Shelley Stuart & The Five Stars - Vampire Husband

"Vampire Husband," a tale of a wife attempting to reconcile her love for her husband with his undead status, is one of those song-poems that has to be heard to be believed. With awkward rhyming couplets like, "You promised to never hurt a hair on my head/But you are strictly, strictly from the dead," and Stuart's slightly off-key vocals, "Vampire Husband" is pure song-poem bliss. I have no idea who wrote this gem, or what the author's intentions might have been. But listening to this song about a woman who is terrified of her husband, it is hard to get around the suspicion that there might be some non-supernatural form of domestic terror lurking just beneath the surface of these goofy lyrics, and that makes the song genuinely creepy.

"Vampire Husband" was cut by the Boston based Sterling label. Vocalist Shelley Stuart was the wife of label owner, Lew Tobin, who likely plays the keyboards on this cut. This song and many others song-poem classics are available for download for free from WFMU on the I Like Yellow Things: MSR Madness, Vol. V compilation.

And is it just my imagination or did Lew Tobin have Rod Argent's keyboard playing with the Zombies in mind when they cut this spooky track?

Jimmy Carter Says YES!

Song-Poem Plug

I noticed David Dubowski (aka easydinar) has another song-poem auction going. Bidding ends tomorrow, and so far the price is obscenely low. If any of my readers wins the auction, I would be happy to post the results here. (FYI, I have no financial interest in this, I just think David provides a good service). Actually if there is sufficient interest, I would like to make song-poems submitted by readers a ongoing feature here.

World Premier Song-Poem "Ballad of the Boy in the Bubble"

I got my song-poem back today. I have to say I am quite pleased with the results. David Dubowski is the musician behind the eBay song-poem auction, and I give him a lot of credit. He brought a genuine enthusiasm to the project, and obviously worked very hard on it despite the fact that he must have been disappointed with the closing amount for the auction. Kudos to Dave (check out his tasty guitar licks after the third chorus). He also did a nice job of dealing with the rather awkward chorus.

The whole thing has been a fun experience for me, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is fascinated by the song-poem phenomena, or is just curious to hear someone else set their words to music. For someone who has always regretted the fact that he has no natural aptitude for music, it is rewarding to be involved in the creation of music in some way, even if the song isn't going to rock anybody's world. While I realize fame and fortune are not coming my way anytime soon as a result of this song, I had a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it. (Maybe next year I will attempt to write a Yultide standard and post it here, although I could never top "Santa Came on a Nuclear Missile.")

If anyone reading this ever does a song-poem (either through Dave or someone else) I would be happy to post it here. In fact, I'd love to hear what you guys could come up with.

Ballad Of The Boy In The Plastic Bubble [right click to download]

Song-Poem Update

So you guys were no help at all in determining what to submit for a song-poem. Thanks a lot. In the end it didn't matter because my options turned out to be more limited than I thought they would be.

First I asked Will (my four-year old son) to help me write a song. I asked him what he would like to right about, and he said "kitties!" "Okay what do you want to say about kitties?" I asked. "Kitties, kitties, kitties, kitties, kitties, kitties, I love kitties." That was as much as he was willing to contribute. Will is a very creative kid with an astounding vocabulary (he recently used the word "dissipate" in an entirely appropriate context). But the creativity has to pretty much come on his own terms, and he just wasn't into this.

So, on to option two: I tried to find the poem about sad clowns I wrote in the third grade. I thought it was with a package of old school stuff my parents gave me before they moved, but I couldn't find it. (Will did enjoy reading some funny paragraphs I wrote in fourth grade, and wearing my old Indian Guides vest though.)

That left me with no options other than to either write an entirely new song, or revisit the "Boy in the Bubble" song I wrote years ago. I just didn't feel up to writing something new, so it was back to "Boy In the Bubble." I was reluctant to revisit this song for a few reasons; first, I wrote this before the much-criticized Bubble Boy movie, and at 37 I am a little more sensitive about being respectful of people with real disabilities than I was as a callow youth. (I wrote the song after the Seinfeld "Bubble Boy" episode, but I hadn't seen it at the time.) Also, I remembered far less of the lyrics than I thought I would (only a couple lines really), so I essentially had to redo the whole thing.

