Today we visit the land of MSR Records. As long time readers of this site may recall, I'm not much of a fan of this label, or really of anything that the "MSR" crew was doing from the early 1970's (at this label and others, such as Cinema). That puts me at odds with the powers that were behind the song-poem boom and CD releases of 25-30 years ago, who actually named their series after the label. Perhaps it puts me at odds with my readership, too - I dunno. I just find their material far more frequently sterile and boring than other labels. Plus, the early '70's to the mid '80's are simply not my favorite era, and those are the sounds they were aping. For what it's worth, I like the sound of the Columbine label (which operated in the same eras) even less than MSR, and for the same reasons.
But I do like to throw out an MSR track every now and then, if for no other reason than to provide a more full picture of the song-poem world. And at those times, I also try to offer something interesting.
To that end, today I have a record for which both sides were written by song-poet Fred L. Chitester. Mr. Chistester was a prolific song-poet, and apparently had enough money to throw around to have nearly two dozen documented releases of his handiwork on the MSR label - and those are just the records discovered before the song-poem archives website was mothballed. He submitted a handful of songs to the label around 1974-75, and then at least a dozen during 1979-80. This includes a couple of albums in that period which each featured five Chitester songs.
The song that intrigues me here is "George and Kay", sung by the always incompetent Bill Joy. Bill Joy was the dominant male singer during the last days of MSR, starting in 1976 or so, and, by 1980, was singing all but a handful of the male vocals on the label until its demise in the mid 1980's. And he was awful. The first time song-poems were explained to me (by Dr. Demento), the song used to demonstrate the genre was a Bill Joy special, "How Long Are You Staying?" (I had heard song-poems before that, but hadn't known their provenance.)
"George and Kay" intrigues me because of its lyrics. It seems to be about a famous couple - or at least locally famous, somewhere. They are seen every day, but what the song-poet appreciates about them is how they always do right, and are always bright, smiling and happy, and in particular, how they make a point of not ever telling anyone else to do. Mayhap I am spacing on a couple who were famous in 1980, but I have no idea who he is singing about. The music is vapid, particularly that awful synthesizer which is omnipresent on MSR releases of this area, and Bill Joy provides his typical supper-club awfulness.
Anyone know who he's singing about?
Download: Bill Joy - George and Kay
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The real horror here is the flip side, "When You Are Low and Feeling Blue", in which the solution for clinical depression is to "Change Your Ways", or perhaps move somewhere where you can pretend to be upbeat and "no one will know" that you're depressed.
Have I mentioned my 35 years working in behavioral health? This is an infuriating lyric - because I know there is a certain subset of people out there who think like this. God help 'em if they developed a behavioral health condition.
Download: Bill Joy - When You Are Low and Feeling Blue
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