I've been listening to loads of 'Song Poems', culled from various corners of the web.
I don't know if anyone's familiar with the history, but basically a song poem is the musical equivalent of vanity publishing ie the end result of a process wherebye interested parties, mostly amateurs or non-professionals, would pay to have their lyrics set to sound by jobbing musicians. This practice was fairly popular in 60s / 70s America, but stretches back to mid-century or before. The results are mostly as banal as one would expect, but there's a fair portion of sheer weirdness resulting either from the aspirations of obviously disturbed individuals (the work of Thomas Guygax could be explained either by an infatuation with 'Finnegan's Wake' or the impact of schizophrenic thought disorder) , deliberate piss takes (the most well known song poem is Jon Trubee's infamous 'A Blind Man's Penis'), or incompetent studio hackery (loads and loads). Many such nuggets are collected on pricey and OOP collections (I remember the main archive used to be available for download back in 2002), but there are plenty of available examples on WFMU and of course much similar ephemera on Ubuweb (last time I looked). Worthy of exploration by anyone with an interest in trash para-culture.
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