nursery rhymes. Whimsical, for sure - perhaps, on occasion, endearingly so, as if this could be closer to Louis Hardin the man, than to his public New York city street viking persona (should that distinction even apply; although, based on his getup, I would hardly have envisoned him fathering children, so it just might) - but, as it turns out, even presented by the ineffable Moondog and his unfaltering tom-toms, it would seem that, much like your regular viking, I just cannot fill up on hors d’oeuvres.
No need to complain, though; it was simply a matter of waiting: In Europe, things would get regal again.
