"The Suffering of a Serviceman's Wife" and Other Overwrought Titles

I'm back!!! As I've probably written nearly every year, the month of May is about the busiest one there is in my life - particularly the third week of the month, and as a result, I often end up posting less in May. Such is the case this month, with only two postings. But on the other hand, both were of EP's, so there's been a total of eight songs shared, and that's something....

The folks at Halmark certainly received more than their share of portentous, overwrought lyrics. On the AS/PMA website, Phil Milstein made a guess that this might be due to where Halmark tended to advertise - in "Writer's Digest" - perhaps pulling in a far higher number of people who thought of themselves as having great potential as serious authors and lyricists.

Whatever the cause, ridiculous, ponderous and pretentious song titles and lyrics abound on Halmark records. But never have I seen quite the collection of song-titles as came to me on this EP. Making all that much funnier is that all four tracks are attributed to Bob Storm, Halmark's resident over-the-top baritone (heard in my last post, as well), while in fact only one of the songs here seems to be sung by the singer typically labeled as Bob Storm - in fact, two of them have a lead vocal sung by a woman.

First up, the only true Storm vocal and the one with the least over-done title, is "Unapproachable". For that latter reason, it's probably the least interesting of the four songs to me.

Download: Bob Storm - Unapproachable
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Now, le'ts get to those juicy titles, starting with the one reference above. This is yet another Vietnam-related number, titled, yes, "The Suffering of a Serviceman's Wife", sung of course, not by the identified Bob Storm, but a female vocalist. Seems her man's been wounded over there, and she considers him "half a man".

The song is full of such musically flowing phrases as "fighting for something you thought had a good cause" and "I was expecting to see the same smiling face". Certainly there is good material to come out of this situation - and such songs exist. But this author comes off as petulant and irritated that the army gave her a different person than the one who left her - which I guess is to be expected with this title - his own struggles are pretty much a side note until the final line.

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm - The Suffering of a Serviceman's Wife
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Our favorite female Bob Storm is back again for the Broadway-esque 6/8 thang whimsically (and perhaps a bit less ridiculously) titled "Honeymoon on the Moon". In recent years, some of us have discovered that several of these mysterious Halmark backing tracks are actually dead ringers for existing songs' arrangements, including those for "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Gentle On My Mind". I'm guessing this is another one, but can't put my finger on the song.

Anyway, this one works a bit better, to me, than the other three songs here, because it's at least a bit peppy, and the lyrics are actually a fairly decent match for the backing track and singer, although I'm thrown a bit by the female writer mentioning "my pretty bride and me", decades before that was a possibility. Again, not that any of this means I think this is very good, but it's definitely less "bad" than the rest of this EP.

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm: Honeymoon On the Moon
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Finally, there is the uniquely titled "Trench Coat, Umbrella and Boots", sung, again not by the man typically called "Bob Storm", but by the Halmark stalwart usually billed as "Jack Kim" - although this is not the only time his vocals have been identified as Storm, or vice versa. But since Jack Kim had a career under his real name, it's at least known that this "Jack Kim" is a match for the similarly named real singer behind the pseudonym.

Over one of the most stodgy and overused Halmark backing tracks, he sings a pathetic story of a pathetic feeling man, with the requisite un-musical phrases such a title would suggest - I'm particularly fond of "Walkin' in My Teardrops..."

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm - Trench Coat, Umbrella and Boots
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