Some back-story on this: I originally wrote the lyrics to "Boy in the Bubble" circa 1994 after watching the John Travolta Boy In the Plastic Bubble made-for-TV movie while working at Kim's Video in New York. The movie struck me as strange because while it dealt with the specifics of the of the boy's immunodeficiency, the writers ended up treating the whole thing as a kind of poetic metaphor for fear of commitment. (At the end of the movie Travolta's character just leaves the bubble to be with the girl he loves to no ill effect). I thought it would be amusing to write a song that treated the subject in the same way (i.e. as a metaphor for fear of commitment). I really didn't intend it to be offensive or insulting to people with serious diseases, although I recognize it probably is. I apologize for that.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the lyrics I came up with. I wrote them in about ten minutes last night, and they bear little similarity to the original lyrics, so I have renamed the song, "Ballad of the Boy in the Bubble":

I live my life behind cellophane
It's enough to drive a boy insane
No fresh air, no human touch
But when I saw you baby it was just too much

I'm the boy in the bubble
And love is just trouble
Boy in the bubble
Love is just trouble

As fine as you are I must turn you away
Cause in this bubble I must stay
I know your kiss would thrill me
But baby your germs could kill me

I'm the boy in the bubble
And love is just trouble
Boy in the bubble
Love is just trouble

Love's too scary with immunodeficiency
If I leave this bubble it could be the end of me
But I can't help wonder what it would be like
To feel your touch and ride a bike

I'm the boy in the bubble
And love is just trouble
Boy in the bubble
Love is just trouble

My love for you just can't be concealed
My emotions aren't hermetically sealed
I'll take my chances leave this bubble behind
Cause life without love isn't kind

I'm the boy in the bubble
And love is just trouble
Boy in the bubble
Love is just trouble

But I'll take my chances leave this bubble behind
Cause life without love isn't kind

So there it is, it's not nearly as good as the song-poems many people with serious mental illness write, but it is what it is. I'll be interested to see what the guy comes up with. He promises to have the song to me in about a week, and I'll post it when I get it. And remember dear reader, you are partly to blame for this offensive trash because you didn't advise me not to do it when you had the chance.

Help Needed -- Song Poem Dilemma

I actually won the song-poem auction. I put in a token bid, and didn't expect to win, but I did. From what I've read the going rate for a song-poem back in their heyday was around $300. I got a bargain at $10.50, which is an especially good deal when you adjust for inflation.

But now I have a real dilemma. What should I submit? I looked around and could not find the lyrics to "Boy In the Bubble." I have a pretty decent memory and could probably put it together with about 75% accuracy. I remember lines like "I know your kiss would thrill me/But Baby your germs could kill me." I don't remember what I rhymed with immunodeficiency, but I'm sure I could come up with something. This song has the advantage of being in horrible taste.

The other route I was thinking I could go would be to submit a poem I wrote as a child. The one that stands out in my mind was a poem I wrote in the third grade about sad clowns that ended with the line "Like the eagle we are legal." I caught a lot of flack over the years for that last line, but it made perfect sense to me. This approach has the advantage of submitting something genuinely naive, and it also lets me off the hook in terms of quality (hey, I was eight give me a break).

A third route would be to write something entirely new. If I did this I would do it in collaboration with my four year-old son, Will. Writing with Will would have the advantage of being fun (and I assume a thrill for him). I'm leaning toward this as a solution.

Anyway, this could be my ticket to fame and fortune, so I want to do this right. Any advice you might have would be much appreciated. I doubt I'll come up with anything as brilliant as "Santa Came On a Nuclear Missile," but no matter what I will post the results here.

Pure Pop Christmas

Each of these is a great pop song on its own merits, regardless of any seasonal connection. The Screaming Santas are really The Posies, Jon Auer and a couple guys from Super Deluxe. They should collaborate more often. The XTC song was originally issued as a single by The Three Wise Men, then showed up on the odds and sods collection Rag & Bone Buffet and probably a Rhino "new wave" Christmas compilation. NRBQ's "Christmas Wish" has a real Pet Sounds vibe to it, and is one of my favorite NRBQ songs, ranking right up there with "Riding In My Car" and "RC Cola and a Moon Pie." I doubt I'm the first or last to use the term "criminally overlooked" in connection with NRBQ.

And seriously, go get The American Song-Poem Christmas. This is great stuff, if you don't believe me, listen to the clips from "Santa Came on a Nuclear Missile," "The Peppermint Stick Man," and "Daddy Is Santa Really Six Foot Four" at Amazon.com. The album is also available for download from iTunes and eMusic (where you can get a free trial) if you are in need of instant gratification (and this is one case where the fidelity lost to compression is beyond irrelevant). And face it, you know your life is incomplete. You feel like there is some void you can never manage to fill. It is time to come to terms with the fact that the problem is that you do not own two distinct versions of "Santa Claus Goes Modern."

I discovered three songs from the album are also available for free from WFMU, who released the final two volumes of the MSR Madness series as online exclusives. Evelyn Christmas, Snowbows, and Season's Greetings [right click to download].

Big Money And Fame Could Be Yours!

