Just realized that a few days ago, December 15th, was the 40th anniversary of the passing of the greatest of the song-poem performers, Rodd Keith. To most of you, this wont mean a damn thing...but to those of us interested in the weird, side roads and alleys of pop music of the past, its big. Song-Poems were a twisted genre, where little classified ads in comic books and esoteric magazines would implore aspiring poets to send in their lyrics for consideration. Invariably, no matter how inept or illiterate the material sent in would be, the sender would receive a reply that the material had merit, and in order to get the song considered for further use, they needed to send in a payment of $100-300 or so (depending) to help finance getting the song recorded, and demo records pressed for distribution to disc jockeys and other industry folks. In actuality, all the companies would do is have one of their team of musical hacks do a quick read through of the lyrics, over pretty much whatever music they chose to play....even often using the same musical backing for many, many song-poems The would be lyricist would then receive a 45 or tape of this recording, and that would be the end of it. In truth, no one besides the writer would usually ever receive a copy of these songs. Most of these songs are turgid and difficult to listen to. Some are so wrong or inept, theyre fascinating. The work of Rodd Keith was unusual in that even though the audience for these records would essentially be one person (the writer), he still worked to create unique, nuanced songs. In fact, on most of his sides, with the exception of the occasional female vocal accompaniment, he does everything else...all the harmonies are often his own, multi-tracked. The music is all his as well, most coming from his use of the Chamberlain, an early keyboard sampler similar to a Mellotron. Overall, its fascinating stuff. RIP Rodd. youtu.be/oHugRZhOa10
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 20:13:33 +0000