Tuesday, July 15, 2003
The Song-Poem Graveyard Now
Open to the Public!
Physical State: creaky
Mental State: loopy
Music: Kim Hiyorthoi - Hei
Fashion sense: white shirt, tan shorts
Song-Poems! Fancy yourself some undiscovered Lee Hazlewood stuck in a crummy basement apartment in Cheektowaga? Well back in the day you could send in a cheque along with your crappy poems into various little music studios in New York, Nashville and LA and they would make a song with your poem set to music. As long as the cheque didn't bounce you'd have a song. The studio musicians would crank out tons of them in a session, paying little attention to the "nuances" of your masterpiece therefore creating some truly freaky and inappropriate musical interpretations. Things like moralistic Christian anti-temptation songs done Motown or with a porno-stylee sax accompaniment. Now there's a site and a few compilations to honour such things and some of these are just incredible! They range from the truly bizarre (songs to praise a pre-Watergate Richard Nixon) to just plain hilarious (The Amazing Helicopters, I Wouldn't Hide The Moulding Rock and Bo Derek On My Mind). If you've ever wanted to get a good chuckle, wanted to wow your obscuro music fan friends or just wanted to get inspired to record your crappy song but think its too lame, believe me it ain't, then you should definitely check out the American Song-Poem Anthology site. Thanks to Claire @ TotallyRadio for tipping people me off to this and kudos to Bar-None/Setanta for releasing this amazing compilation of American cultural detritus entitled "The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know The Difference Between Big Wood And Brush". Do these song-poem studio things still exist? I'm waiting for that next great release of something like "Mondale, We Never Knew You", "Lovely Sugar Smacks" or "I Ended up in Heaven Because of White Castle". Just think of the possibilities. Oh the mind boggles. Hey you entrepreneurial musicians out there, get going on this! The musical equivalent of Sea Monkeys!
