Thanks to our old pal Greg, we are kept aware of brilliant documentaries such as this one. Please rent this. It may help you understand folks such as that uncle of yours who thinks someday someone is going to make his song about his days climbing greased poles a hit.
The best 40th birthday gift ever
Off the charts...
I didn't mind turning forty; I don't feel forty, I don't think I look it, and I definitely haven't lived it. Because of those factors, on my birthday, I thought I should either throw a big party or celebrate quietly giggling with Neil, beers in hand. Being rather shy about the spotlight unless guitar is strapped on, and having a birthday fall on a national holiday when everyone was out of town for the three-day weekend, I opted for the latter and threw in my trip to Barcelona as a personal birthday gift. I'd save the big party for a non-obvious year, such as 42, which is a well-received age for my friend Beth and I after a Monty Python episode that had us nearly wetting our pants twenty-plus years ago. A quiet forty was good.
On my actual birthday, we went to SAM and looked at Van Goghs, bought books, and had some beers at the Fiddler. When we came home, Neil presented me with one of my gifts (the second was a freshly-won Ebay bid, still in the mail). It was Off the Charts, a documentary about song poems, the people who write the poems, and the people who write the songs.
What is a song-poem? Simply put, it's when one party writes a poem and gives it to another party to set to music. It's a practice that's existed since the turn of the twentieth century. Decades later, among the tiny anti-acne and whoopee cushion ads in the backs of magazines, a new service was offered to aspiring songwriters: give us your words, we'll put them to music and record them to vinyl. Not only that, but maybe your song will become a hit. Several companies solicited regular folk who either wrote poems and/or their own songs, but had no resources to record the music. For a small fee, they'd turn their words into songs — and if they were lucky — gold.
Off the Charts, directed and produced by Jamie Meltzer, features current song-poets and composers discussing their respective ends of this unique art form. Others involved, such as historians or curious fans, also talk about their fascination with the song-poem. What could have been an ironic poke at a group of people who've carved out an unlikely niche for themselves is instead a reverent depiction of the people who still believe they can create a hit song. The poets like Caglar Juan Singletary and Gary Forney (pictured on the cover) submit their poems to composers Art Kaufman or Gene Merlino, and out come songs with titles like "Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers." It's a movie about folks, and as much as the untrained painter might be called an outsider artist, these folks are definitely outsider musicians. Because of that, there's a solid charm in this surreal route of making a song.
I really loved the documentary. The more I see or hear modern art or music respectively, the more I've become a big fan of "outsider art." It's a term that encompasses something pretty huge — and vague — but it implies a spirit that sometimes gets lost in all that training.
A few days passed after my birthday and our viewing of Off the Charts. In the afterglow, I'd forgotten about Neil's second birthday present. One day I came home and found a CD envelope in the mailbox and thought, "Cool. Neil must've gotten me a CD off Ebay." He called from work and I told him about the package. He asked me to wait until he got there to open it.
"So," he said as he walked outside to the backyard where I was barbecuing some food, "did you recognize the name of the return addressee?"
"No, but..." and then it hit me. Magic Key Productions. "You didn't!"
"He had a bid on Ebay."
"You won a song?"
"It's one of your songs."
"Wait. Mighty Shiny? Which one? No way!"
"It'll be a surprise. Let's just listen to it after dinner."
I was beside myself. He gave Magic Key the words to one of my already-recorded songs to interpret and put to music! Brilliant! Magic Keys is Art Kaufman, the man who turned Singletary's "Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers" into a song. Angelaria!
I can barely describe the range of emotions or sensations I felt when we finally plopped that CD-R into the player. Neil had emailed Mr. Kaufman my lyrics and told him to do whatever he liked musically. Not only was I wracked with the anticipation felt by thousands of song-poets before me who heard their songs interpreted for the first time, but it was an amazing full-circle created by the excitement of the film and deftly executed by my sweetheart. I'd been set up in the best possible way.
I hit "play" and a keyboard and drum machine thumped out an unfamiliar driving beat. The first verse came out, and I almost cried. As the song played, we shrieked, laughed, sang along, and just plain marveled. Mr. Kaufman, a.k.a. David Fox, song unheard, crooned a tune completely unlike the one I'd recorded a few years before, but still seemed to capture the angst and candor of the original.
It is at this point that I'd like you to hear both versions. You'll need Windows Media Player to hear these. If you're already familiar with the songs on our CD, jump straight to Art's version. If not, listen to the original first, and then Art's. Understand that he wasn't given verse or chorus breakdowns, so you won't hear the same distinction as you would on the Mighty Shiny version. Pretty fun, you think?
Then, if any of this talk of song-poems is the least bit intriguing to you, I'd highly recommend renting Off the Charts at your local offbeat video store (our neighborhood place even has it). I'd recommend this film to fans of Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Bradley Beesley (Okie Noodling), or Chris Smith and Sarah Price (The Yes Men, American Movie), and anyone who's just plain curious. Who knows...maybe your poem will be a hit.