A coworker asked me if she could borrow an Eminem CD. It was a very confusing few moments, as I visualized this mother of three singing along to hits like “Just don’t give a Fuck,” “Bitch Please II,” and “Kill You”. She snapped me out of my daydream after I had added a bass tube and tinted out the windows in the minivan, but just before making it into a low-rider minivan, by explaining that she wanted to check it out before her kids do. It’s nice to see people getting in tune with their kids, and trying to examine and explain rather than forbid.

If the kids know that a good portion of the music that is pushed to them is essentially the equivalent of either a marketing ploy or acting for audio at worst, and clever expression of emotion at best, then I don’t see anything wrong with them listening to whatever they want to. Let them explore and find out what they like.

When the music is forbidden, it’s more attractive. When messages can be explained by tuned in parent, the messages and their resultant emotional responses can be less confusing.

Hell, it’s just music.

On that Note…
Music… note… Ah, forget it.

On that note, I found an interesting site that revolves around the incredibly strange music of song-poems. What is a song-poem you ask? According to the American Song Poem Music Archives (www.aspma.com), a song poem is a long running scam where a company places an ad in a magazine looking for new ideas for hit songs. People then send in their poems on the hopes of striking it rich by writing the next big hit. Then the scammer calls the mark looking for seed money to get a demo together for the incredible piece of writing that the mark sent in. The scammer takes the money, and sets the poem to music with factory speed and minimal effort to produce a demo to send to the mark.

The mark, upon receiving the song, waits for the riches that come with writing a hit. Unfortunately, hits are made in distribution, marketing, not to mention good writing, none of which have been even considered with respect to the demo. And while the mark waits, the scammer is too busy churning out the next “smash hit” demo for the next gullible person in line.

So? Why do you care? For one, one of the Song-Poem ads on the site is from the home office in Quincy, Massachusetts, and second, the site provides access to a number of these horribly amusing recordings for free download. I’ve sat and enjoyed a number of them including “Heart Break of Love“, “The Ballad of Juan Rio“, and my favorite, “Five Feet Nine And A Half Inches Tall. You want more? See ASPMA’s MP3 page. While your listening, please try to remember that the songs authors are the victims here, not you.

Posted in Music, Philosophical BS