George and Kay! Who Are They?

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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Gettin' Down and Dirty With.... The MSR Band?

 With today's post, I have completed the corrections to another month, and with that month, January of 2011, another year of the broken post project is finished. I now have only to get to 2010 and 2009 to complete the vast majority of posts at this blog, and virtually all of the song-poem posts, which began in earnest in January of 2009. 

Today's corrected posts (one of which contains references to a then-current project of also correcting old, broken links) include a whopping twelve tracks, including a two record posting of Bobbi Blake on MSR, a very late record from Norm Burns on Sterling, an EP featuring the great Rod Barton along with Sammy Marshall, and one of the best 45's ever released by Halmark, with some truly ridiculous lyrics, sung ridiculously by the inimitable Bob Storm. Even if you ignore the other links, I strongly suggest you give that Bob Storm number a try. 

Now that that's taken care of, we have this: 

I do not often share MSR releases here - I honestly don't understand how their product became the shorthand name for "song-poem" amongst so many aficionados (i.e. "MSR Madness). I think that generally - and absolutely, after Rodd Keith's death - the backing bands feature what were apparently top of the line studio musicians playing like hacks, with no attempt to hide their disinterest in the material. This doesn't come out as car-crash fascinating or "bad" funny, but simply tedious. 

I did, however, get a kick out of "To Prove It To You", by Bill Joy. Bill Joy is the singer on the very first record I ever heard that was identified beforehand as a song-poem (I owned two others, which I one at a record booth at a school fair, all the way back in 1975). That song was "How Long Are You Staying?", and it remains the high point for a singer who otherwise doesn't interest me at all - not at all good, but not entertainingly bad, either. 

But I knew this was something special as soon as the song started. For rather than being Bill Joy's typical soulless disco, this is a "bump-and-grind" record, something I thought would have been far beyond the ability of Mr. Joy, or the interest of the MSR band. Right on both counts. This is a entertainingly awful stuff. Whatever the opposite is of "giving it their all".... well, that's what the band is doing - they effectively give the impression of not only never having seen a stripper, but not having any idea of what a stripper might be. And Bill Joy.... well, he wasn't capable of doing anything well, musically, so  he's right at home. The lyrics are nicely, and appropriately vapid to match the music and singing. 

Enjoy!

Download: Bill Joy - To Prove It To You

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On the flip side is the aforementioned Bobbi Blake, a much, much better singer, trapped here in a deadly dull - and therefore much worse - flipside song, titled "It's All Over". 

As with the A-side, and as with most MSR product of this era, this record is poorly recorded and pressed, leading to terrible sound quality, and the song is innocuous and bland, they seemingly made no attempt to fit the words to a memorable, or at times, even singable melody. 

I honestly wish Bobbi Blake had worked with a different crew and company. 

Download: Bobbie Blake - It's All Over

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The Apron, The Pastries and Other Things

As I've probably mentioned too many times, MSR is not my favorite label. And so it was some surprise that I came to rediscover this weird little gem, from another category I don't much like, 1980's song-poems.

Over the past few weeks, I've been reviewing some comments and other notes I made about song-poems, when I was first getting in to them, nearly two decades ago. One song, with no reference to the singer, was referred to as "With You". Now that's a fairly generic title, and in fact, when I searched the AS/PMA for the phrase, I got hits on more than 40 of its pages. Narrowing it down to only the song-poem labels on which I would have owned records in those early days, and to songs which had "With You", as the entire title, and that narrowed it down to one label and one song, MSR and Gina Genova's rendition of "With You".

I dug into the box containing my "song-poems I never need to listen to again", and dug it out, and sure enough, it's weird in unpredictable ways and rises above what I would have expected from that label in that era. The appeal to me here is the rather unexpected lyrics, and the attempt to shoehorn them into a tender ballad, which, for me, just plays up how badly that attempt works. The opening lyrics appear to be: 

You always felt eager (?) for the pastries I baked you

You sewed me an apron, ???? blue

You spent hours repairing bikes,

made a case to put behind their well-worn seats 

Actually, that's all sort of sweet - what I can make out of it, anyway, but at the same time, those lines don't scan very well as lyrics to a melody.

I'll also mention that the recording quality on this record is horrendous, the singer's words are very difficult to make out at times (witness my attempt, above), due to overly bass-ie sound, and I've tried to clean it up a bit, so I'm posting it twice, once with its original sound, and then again in a version attempting to improve that sound. Admittedly, the effort was less than successful.

Here is the original record:

Download: Gina Genova - With You
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And here's an attempt to clean it up a bit:

Download: Gina Genova - With You (with Equalization)
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On the flip side, we have the consistently, resolutely awful Bill Joy (who sang the first song-poem I ever heard which was identified as a song-poem, "How Long Are You Staying", with some singularly banal lyrics, arrangement and melody, on the song "Be a Friend":

Download: Bill Joy - Be a Friend
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