vinyl podcast

I’d like to apologize for my recent unexplained hiatus. I hope to make it up to you with a fantastic song. On this show I’m going to play “I Was Made To Love Magic” by Nick Drake, from his posthumous album Time of No Reply. Nick Drake was a British singer-songwriter who recorded from 1968 until his untimely death in 1974. You may recall that on an earlier show I played a cover of Drake’s “Pink Moon” by local band Walt Mink. If you’re unfamiliar with Nick Drake, you probably know his original version of that song, which was featured on a Volkswagen commercial a year or so ago.

You can file this particular song next to my Bonnie Dobson podcast under “haunting folk.” On this song, as in most of his music, Nick Drake seems to act out the story of his career as a painfully shy, tortured, doomed artist. He portrays himself as uniquely gifted to see the magic in the world, to use his eyes, and to live in a land of forever. In contrast, the rest of us have lost our sense of wonder and possibility. It’s not a cheery song, and of course it’s more poignant knowing that a few short years after recording it, Drake succumbed to an overdose of antidepressants which may or may not have been intentional.

Nick is backed up by a small ensemble on this track, in a really interesting arrangement by Richard Hewson. This track has recently been reissued on an album of the same name, however, the new release attempts to rewrite history by adding different orchestration, written in the late ’60s by Nick Drake’s friend Robert Kirby, but not recorded. I haven’t heard it, and I’m a little reluctant, because I like this track just the way it is.

0424vinylpodcast-NickDrake.mp3

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 24th, 2005 at 2:31 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.