10+10 Pisciatori controvento. 19) Alvin Dahn Alvin Dahn - Don't Throw Your Dreams Away (Music Video)
“It’s Time” by Alvin Dahn is a fucking masterpiece.
“Don’t Throw Your Dreams Away” alone would be enough to explain why I love this record so much: it is the emblematic song, the piece that single-handedly explains who the "pisciatori controvento" truly are, what is really behind the poetry of outsider music.
But “It’s Time” is not just that piece; it contains everything: country ballads, metal riffing, baroque pop, chamber rock....
If Alvin isn’t at number one on this list, it’s only because at number one there’s the very best of the best! But he is just a tiny bit, only a tiny bit, below that.
Our Alvin Schuyler Dahn, in the '90s, worked as a janitor around Buffalo when he was struck by "the call." He convinced himself he was the new John Lennon and that this was the right moment for him.
It didn’t matter that he was a (very) self-taught and rather unlikely musician, and a singer who was, let’s say, “untrained.” He believed in it!
So he borrowed some money and emptied all his savings to record his album. The album that Daniel Johnston and Brian Wilson would have made if they had fused into one body.
He even called the Buffalo Philharmonic and he played nearly 50 different instruments.
The result: the money ran out before the album was completed. Alvin lost his job, his wife, his house, and everything else. And the album didn’t even circulate among friends and family.
However, from that monumental madness and the strange “musician custodian,” someone began to talk. “It’s Time” became a small underground cult.
Now on Wikipedia and some sites, it is said that Alvin's album was produced by the well-known (in America) actor-writer-artist-musician Geoffrey Giuliano. Wrong information (just to change it up), but it is true that Giuliano (among other things, also a music critic and biographer of musicians) worked on a documentary about Alvin, “Let Your Mind Out.”
The news reached the ears of the usual Irwin Chusid, who wanted Alvin on one of his “outsider music” compilations, but Irwin chose one of the most improbable songs from that album: "You're Driving Me Mad," a hard rock piece that Alvin composed while separating from his wife (a very painful separation). The most wrong piece, the furthest from Alvin's poetry that could be chosen.
The effect was the usual hearty laughter (and I suspect that, in the end, what interests Chusid is to make a splash, showcase the freaks, have a laugh, rather than really support these musicians), people went from mocking him by calling him Dahn Halen to those who talked about “a metal piece sung by Ned Flanders.”
Today Alvin no longer plays.
Some say he ended up in a retirement home for singles, others say he remarried and is employed at the community cafeteria.
For sure, he still lives in Buffalo and is still deep in debt.
And, maybe, he has thrown away his dreams.
But this astonishing album remains.
Astonishing, believe me.
“It’s Time” by Alvin Dahn is a fucking masterpiece.
“Don’t Throw Your Dreams Away” alone would be enough to explain why I love this record so much: it is the emblematic song, the piece that single-handedly explains who the "pisciatori controvento" truly are, what is really behind the poetry of outsider music.
But “It’s Time” is not just that piece; it contains everything: country ballads, metal riffing, baroque pop, chamber rock....
If Alvin isn’t at number one on this list, it’s only because at number one there’s the very best of the best! But he is just a tiny bit, only a tiny bit, below that.
Our Alvin Schuyler Dahn, in the '90s, worked as a janitor around Buffalo when he was struck by "the call." He convinced himself he was the new John Lennon and that this was the right moment for him.
It didn’t matter that he was a (very) self-taught and rather unlikely musician, and a singer who was, let’s say, “untrained.” He believed in it!
So he borrowed some money and emptied all his savings to record his album. The album that Daniel Johnston and Brian Wilson would have made if they had fused into one body.
He even called the Buffalo Philharmonic and he played nearly 50 different instruments.
The result: the money ran out before the album was completed. Alvin lost his job, his wife, his house, and everything else. And the album didn’t even circulate among friends and family.
However, from that monumental madness and the strange “musician custodian,” someone began to talk. “It’s Time” became a small underground cult.
Now on Wikipedia and some sites, it is said that Alvin's album was produced by the well-known (in America) actor-writer-artist-musician Geoffrey Giuliano. Wrong information (just to change it up), but it is true that Giuliano (among other things, also a music critic and biographer of musicians) worked on a documentary about Alvin, “Let Your Mind Out.”
The news reached the ears of the usual Irwin Chusid, who wanted Alvin on one of his “outsider music” compilations, but Irwin chose one of the most improbable songs from that album: "You're Driving Me Mad," a hard rock piece that Alvin composed while separating from his wife (a very painful separation). The most wrong piece, the furthest from Alvin's poetry that could be chosen.
The effect was the usual hearty laughter (and I suspect that, in the end, what interests Chusid is to make a splash, showcase the freaks, have a laugh, rather than really support these musicians), people went from mocking him by calling him Dahn Halen to those who talked about “a metal piece sung by Ned Flanders.”
Today Alvin no longer plays.
Some say he ended up in a retirement home for singles, others say he remarried and is employed at the community cafeteria.
For sure, he still lives in Buffalo and is still deep in debt.
And, maybe, he has thrown away his dreams.
But this astonishing album remains.
Astonishing, believe me.
lector
26 may 19
DeRank ™: 25,95
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