WILD ABOUT HARRY.

It's been a great year for rockumentaries and my next piece of evidence is a doozy. Recently released on DVD and Netflix Instant Queue, I had the pleasure of seeing "WHO IS HARRY NILSSON AND WHY IS EVERYBODY TALKIN' ABOUT HIM?"

For those reading this who can't answer that question, watch this.



Harry Nilsson was an extremely gifted singer-songwriter who achieved much commercial and critical success in the early Seventies. He had the respect and admiration of The Beatles, Monty Python and Brian Wilson, and with good reason. His talent was on the same level as theirs. He was probably best known, at least for myself, as a hard core LA party monster who figured heavily into John Lennon's "Lost Weekend that lasted 18 months" in his words.

Lennon actually plays a very symbolic role in the story. They were extremely close friends. They had parallel childhoods, unbreakable artistic integrity and a sharp sense of humor about life. After Lennon's murder, Nilsson campaigned for stricter handgun laws and later retired from the music industry and concentrated on raising a family.

Nilsson was a fine example of that long list of geniuses who should have been bigger than they were. For whatever reason, Harry is one of those guys who, it seems, only real music fans are familiar with. Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, and Tom Waits would be the closest I could compare him to. He's just one of those guys who you may recognize a couple of his songs but you really had to a music lover to understand how far reaching his influence was.

I highly recommend this movie if only because I learned so much about a man who had a long lasting effect on the lives of people, like John and Ringo, who in turn had a major influence on my own life. The movie itself was like the music of Harry Nilsson. It was joyous. It was witty. It was sad. It was deep.

Above all, it was real.