Everybody's Stalkin' *

Howdy Pop Pickers,
sorry to have left such a long silence,( as though anybody actually cares, ) however I've ' been away ' as the euphemism amongst former convicts goes.
The current advertising campaign for the big UK switch over to digital television transmissions features a man and his robot. They're seen out on the road spreading the enlightenment about binary based visual entertainment. That their quest to evangelise the British Iles is set to the Fred Neil song ' Everybody's Talkin' ' set off a few " echoes of my mind."

Fred Neil

The song is famous for its inclusion in the 1969 United Artists' film " Midnight Cowboy" directed by British director John Schlesinger and starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt,
- and so far the road movie element of the original has provided the theme for the ad.

Does this mean that one of these chaps has plied his trade as a male prostitute, and that the other will be seen in the final advert of the series , dead , propped against the window of the vehicle wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt ?

A man can have a dream.

There are also a couple of John Lennon connections on the soundtrack- The version of " Everybody's Talkin " is sung by Nilsson.
The Beatles in general had enthused about Harry Nilsson,who also wrote a few hits for the Monkees funnily enough, and Lennon produced the " Pussy Cats " album. He's best known otherwise for his version of the song by the ill fated Badfinger " Without you", a Welsh band signed to... Apple Records. If you want the full story click the link to the Wikipedia entry.
The other connection is with Elephants' Memory, they were a New York band who provided two tracks for the soundtrack and also did their own version of the 'Midnight Cowboy' theme. ( Composed by Yorkshireman John Barry. ) Later they hooked up as Lennon's backing band for the 'Sometime in New York City' album.

As for Fred Neil, he was a folk singer and songwriter who wrote, amongst many others, the song " Dolphins ". At the start of the Seventies he pretty much turned his back on the music world, and went to work with... Dolphins. He died in 2001.

* apologies to Badly Drawn Boy for nicking his title.



Nilsson singing 'Everybody's Talkin' ' in 1969 on Beat Club, West German tv.