Children Tangerine Herb: John Rydgren-Silhouette Segments

воскресенье, 9 мая 2021 г.

John Rydgren-Silhouette Segments

Born February 14, 1932 in North Dakota

Died December 26, 1988 in Los Angeles

Rydgren was head of the TV, Radio and Film Department of the American Lutheran Church and an ordained Lutheran minister. He created and hosted the progressive FM rock radio show Silouettes. Additionally he hosted some of the "What's It All About?" series with Bill Huie and TRAV.

Lost 1968 masterpiece from USA. Incredible hip and over the top recordings with a weird twist. In style of Ken Nordine, narrated by John Rygden, but backed by super GROOVY music, sound effects, cut-ups...An incredible Journey to Hipsville...Good to hear a clergyman not taking himself too seriously. This is absolutely marvelous. DJ's, radio stations, sampling maniacs and 60's fans should take notice. One of my most out there records!

When Liz played Pastor John Rydgren's Rinky Dink last Tuesday, I was reminded of just how great and weird Rydgren's radio spots were, and what a strange confluence of events created the country's only Psychedelic Christian format back in 1967.

Heading into the Summer of Love, Rydgren was the crafty head of the TV, Radio and Film Department of the American Lutheran Church. , the straight-looking Rydgren created a daily radio show called Silhouette in which he became the reassuring, resonant-voiced Hippy for God. Rydgren wrote, announced and programmed Silhouette, taking his musical and cultural cues from The Electric Prunes, Herb Alpert and the cover of Time (Is God Dead?), with a vocal delivery that was straight out of the Tom Donahue / Scott Muni / Ken Nordine school of breathy baritone radio seduction. Silhouette dropped all the counter-cultural codewords of the day into a heady mix of Peace, Love, Sex, Drugs and Jesus. Not to mention Fuzzy Guitars.

Pastor2New York's WABC-FM picked up Silhouette on a daily basis after the FCC forced them to stop using their FM station to re-transmit WABC-AM, their Top 40 powerhouse. Faced with an immediate need for a new format, ABC signed on to Rydgren's Psychedelic Christian thang, at least for part of the day.

The FCC rule in question - the non-duplication rule - sent stations all over the country scrambling for formats at a time when youth counterculture ruled the zeitgeist. Yes, the same rule that created the Psychedelic Christian format also gave birth to the Pastor3_1commercial freeform radio movement in the US.

ABC quickly dropped Silhouette from its lineup, and flailed around for three more years before finally changing the station's call letters to WPLJ in 1970 and finding their calling as one of New York's eminent Album Oriented Rock stations throughout the 70's.

But Rydgren and the American Lutheran Church aggressively syndicated the show beyond New York, and in that effort, they issued a double LP in 1967 called New Life Radio Spots and Cantata, which distilled Rydgren's swinging message of redemption Pastor4into bite size bits for other radio stations to play. If they liked the Silhouette segments on the New Life LPs, they could pick up the whole show, as American Armed Forces Radio did in 1968. The 2-LP set was issued to radio stations only, but the segments were later reissued a few years ago on a single LP called Silhouette Segments. That reissue wisely omitted the LP-length Cantata, which was along the lines of (but far worse than) The Electric Prunes Mass In F Minor, as I recall.

Лютеранский проповедник Джон Ридгрен в 1967-68-м годах вел христианскую психоделическую ежедневную программу "Silhouette" на нью-йоркской ФМ-радиостанции WABC-FM. Обращаясь к молодой аудитории, он касался таких тем, как наркотики, свободная любовь, одиночество. Он разыгрывал короткие ироничные скетчи и произносил своим глубоким голосом прочувствованные монологи. И все это на фоне то утяжеленных гитар, то ситаров, то лаунж-джаза, создавая действительно странный микс.

На полной компиляции его выступлений Silhouette Segments в итоге насчитывается 64 произведения музыкально-проповеднического жанра

Silhouette Segments

1-1 Music To Watch Girls By

Engineer [Engineered By] – Fritz Sinjuschkin, Mike Shields

Narrator [Narrated By], Producer [Produced By] – John Rydgren

Recorded By [Additional Recordings By] – David Hersk