Define "Real". Define "Pros"

 Before getting to this week's offering, I wanted to ask if anyone is having trouble downloading files. Two people that read my other blog have reported that when they try to download the files they get an error message saying "od.lk". I am unable to reproduce this downloading from any of my pages, and I am about as far from a computer expert as one can get, so I don't know the solution. This is apparently a problem with the site I use (Opendrive), but I can't find a solution, or even reproduce the issue. Is anyone having this issue, and does anyone know how to fix it? 

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Next, here is another vintage song-poem ad - for this one, the address to write to appears to have been cut off, so I have no idea what the company might have been. There is a claim that the song-writer of the hit "Boots and Saddles" will compose your music - there seem to have been a few hits with that phrase in the title, but I'm not sure which one it refers to. 

And now: 

As I've written - probably far too many times - in the early days of the Cinema label, the owners chose to use some guy (no one seems to know who he was) with his console organ, and occasionally an equally mysterious female vocalist over the same type of music. By 1973, they had segueing into the use of the gang who who also worked for Preview, MSR and, later, Columbine, with some '72 and '73 releases featuring Mr. No-Name and his organ on one side and Dick Kent and the gang on the other. 

I like to imagine what the conversation was around the Cinema offices when that decision was being made, and also what Mr. No-Name said when he learned he'd been replaced. They could have stayed with the one-man band - who made a few of my very favorite song-poems, but also made some hilariously incompetent tracks and several plain old dull ones - and saved a lot of money. But they chose to shell out more money for a full band sound and a whole stable of singers. 

Apparently quality won out over cost efficiency (although I'm not much of a fan of the MSR gang at all), and again, I wonder what this guy thought - "You're firing me and hiring SIX people?". 

I said this guy made a few great records. "Send Me Your Heart" is not one of them. First of all, there are enough lyrics here for a standard 150 second song-poem record, but for some reason, he dragged it out with repeated sections and a lengthy (SEVENTY SECOND!) solo section. What's more the setting is dull, even lifeless. And finally, what is one supposed to do with lyrics such as "You have the answer to my life" - I don't even know what those words mean. And the big finish ending is just mangled. 

Download: The Real Pros - Send Me Your Heart

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The flip side is called "Lonely People", and it's even worse than the song of that title by America, if that's possible. Here's the deal: two people love each other but can't be together and who are always lonely, for reasons known to them. They had one night together, and the singer lives for that day, which will never be repeated. It's stultifying.  

Download: The Real Pros - Lonely People

Play: