Take Her Away

This came from a batch of song-poem 45s received just yesterday but, such was my urgency to share this little treasure with you, I decided to forgo my Easter egg eating and waste no time in transferring this to MP3.

Many regular visitors to The World's Worst Records will already know about Rodd Keith, possibly the greatest of all the song-poem artists: multi-instrumentalist, arranger, singer, writer and producer of countless cuts for Film City, Preview, MSR, Circle-D and a dozen other outfits under a variety of different names.

But no matter how well you think you know Rodd you will not have heard anything like this. You'll have heard Rodd sing in falsetto before, on the two versions of I'm Just the Other Woman for example, but the voice he uses here is quite extraordinary. Written by Paul Beshears, Pretty Boquet (and that's their spelling, not mine) is sung by Rodd in a bizarre high-pitched whine which makes him sound like a cross between the Bee Gees and Tiny Tim.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it; at first listen I thought it was about a bride who died on her wedding day, but subsequent spins show that hopw was little more than a product of my damaged mind and warped sense of humour. As it turns out its simply a grotty little piece of sentimental slush with few redeeming features outside of Rodd's freakish performance.

There are a few others in the same batch will will no doubt make an appearance at some juncture, but for now enjoy the peculiar Pretty Boquet (sic).