Moondog, "Voices of Spring," "Down is Up" lyrics

Moondog 2 (1971) was Columbia's follow-up to the better-known Moondog. The second installment features Louis Hardin and his daughter singing rounds, with simple percussion, keyboard, and woodwind accompaniment, and what sounds to me like quite a bit of overtracking and stereo-mixing.

Each little song (26 in all) is charming and minimal, reminiscent of the Carl Orff gassenhauer (street song) for children. I couldn't make out all the words but this blog transcribed them. I made some tweaks to a couple of my favorites:

Voices of Spring

voices of spring were in chorus
each voice was bringing a song
i couldn't sing in the chorus until i wrote a new song
i wrote my song and joined the throng

voices of spring were in chorus
each voice was singing a song
i couldn't sing in the chorus until i wrote my new song
i wrote my song and joined the throng

Down is Up

down is up, and so up is down
because the earth is round
there is no such a thing as up or down

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel

...is a Soviet-era genre-bending novel by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky, one of their more memorable efforts. A ten-little-indians style mystery with an oddball assortment of characters snowed in at a mountain lodge. Just how oddball is gradually revealed to a by-the-book police inspector.

An Estonian film version, "Hukkunud Alpinisti" hotell, with script by the Strugatskys, showed up on YouTube. Made in the late '70s, yet it looks like an '80s film, with aggressively modern set design, an electronic score, and stylish costuming. Touches of Kubrick and Argento, as much as the budget allowed. The Strugatskys somewhat truncated their plot and characters but the story works, especially the surprisingly emotional ending.

Hukkunud_Alpinisti_hotell