Hirth From Earth/Hirth Martinez

August 12, 2005  (I was 60)

Hirth From Earth/Hirth Martinez

Warner Bros. BS 2867 released May 1975

         Hirth From Earth is the album I’ve been waiting for, the album I’ve been expecting Harry Nilsson to make ever since Schmilsson.  But Hirth Martinez is not Harry Nilsson –or is he?  Compare the cover photos with those on Nilsson’s Duit On Mon Dei.

         From Earth is a superb album.  Robbie Robertson’s production is a part of the talent operating here, but all the songs were written by Martinez and the resemblances to The Band’s music are fleeting and understated.  There is a large orchestra, fifty musicians, twelve violins, but the orchestration is never overwhelming.  The strings, horns, synthesizers, congas and concertinas appear selectively throughout the program.  This is nicely embellished Roll and Roll, vamping from New Orleans jazz flavors to neo-vaudevillian ballad, and Martinez’s guitar work and vocals are the featured instruments.  Singing stretched postures, he evokes characterizations –at times the rasping madman of the mountains, at other times a Gaspby romantic playboy.  Through it all it’s the persona of Winter Again, that of a recently-aging poet, which seems to be the most personally reflective.

         My wife looked at the pictures and said, “Ah, that’s not Harry Nilsson.”  A friend who visited a few days said, “I played it twice.  I didn’t like it at all.”  So play it more than twice.