Moondog
July 1st, 2010 by Steve Bowbrick
Another Speechification exclusive (you won't hear this anywhere else). Steve Shepherd (the man who made the Lenny Bruce programme we published here in April), produced this portrait of divine eccentric Moondog for Radio 3 (MP3). The narrator is again Charles Shaar Murray.
Steve sent me these words about the making of the programme:
Moondog was another of my heroes/obsessions, a legendary NYC street performer and driven outsider who made some of the strangest records on the planet. Charles Shaar Murray shared my fascination with him and when I managed to sell the idea to R3 he jumped at the chance of presenting. The budget for these 30min jazzfile docs was very low so it was basically an illustrated talk but we managed to find two people who had actually experienced Moondog on the streets of New York: Charles knew musician Patti Palladin from way back and I was friendly with composer John Zorn. I think their eye witness statements bring this piece alive alongside the incredible Moondog interview I found buried in the BBC archive. The hardest thing to source when we were making the show was the Moondog / Julie Andrews collaboration. It's since been reissued but at the time it seemed as if someone had invented it just to give me something to search for. We eventually tracked down a copy via a Julie Andrews completist in Holland - the things we do for radio! Hope you enjoy Moondog - spread the word about him and if you're going buy some of his music get the early stuff.
(The video uses numbers from Flickr to illustrate a Moondog piece called 'Fog On The Hudson (425 West 57th Street)'. I found it on YouTube).


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