I've posted a couple of song-poems on this site (most recently the seasonal favorite "Santa Claus Goes Modern," which has been covered by Yo La Tengo). I had assumed the song-poem phenomena died out sometime in the early eighties. Maybe it did, but browsing eBay today I found a song-poem auction. It's kind of amusing to me that the seller gives the same promises of fame and fortune as the song-poem factories of old, although his tounge seems firmly planted in cheek:

WILL YOU BE FAMOUS? Send it to your local DJ, friends or family. If your song becomes famous, YOU get all the glory and all the fame, all the women and all the money! If you ever have wanted to write a song about a person, place, thing, feeling, idea, accomplishment, longing, whatever it is, let it be a song. Just supply the poem!

I'm considering bidding. As a joke, I once wrote some lyrics to a song that I considered sending to Redd Kross (never got around to that). It was called "Boy in a Bubble" inspired by the John Travolta TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. I probably lost the lyrics years ago though. They were pretty funny from what I remember. I could then post the resulting song here. (Of course I am too lazy to really do this).

Santa Claus Goes Modern

Songs that have Santa Claus piloting something other than his traditional flying sleigh are a mini holiday music subgenre in their own right. Here are three very different examples. "Santa Claus Goes Modern" comes from the Beat of the Traps song-poem compilation and puts Santa behind the wheel of a flying saucer. This amazing song is featured in two different versions on the American Song Poem Christmas compilation from BarNone. I highly recommend this album because whether you are a Gentile, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Athiest, Agnostic, or something else altogether, no Holiday season is complete without hearing songs like "Santa Came On a Nuclear Missile," "Maury, The Christmas Mouse," and "Rocking Disco Santa Claus." The movie Off the Charts, about the song-poem industry, is next up in my Netflix queue because I really want to hear from the amazing minds who created this stuff. This music is not at all "bad," it's fascinating.

"Santa Done Got Hip," which can be found on the Rhino Hipster's Holiday compilation, also puts the jolly old elf in a flying saucer, and The Untamed Youth put him behind the wheel of a hot-rod for "Santa's Gonna Shut 'em Down."

A short history of the car song

Car songs have played an important role in rock and roll's mythology virtually since its inception. Typically the car has represented adolescent dreams of freedom and sex, but the best rock and roll car songs present a more complex picture of the role of the automobile in middle-class American adolescent life. Chuck Berry set the gold standard in the 1950s with "No Particular Place to Go," by making the automobile simultaneously serve as both a sex machine and a chastity belt.

In the 1960s the Beach Boys' carried on the tradition with songs in which the automobile is sexualized to the extent that when Brian Wilson sings "Oh what she does to me, when she makes love to me" in "Don't Worry Baby" you can't be 100% certain he isn't singing about the car instead of a girl. But the Beach Boys' car songs are also shot through with an increasing level of anxiety and ambivalence about the automobile’s ability to deliver on its promise of freedom.

In the 1970s the automobile as sex machine theme becomes even more explicit in songs like "Chevy Van", but also finds deeper and darker expression in the music of Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen seems all too aware that the automobile's promise of liberation is at best temporary and illusory, and it brings a level of desperation to his car songs that is almost operatic in scope.

You just know the narrator of "Born To Run," despite his desire to escape the confines of the working class world, will end up knocking Wendy up and working at a dead-end job. Or worse yet he'll end up like the narrator of "Darkness at the Edge of Town," offering bitter recriminations from beneath some bridge on the outskirts of town. But then of course the 1970s were a time of diminished expectations, when America seemed to be literally and figuratively running out of gas. (When I was in grade school in the 70s I vividly remember teachers telling us that we were the first generation of Americans who would end up worse off than our parents. That and we had to learn the metric system or the Japanese would eat us alive.)

Anyway, here is a weirdly wonderful car song from The Beat of the Traps, a compilation of songs from the "Send us your poems and we'll put them to music! Big money could be yours!" stuff collected by Tom Ardolino of NRBQ in thrift shops over the years. Where does this fit within the history of the rock and roll car song? Well, it doesn’t. Instead it’s a reminder that real life is too messy, and often too weird, to fit into the tidy historical narratives we construct in order to make sense of our world.

I genuinely enjoy listening to stuff like this. I like to imagine what the writer was thinking when they wrote it, the anticipation they felt waiting for their record to arrive, and their reaction when they got it. I like to think about what the performers must have thought of the lyrics they were assigned to put to music, if they thought about them at all. This is the stuff that happens outside the contours of official history.

And, not that it matters, but "Roadrunner" by The Modern Lovers is my all-time favorite driving/car song, because it really is about the journey, not the destination, and nobody gets that like Jonathan Richman. And you can't drive around in the rockin’ modern moonlight of Massachusetts listening to "Roadrunner" and not feel good. Please feel free to share your favorite driving/car song in comments.