Trips to the Moon, With Gene Marshall, Part Three

ANNOUNCEMENT!!! ANNOUNCEMENT!!! ANNOUNCEMENT!!! 

It's almost time to complete our three week trip to the moon with Gene Marshall, but first, I wanted to do a little promotion: 

Some of you own, or are aware of my "The Many Moods of Bob" collection, an album of comic songs which I put together in the late '90's, and which went up online on the Happy Puppy label several years later. Well, since that time, I have continued to write and record both comic and serious songs, although a lot more of the former, recording them whenever I had enough time. And now, after 19 years, this 19 track album is available. It's called "A Few More Plans". 

There's a wide variety of material - songs set to psychedelic style, calypso, jazz, rhumba, gospel, and much more, all featuring my style of humor and songwriting. Three of them have been featured on the Dr. Demento show in recent years. Mostly, it's me: my voice and my keyboard (and a few other instruments in places), but a few tracks feature family members and a friend.

Mixed in are four instrumentals. One of these - the title track - is a fairly insane trip through sound which wouldn't be out of place as the accompaniment to a silent movie. The other three instrumentals are simply revved up versions of songs I've been playing forever. There's also a remake of a beloved, very obscure commercial (of all things), a remake of a song-poem, and a rendition of a song my brother once dreamed, during a nightmare, more than 50 years ago. 

I have been writing and recording songs - serious and decidedly not so - since I was 16 years old, and I believe that, as a set of material, this is by far the best project I've ever produced in those 40-some years, and I would love it if you'd have a listen. It's located here: 

https://bobpurse.bandcamp.com/releases

You can listen to all the songs for free on the site, and read the lengthy notes attached to each song (under "lyrics" - there was no other way to do it), and if you'd be so kind as to buy it (which allows the download of the material and all the notes and the front and back covers), it's only two dollars.

One more thing: I'm not really on social media, for a variety of reasons, and I would very much like it if  - on the chance that you enjoy the material - you'd consider putting up links to my project on whichever of these sites you are part of. If you choose to do that, I'd really appreciate it. 

~~

And here's another announcement: I have re-upped three more posts from around the time that my previous file-hosting site, Divshare, went down for the count. So now, if you'd like, you can once again enjoy and download a truly bizarre Preview release here, a Mother's Day special (with a shout-out to dad, too), here, and a bit of a mystery on Sterling here. 

I will continue this project as often as I can. 

~~

Finally, we're at the final stage of our Moon Shot Trilogy. Some time after last week's tribute to the initial landing on the moon (250 or so label numbers later), here's a patriotic tribute to the brave men who took part in that flight, titled "Astronauts Moon Flight", and again, of course, sung by Gene Marshall. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Astronaut's Moon Flight

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On the flip side, Gene gets to tackle another piece of history, in this case, via a war ballad, honoring the Battle of "Shiloh", an early major event in the Civil War, 1862. The words are quite respectful, and seem to be acceptably accurate, and Gene handles the song well, although musically, none of this holds my attention. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Shiloh

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Trips to the Moon, With Gene Marshall, Part Two

Well, today is the day! My younger daughter turns 26 today! Yippee!!!

Wait, while that's true, it's not why I'm posting a set of special themed records this month and, particularly, today. Today, in case you've been melting and not able to pay attention, is the 50th anniversary of the day that a human first walked on the moon.

 And as promised last week, here we have part two of our Gene Marshall triple play, all about travels to the moon. And apropos of today's anniversary, the title of the song is "Footsteps on the Moon".

Admittedly, this is far from the most exciting or even interesting record that I've ever shared here (or even that I've shared this month), but I think given the magnitude of the event and the anniversary, it's the perfect song-poem for today. Sing it, Gene!

Download: Gene Marshall - Footsteps on the Moon
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On the flip side is a brief record  - "I Can't Make You Cry" - that I find fairly peculiar, lyrically. The writer (and of course, Gene, is his vocal) is despairing that his beloved is far too young to be in love with him, the tell-tale sign being that he can't make her cry. I guess I'm trying to picture how young a young woman would be who doesn't periodically cry, or who is unable to cry in response to something done by a boyfriend. And even if such a person exists, why is that the deciding factor for the writer?

By the way, the sudden increase in volume at 1:24 is not something I did. The record plays like that.

Download: Gene Marshall - I Can't Make You Cry
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Trips to the Moon, With Gene Marshall, Part One

Well, we're back from vacation and I'm ready to rock and roll you... TO THE MOON!!!!

But before I get to that, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that, as promised, I have begun to re-up the broken files from prior to the summer of 2015. Today, I have restored three posts from spring of that year, a Gene Marshall post featuring the song "Beer Belly Polka", which can be found here, a Rod Rogers Film City classic featuring two patriotic ditties, which you can find here, and a ridiculous Mike Thomas record (but I repeat myself) from Tin Pan Alley, which can be found here. 

I will try to continue to fix the broken links as frequently as possible. 

And now, back to that satellite we all know and love!: 

As you've probably been unable to miss out on hearing, we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, which took place on July 20th, 1969. Since there is an entire sub-genre of Astronaut-related song-poems, I'm going to take the rest of the month, once each weekend, and treat you to one of Gene Marshall's musical treatises, one fanciful and the other two in tribute to those intrepid outer space explorers.

Since we're not yet on the actual anniversary just yet, I'll start with the imaginary trip to the moon, on a record which was likely made not long after the actual moon shot. It has the completely unwieldy title of "Fly With Me Darling On a Rocket to the Moon", and for some reason it features some backup singers who sound as if they've never read music before (well, it is likely that they'd never seen this music before singing it). The  lyrics smack of someone using a rhyming dictionary while trying to shoehorn those rhymes into her poem.

Gene, on the other hand, does a wonderful job, and the peppy band does its job, too, particularly a fairly wonderful, at times hyperactive drummer - that drummer gives more to this backing track than this simplistic, sing-songy lyrics had a right to expect

Download: Gene Marshall - Fly With Me Darling On a Rocket to the Moon
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The flip side, "Masque", has little to offer, aside from trying to figure out why the song-poet decided on the unnecessary alternate spelling of "Mask". The backing band sounds more like the minimalist, barely talented folks on late '60's Tin Pan Alley records than the usual stellar Preview band.

Download: Gene Marshall - Masque
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