Picture this: It was the late 1960's. You're a woman who came of age during the Eisenhower years, when men were men and knew how to dress, talk, walk and groom themselves like men. Now, the fashions have changed, and many young men have grown their hair out longer than
yours has ever been. What's more, they've started growing
beards again -
that went out of fashion with Rutherford B. Hayes and James Garfield, didn't it?
What's an upstanding woman to do? I know - write a poem about it, expressing your outrage, and ridiculing this trend - maybe even imply that there's something morally and sexually queationable about it. Then you can have the poem made into a song! I'm sure there are people who will do that for you! So what if you have to pay them, they seem to think you might get a hit record out of the deal?
And so what if they have a guy sing it, and as a result, they change your first person complaint into some sort of weird third person observational rant? And who cares if they attach it to some bizarre setting, where it starts upbeat, slows down to a crawl (leaving "beat" out of the mix entirely for a time), then slowly gathers steam until its at the opening beat again, by the time it ends?
All that is a long-winded way for me to introduce one of my favorite song-poem records, which I can't believe I haven't featured here before, Mike Thomas' amazing rendition of Agnes M. Solan's "My Kind of Man":
Play:
The flip side is a pleasant slice of late '60's pop, also by Mike Thomas, "One Little Moment of Day: