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Music Music and More Unreality
Sep. 17th, 2005 12:15 amI've been listening to "The American Song-Poem Anthology" lately. Song-Poems are songs or poems that regular American people paid to have recorded -- usually it was something of a scam, where recording companies and studios on the fringes of the recording industry tried to get people to send them songs or poems that could be set to music, promising fame and fortune and that their song could be the next big hit, when in reality they just wanted to get people to pay them money, record the song as quickly and cheaply as possible, send the records off to the budding songwriter, and that was the end of it. No thought of promoting the music or doing anything further with it, of course. In fact, they generally recorded these things as fast as possible -- sometimes the studio musicians were paid per song -- and they might crank out a tune in ten minutes or less, even when they had to set it to music first. ^_^
A lot of people collect this stuff -- and of course there are lots of "gems" out there to be discovered, since there were never a lot of copies of any one song and those copies may have been sitting in someone's basement or attic for years. Anyway this is a different sort of "bad music" from the two Songs In The Key of Z collections, because these songs are generally recorded by competent studio musicians -- sometimes even more professional musicians who were moonlighting, possibly under assumed names. The fun part is in the loopiness of the actual lyrics... songs about how great Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon was, songs about what a hospital can do for you, songs celebrating things like the moon landing or everything yellow. One song goes on and on and on about how great it is to have a convertible and a headband. The headband is a very important part -- when his dad tells him that "in my day, I had shoes on my feet, and I had a convertible with a rumble seat", he replies that something was missing -- his dad didn't have a headband!
And then there's the song where some guy tries very hard to rhyme words with "disco": Disco disco disco, I am going to Mount Kisko, I am going to buy some crisco, so I can bake a cake to disco" etc. etc. ad nauseum. Anyway most of this stuff just makes me laugh my head off.
I haven't recieved my Bowie or Billy Idol cds yet, so I may not have a good copy of my current cd song mix ready for tomorrow. And I haven't written anything. I've been very busy building stuff in Second Life, mostly clothing for now.
( Mice In Space! )
A lot of people collect this stuff -- and of course there are lots of "gems" out there to be discovered, since there were never a lot of copies of any one song and those copies may have been sitting in someone's basement or attic for years. Anyway this is a different sort of "bad music" from the two Songs In The Key of Z collections, because these songs are generally recorded by competent studio musicians -- sometimes even more professional musicians who were moonlighting, possibly under assumed names. The fun part is in the loopiness of the actual lyrics... songs about how great Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon was, songs about what a hospital can do for you, songs celebrating things like the moon landing or everything yellow. One song goes on and on and on about how great it is to have a convertible and a headband. The headband is a very important part -- when his dad tells him that "in my day, I had shoes on my feet, and I had a convertible with a rumble seat", he replies that something was missing -- his dad didn't have a headband!
And then there's the song where some guy tries very hard to rhyme words with "disco": Disco disco disco, I am going to Mount Kisko, I am going to buy some crisco, so I can bake a cake to disco" etc. etc. ad nauseum. Anyway most of this stuff just makes me laugh my head off.
I haven't recieved my Bowie or Billy Idol cds yet, so I may not have a good copy of my current cd song mix ready for tomorrow. And I haven't written anything. I've been very busy building stuff in Second Life, mostly clothing for now.
( Mice In Space! )
