There Is No Cat

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly

Thursday, February 13, 2003

The Music Men from Mars

Using the hook of a new compilation CD released a few days ago, Lileks bleats about song-poems, the scam where you're supposed to send in your lyrics to a company for evaluation, followed quickly by a check to pay for the recording of Your First Top 40 Hit Record. Like Lileks, I've long been a fan of the genre, much to the discomfort of my long-suffering fiancee. A small cadre of hipsters has been collecting these efforts for a long time, finding the evidence of misplaced self-confidence and naivete in thrift shops around the country. And they've been generous enough to share their finds with the rest of us. Phil Milstein maintains a web site devoted to the phenomenon. The new compilation on Bar/None records, entitled The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know The Difference Between Big Wood And Brush, is kind of a compilation of compilations; Tom Ardolino and Phil Milstein have been releasing LPs and CDs of this stuff on a tiny, poorly-distributed label for years. You can find most of those "original" compilations still for sale at Forced Exposure, in case you find your appetite whetted by Bar/None's compilation and want, nay require, more. And you may want to; the track list of TASPA:DYKTDBBWANB sadly omits my favorite track, Rodd Keith's "I Died Today". Fortunately, there's a CD filled with Rodd Keith-produced tracks of which that classic tune serves as the title track.

Posted at 4:21 AM

Comments

Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

I'm stunned that you didn't mention the song A Blind Man's Penis (aka Peace and Love) written by John Trubee and sung by Ramsey Kearney (see www.aspma.com/trubee.htm). Maybe you didn't point it out because it is a faux song poem and not the REAL thing. I just want to know how could anyone not love lyrics like:

The Zebra Spills Plastinia on Venus/And the Gelatin Fingers Ooze Electric Marbles/Ramona's Titties died in Hell/And the Nazi's want to Kill/To kill Everyone.

Posted by lilbro at 3:55 PM, February 13, 2003 [Link]

That, plus the fact that everyone with such an inclination already knows about that song. It's a classic, but what it's a classic of, I'm not sure.

Posted by ralph at 5:50 PM, February 13, 2003 [Link]

I heard about these "song poems"... and somewhere there's one called THE KEY IS STILL THERE by myself (writing as "Isadore Ivy").It's not on the Bar None compilation, though...

I know because I paid MSR Records/ George Liberace to do this song, in 1977. I knew it was a "demo mill"... BUT I didn't know it would be RE- RELEASED on Fortune Records (#969).

If anyone knows who owns the masters let me know...I supplied the music AND the lyrics. Today I am affiliated with BMI (Operation Unlimited Music).

Posted by Ronald Vaughan at 11:10 PM, October 15, 2003 [Link]

Found out that NOBODY still has copies of "The Key Is Still There" EXCEPT ME.

The Koch/Bar None compilation was made by working BACKWARD from old 45's... mystery solved.

BUT, I have an unreleased CD & may someday include this song...who knows?

Posted by Ronald Vaughan at 11:24 PM, September 9, 2004 [Link]

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What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

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