A demented desert island disc in this home. This was the first collection of song poems, short-run records (mostly 45s), the result of the “send us your lyrics” shuck found in gossip magazine ads back in the 1960s and ’70s. The king of this strange corner of the record world was the sad genius Rodd Keith (aka Rod Rogers and many other names), a musical prodigy who met an early demise, the result of drugs and/or mental imbalance. He could bang out multiple one-take songs per day, a lot of them sounding genuinely good and catchy with an air of someone having actual fun at their work, so he’s since had several anthologies of his own. Other singers come across as d-level lounge crooners, and hearing them sing these bizarre poems sent in by suckers who paid money to have a record of their own often results in some strange accidental works of sick inspiration. Released by Byron Coley’s Carnage Press label, which was created for that cool Jim Jones Trading Cards set.
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