Wednesday 6 January 2010

A little bit o' Dick


Well, the festive season is over so its time to say goodbye to all of those awful Christmas records and get back to the serious business of 'proper' bad records. And have I got a doozy for you today!

It's another classic from Dick Kent and MSR Records, one of the world's premier song poem outfits. Your Body's Makin' Eyes at Me is not only one of the stupidest titles ever but its also a truly horrific recording, Dick doing his best lounge crooner act whilst wrestling with the most banal lyrics possible.

As I've previously written, Dick was one of MSR's busiest staffers, cutting literally hundreds of sides for the company s well as several other song-poem outfits, yet little is really known about him - apart from the 'fact that his real name was Elmer Plinger and he recorded variously as Dick Kent, Dick Castle, Sonny Cash (Psychic Cigarette), Buddy Raye (Gymnasium Girl) and Richard House.


I don't appear to have posted much by Dick Kent before, which is peculiar as he's one of my favourite song-poem singers - his dulcet tones lending gravitas to such gems as Paper is Important (Parts one and two), Christopher Columbus and the Compass, and two of my all-time favourites - Jenny Beloved (featured in an earlier WWR post http://worldsworstrecords.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html) and the timeless Octopus Woman, Please Let me Go. I'll have to make up for that, starting soonwith not one but two different versions of Gretchen's New Dish, but until then enjoy this.

2 comments:

  1. Nice one !
    As a musician I have to admit:
    Tactically it`s very professional, like,
    "we`ll do the old if-they-only-had-told-us-which-chord-comes-next-routine, so you can sing whatever you want".
    Until now I thought bad songs are only to make aware what to avoid- - wrong !
    Cheers, Joey
    (if you are through with the english- speaking world, come to Germany for another 100 years of bad music...)

    ReplyDelete
  2. ...this is the kinda shit i singsong for my wife on the weekend. top o' the head, grandmother playing the boards, kids out for the evening. glad i'm not alone.

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