I spent my formative performing years strumming
the guitar to songs composed using my repertoire
of well over seven chords.
So now, a medley of my hit. (Right: A medley of my hat.)
Struck by the way songs about cities often cele-
brate the mundane (San Francisco has cable cars; in Chicago, men evidently dance with their wives),
I took the concept to its logical extreme for an ode to the city where I lived at the time: Somerville, Massachusetts.
It became a popular paean (now celebrating its 50th birthday and my entry into the biz of show), was released as a single on Fretless Records, and was denounced in The Somerville Times as “exploiting our city as surely as Exxon exploits its customers.” Which is true but I assure you with less profit.
Later it was the official song for Somerville’s Holiday Lights bus tour, was played on the “Dr. Demento Show” (#20-45, 11/7/20), got a shout-out on the podcast “Judge John Hodgman,” covered by at least one band, and YouTube videos have gotten over 15,000 views. (And is still getting air-play.) Click here to hear.
In another bit, I reviewed records, including the legendary Bob Dylan “Bathroom Tapes,” recorded by Dylan’s next-door neighbor in Greenwich Village and featuring songs not usually associated with him, such as “O Sole Mio,” a medley from the musical “Oklahoma!,” and a biting rendition of the “Theme from ‘Mister Ed’.”
Years later a friend was producing Dylan’s show for Sirius Radio, told him what I’d done, and Dylan launched into “Mister Ed”! But it wasn’t recorded so mine remains the definitive version.
I became friendly with disc jockeys at WCAS, 740 khz in Cambridge, Mass. (which only broadcast during the day) and they asked to use my Dylan impression as their signoff song; here’s an excerpt from “Just Like A Radio”…
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Sure, zombies are all the rage now, but some people predicted the plague 50 years ago; revel in the prescient harmonies of “Zombie On The Loose.”
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In the early 70’s, I got one of the first telephone answering machines and, for fun and to promote my performing, recorded weekly 30-second a capella greetings using my TEAC reel-to-reel tape recorder, which had primitive overdub capacity.
After the first message had been playing for a few days I started getting calls from people who’d giggle then hang up. That continued through the next couple ditties; then the hangups increased, then they came accompanied by party sounds, then they started coming late at night (when callers assumed they’d get the machine and not me), then they started coming by the hundreds… and my Answering Machine Period was over.
Below are The First (“Hello?”), The Contrapuntal (“The Voice”), The Seasonal (“Hark!”), The Vacation (“Joy!”) and The Professional (“Vision Inc.”), a $25 commission from a landscape architecture firm which requested it be set to Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy”…
“Hello?”
“The Voice”
“Hark!”
“Joy!”
“Vision Inc.”