 Rodd Keith Lunatic music appropriate for Tzadik Records' "Lunatic Fringe" line, Rodd Keith's I Died Today documents a genre that is witnessing a growing fascination among followers of strange music: "song-poem" music, the records made by hack music professionals from submitted lyrics. Companies would place ads advertising "send us your lyrics and we'll make your record" and the suckers would line up, sending lyrics and money and the company would send them the completed song on 45. The lyricist would often envision fame and fortune stemming from their would-be hit single, although listening to this CD the recurring feeling is a great curiosity regarding how people reacted when the record arrived and they put it on to hear Rodd Keith's creepy, half-assed musical constructions of their lyrical ideas. Rodd Keith worked for MSR, Inc., the primary company responsible for this fringe market of the music industry, and by all accounts he was a crackpot musical genius, some kind of cross between Brian Wilson and Ed Wood, suppressed mainly by his own lack of initiative and substance abuse problems. In some ways, we are much richer for Keith's troubles, because his recorded legacy is an amazing, jaw-dropping thing. Keith possessed an incredible knack for turning the meandering, often bizarre submitted lyrics into (somewhat) coherent pop singles, and while there need be no pretense that any song on this CD had a snowball's chance in hell of getting even regional airplay, much less a Billboard chart position, in the context of Rodd Keith's musical universe (or "musiverse" as I would say – no, wait, I was just kidding) these are, in their own way, wonderful achievements. Interestingly, I unknowingly discovered Rodd Keith a number of years ago courtesy a dubious cassette called The How's By You?, which featured a song called "H-A-P-P-Y," an innocuous sounding song that had a couple "off" lyrics ("I'm happy – I'm not ready to die") that made it just slightly baffling. Now that we know about Rodd Keith courtesy this CD, that song makes a whole lot more sense. Unfortunately it's not on I Died Today, but there are so many more great moments it's hard to complain. I was initially thinking that the disc would rate a four at best, but listening again I realize that I have come to know and love almost all the tracks on it – I still can't generally sit through all 70 minutes at a time, but you really can't beat hits like "I Am a Real American," "Hippy Happy Land," "T.V. Love," and "General Custer's Story Remains Legend" (?), to say nothing of the wonderful trying-to-be-the-next-dance-craze songs "Do the Pig," "The Graveyard Rock," "Do the Turkey," "The Hump Dance," and of course "Elmer-21-Century Hop." Now who ISN'T doing the Elmer-21-Century Hop this millenium? The appeal of the CD isn't really the comedy factor, because the laughs are all nervous ones, and the jokes are not really jokes, it's like laughing at your grandfather. The humor is far beneath the actual content--for me, it's thinking of who wrote these songs, and what the hell they were thinking. Misguided lines like "Frankenstein was catching lightning bolts/Doing it to save his soul" – where does that come from, and how do I get there? Keith produced upwards of 25 of these songs a day sometimes, using whatever session players he could get. On many cuts you can clearly tell that the band is faking it, or that it's a first take, like the bass player will miss all the changes, or the drummer will make blatant errors, or even the harmony singers will be off. The musicians are clearly good, but they're also clearly cranking this stuff out, so the end product sounds really low-budget and post-apocalyptic. Keith himself sings most of the tracks, and his stylistic range is impressive, going from rock to crooning to bubblegum pop to an unidentifiable cross between country and inspirational music that crops up on a few tracks. And there is a unity to the songs that should not be present given the source material, but Keith comes across as a truly unique musical figure throughout. I Died Today is highly recommended, though it will not be to everyone's taste. That's too bad, actually. I say, bring on the Rodd Keith box set.
Review by Butte Montana |