Nilsson Tribute:
Kiefo Nilsson
&
Andras Jones
From ANDRAS JONES: For this Nilsson tribute I put my own name on the list to perform two of his songs as randomly chosen answers for this Pop Oracle session. This is not without some challenges as switching from host mode to performer mode can be a bit jarring psychologically. This time that difficulty was exacerbated as I was aware that one of our guests, Chris Price, had been waiting around for several hours and here was my song getting picked before his. I would only find out later (in the next segment) what a good use he put that time to but I was still probably a little bit tender from my experience with our Joni Mitchell tribute in which one of our guests who had been kept waiting until the end was very put out by it and used her moment on the show to mock me and my format and storm out of the room in protest. All that was going through my head as Marshall Thompson played the opening chords of Mr. Jones’s favorite song, “Mr. Richland’s Favorite Song” as the answer to Kiefo Nilsson’s question, “What’s going on?”
MR. RICHLAND’S FAVORITE SONG
When he was young, he sang in the band and his fans all looked the same
And the fans he had were younger than he and they loved to scream his name
They’d leave at the end of the third show, go home to talk of the fun
Well, isn’t nice the parents would say, well isn’t nice you’ve got someone
Someone to idolize, he must look twice his size
I think it’s great you’re going through a phase
And I’m awfully glad it will all be over in a couple of days
Well, the calendar changed and the pages fell off, but the singer remained the same
And he never grew tired of singing his song, and his fans still called his name
They’d leave at the end of the second show, go home to talk of the fun
For most of the fans were married by then, so they had to be in by one…
…is the loneliest number
that you’ll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It’s the loneliest number since the number one
“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to speak of other things”
Like a fallen star who works in a bar where yesterday is king
The fans will stay for an hour or so, they still remember his fame
But the time has come the Walrus said, “to call your fans by name”
