Oh Rod, Rod, Roddy McKuen, you honking huge school of fish swimming in a barrel, you and your seventies schlock New-Agey poetry leaves you SO open to ridicule.
"Home to the Sea" album is so jaw-droppingly awful I still have rug burns on my chin. It features the unapologetically maudlin Rod McKuen, teamed with the sometimes interesting (and sometimes McKuen-insipid) composer/arranger Anita Kerr. Rod’s claim to fame was penning poetry some found deep and meaningful, and others laughably pretentious. Did 70s guys REALLY get some action with the hippie chick wanna-bes by playing Rod McKuen’s painfully “relevant” albums? Impossible to fathom, even in those pre-AIDS, anything goes days.
Rod’s somnimbulistically soothing voice backed by crashing-wave sound effects could act as aural Ambien except for the fact that he occasionally drops these unwittingly pants-wetting hilarious lines that totally disrupt the snooze-inducing moment.
Let’s listen to the gloriously odd “Bathtub Surfing”, shall we? It's actually the cut I found the most entertaining. Listen to any of the rest of the tracks of "Home to the Sea" for the more comically bad stuff.
Home to the Sea - Warner Brothers WB 1764
Music by Anita Kerr/ Words by Rod McKuen
6 comments:
Well now, that IS odd!
Oh, God I remember this and ALL the other Rod McKuen/Anita Kerr/San Sebastiab Strings LPs. My first REAL girlfriend was mesmorized by the first three LPs (I think they were 'Earth' "Sea and 'Sky')and the ORIGINAL narrator Jesse (somebody later replaced by Rod...why not get ALL the money for yourself?) and I was forced to listen to almost all of this series as she successfully prevented me from doing anything as we lay on an old couch in her basement. These used to put me to sleep on occasion (when my loins were less excited). Our relationship was mostly in her mind which is where these records led her much like Anne McComber novels do for my poor mother-in-law.
I will download this more for morbid curiousity. Did I really listen to this all the way through? More Than once? Were they stimulating in ANY way?
Thanks for blueball memories.
That's actually actor Jesse Pearson narrating, not McKuen. McKuen has a distinctively raspy voice, not at all as resonant as Pearson's.
oops
I used to see these things promoted on the inner sleeve of old Warner / Reprise albums, next to albums by Bill Cosby and the Beau Brummels. I was puzzled. I am still puzzled but when the download finishes in a few minutes I won't be puzzled any more. But what will I be??
Thanks, I'll download this for sure because I really like Rod McKuen (I'm not kidding!) :-)
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