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Song-Poems

 
 
ORQWITH
21:16 / 01.02.03
3 of my favorite cd's for the last few years are the "MSR Madness" compilations. is anyone else on this forum a fan of this stuff. it is some of the most surreal stuff ever made.
 
 
rizla mission
11:02 / 02.02.03
I don't know, 'cos I don't know what it is.. care to elaborate?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
12:10 / 02.02.03
Song-Poems are/were the product of a peculiar sub-industry in the 60s up through the early 80s or so, there were a few companies who would offer people the chance to have session musicians transform their poetry into pop songs. The results can be very bizarre - remember, a lot of people don't exactly write poetry with an ear for melody, and that a lot of the people who would respond to something like this were a bit...eccentric. You can read all about the history of Song-Poems over at this site, which also happens to have a rather extensive archive of song-poem MP3s.
 
 
rizla mission
13:06 / 02.02.03
That sounds really bizarre.

Do they tend to veer toward fascinatingly unusual, or simply cringworthingly dreadful?

('cringeworthingly'! what a word..)
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
13:17 / 02.02.03
It really depends - there's a few that I think are really amazing, especially the one that appears on the first Songs In The Key Of Z compilation, "Virgin Child of the Universe". Others are just awful, some are just amazingly weird and you just sort of marvel at how the musicians managed to turn such awkward and/or experimental poetry into a cohesive song. For example, here's an example of one particularly odd song-poem, titled "At The Time":

although by the also to have differed with yearly and all known dearly
throughout and among, we use preferred
by the also of having choicefully
three times a day, as the average, we use of thee among our foods
along by our knowledge of the well-kept adage by the more of all
helpin' with all of coulds
towards being among our masters and the also by our intelligence
while passin' of time

If you want to get a taste for the songs, check out some of those mp3s on the site. They are the cream of the crop, but you'll get a sense of it.
 
 
ORQWITH
13:50 / 02.02.03
a lot of the songs are horrible, but to the point that they are either funny or surreal. some of the funniest are when you can tell that who ever wrote the song was trying to be really "hip" even though they were as far from it as can be. these are songs like "convertibles and headbands"
"a convertible and a head band makes the scene
a convetivle and a head band's all you need
no need to worry no need to fret
what more do you want you luck cat
you've got your own convertible and a headband"

other songs proclaim the writers love of their favorite politicians like "jimmy carter says yes" "the day john f. kennedy was called away"
and "richard nixon"

"can our government
be compotent
jimmy carter says yes
jimmy carter says yes" all to a disco beat.

there is an anti-drug rap called "the facts about crack" with lines like
"it will make you as high as an elephants eye"

i could go on forever. but the thing about this stuff is, even though the lyrics i printed are some of the more "novelty" stuff, as a whole it totally trancends the "novelty" label. some of the stuff is truly surreal, some of the music is actually innovative, and every track makes you wonder about the random person who wrote it and what they were like.
 
  
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