It's been ages - oddly enough, exactly a year, actually - since I featured a Halmark single here. There's a good reason for that. While there are some fabulous releases on Halmark - virtually all of those being fabulous because of their entertaining level of awfulness - there are many more releases on Halmark which are simply awful, without the benefit of being funny, endearing or otherworldly.
I seem to have nearly exhausted my pre-arranged stack of worthy Halmark releases, so I am only now sharing them when I newly come across which is worth hearing. And I hadn't had that experience in many a month. Until last week.
And actually, I find the first three tracks here to be also unsuitably stultifying. But that last one makes it all worth while. But there may be some of you, who perhaps are particularly fond of that all-too-common item, the dead Elvis song-poem, who may enjoy the first of our four part saga here. It's called "An August Day", it's set to a track we now know to have been originally created to back up the song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", and is true more often than not on Halmark, the singer is not named.
Download: Halmark Productions - An August Day
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The less said about the next two, ponderous, Christian numbers, the better. The first is "In Gratitude", and what appears to be a slightly off center pressing makes me even more woozy than the performance itself.
Download: Halmark Productions - In Gratitude
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A favorite, dramatically awful Halmark backing track is the only thing which holds appeal to me in "He's Coming Back to Stay", and it's been used to much greater effect elsewhere. I wonder if the writer minded that the singer speaks, rather than sings, the majority of her lyrics. Then again, with non-musical phrases like "available time" and "people who haven't accepted the Lord", what other choice did they have?
Download: Halmark Productions - He's Coming Back to Stay
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But the reason for sharing this record is the track called "Hunting Country". The lyrics here are all over the map, and gloriously stupid. But I'll let you experience the joys of this ridiculous track without spoiling them.
Download: Halmark Productions - Hunting Country
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4 comments:
I believe in all four of this blessed Trinity of songs. Oh, wait, 4 into 3 equals, OH NEVER MIND...
But really, I do like all of these on this 7" EP. That Elvis number is maybe the crown jewel. The Squirrel one is second best & the two Jesus ones are just slightly below them other ones. That lady singer is quite a hoot.
"♫ By the time, I get to Graceland..." Never mind.
Anyway - I'd like to tell you that I have posted all nine New Image 45's in my record collection on my "Music from the World of the Strange and the Bizarre" blog. (https://strangemusicworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/9-nine-new-image-45s.html)
I went back to BlogSpot, so the main blog page is now at strangemusicworld.blogspot.com/
Well, "Hunting Country" is definitely one of the more off-the-wall and interesting song-poems I've ever heard. Thank you! I just love the lyrical mix of banal and insipid. And this is the "Argentinian Cowboy" backing track at a different (correct?) speed, right? Thanks for posting these!!
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