Have you got this Ned?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

http://recordbrother.typepad.com/imagesilike/images/tolkienlotrcover2.jpg

― Masked Gazza, Tuesday, 14 June 2005 23:50 (twenty years ago)

Of course. There was a vinyl box set with all that and more. One day I'll get the CD versions.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 23:52 (twenty years ago)

He never read pi, though, so I'm one up on him there.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 23:52 (twenty years ago)

What's his singing like?

― Masked Gazza, Tuesday, 14 June 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

It's actually more chanting of some of the poetry. A lot of the actual recording was done at the encourage of a friend of his a couple of years before the book was published, and so there are a few textual differences preserved -- it's rough sounding but it's still enjoyable, especially hearing his interpretation of how Gollum spoke. In the late sixties there was an album released based on the songbook The Road Goes Ever On which set a variety of the songs to music by Donald Swann. Half the album was recordings of the songs with Swann on piano and a singer, while the remainder was Tolkien without music reciting the verses, mostly just very straightforwardly and simply.

Christopher Tolkien has recorded two albums of readings from the Silmarillion -- he has an excellent, commanding voice, very appropriate for the text. I saw him read at the 1992 centenary gathering in Oxford at the Sheldonian, including the brief burst of text that was the entirety of a briefly planned LOTR sequel The New Shadow -- quite powerful stuff!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 23:58 (twenty years ago)

Rob Inglis, meanwhile, has done a recording of the entirety of LOTR which is around and about on CD and elsewhere -- he was at the centenary showing as well, funny guy offstage and very much into his role when performing! Rayner Unwin was there too, Tom Shippey...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 23:59 (twenty years ago)

WOT'S 'E LOIK, ANUHWAY??

― Nenah Cherry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:01 (twenty years ago)

He just is, man. *lights up pipeweed*

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:02 (twenty years ago)

Cool! Thanks Ned!

― Masked Gazza, Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:04 (twenty years ago)

Yer welcome!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:04 (twenty years ago)

ned! i can't believe i've never mentioned this before, but a good friend of mine is related to christopher tolkien and used to visit at his home in france every once in a while. he recorded him reading from LOTR, and recorded the sound of JRR's typewriter (from which my pal, who makes sample-based music, constructed the beat for a song)!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:19 (twenty years ago)

Hahah, that's brilliant. Actually, I've slightly met two of Christopher Tolkien's kids via his second marriage at that 1992 thing I mentioned -- they were both arty industrial/goth Psychic TV freaks! I loved them all the more for it.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:21 (twenty years ago)

incidentally the "good friend" who's related and the "pal," who makes the music, are the same person.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:22 (twenty years ago)

So what's the exact relation connection, then? Grandad or what?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:24 (twenty years ago)

i'm not sure, exactly--his mother's cousin or something?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:27 (twenty years ago)

Mysterious! Anyway, fun story there. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:33 (twenty years ago)

ned, doo yoo have the lords of the rhymes album?

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:38 (twenty years ago)

I wouldn't let that thing within ten miles of me if at all possible.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:43 (twenty years ago)

i thought maybe they were friends of yours!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:54 (twenty years ago)

Ew, horrifying thought!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:56 (twenty years ago)

bbbbut elf booty got soul!

http://www.lordsoftherhymes.com/lyrics.html

( i have never actually heard it. i would buy it for a dollar in a heartbeet thought.)

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 00:59 (twenty years ago)

when i was a kid i used to sit in the library listening to the library's copy of the sword of shannara(sp?) on vinyl. i was the poor man's elf-lover.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:02 (twenty years ago)

Ah yes, I heard that as well. Brooks wasn't as good as Stephen Donaldson reading from White Gold Wielder

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:05 (twenty years ago)

wow, i never heard that one! i read those in high school. actually, i never read the last one, so i don't know how it ended. did he die of leprosy?

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:07 (twenty years ago)

lord foul's bane. now there was a book. i actually thought he was a pretty good writer at the time. i wonder what i would think now.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:09 (twenty years ago)

WGW was the end of the second trilogy -- at the start of that one, he had been 'killed' in the real world and the shock there drove him and Linden into the Land. At the end of WGW he died in the Land but became a supernatural force there and blocked Lord Foul's attempt to break the Arch of Time, reducing him to nothingness again while Linden restored the Land. Then she returned to the 'real' world to find Covenant was really dead. He's started a final trilogy focusing in on Avery's return to the Land where Covenant is a guiding spirit, apparently, but I haven't bothered with those. Not always a successful writer, Donaldson, but in its own antihero way the whole cycle was probably the most striking of the most immediate post-Tolkien fantasy epics because of his explicit concentration on a protagonist who was profoundly flawed and psychologically ugly, and interpolating a clash between modern conceptions of mental and physical damage in a fantasy setting at once related and extremely alien to our universe. The poetry mostly sucked, though.

Read LFB before I actually read LOTR! (But I had already read The Hobbit.) I was only ten or so when I did, so much of it simply went over my head.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:14 (twenty years ago)

(To draw a comparison point, meanwhile, Moorcock's Elric was an antihero as well but obviously one derived from a very Romantic/Gothic lineage, with an alien beauty, etc. Covenant in contrast wasn't like that at all -- similarly outcast from society but in a way that was a combination of his disease and the reaction of society to that, which fed into a vicious cycle.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:17 (twenty years ago)

Moorcock? MOORCOCK!!!!

― giboyeux (skowly), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)

Ha ha, I had that when I was a child. NO idea where it's got to now, though.

― The Square Root Of Negative Two (kate), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 14:08 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.