Gibberish From Halmark!

 

Hello! 

I'd wish you a Happy New Year, but that concept doesn't seem possible already, just 14 days in.  

I took a bit of a break to start the year, and to make up for it, I have an EP. a HALMARK EP. It looks like I've only featured Halmark once in the past 18 months, and that was almost a year ago. The big focus here is on the first song of the EP, something called "The Sketch". 

Label stalwart Jack Kim sings "The Sketch", and what comes out of his mouth is, as far as I can tell, is a mish-mash of nearly random words tied together just enough to make it clear that it's about an artist of some sort. I would love it if someone else would take a stab at figuring out these words. I just spent about ten minutes on the first half of the song, and here's what I came up with: 

"Amid the shavings, tools and winch, a burden task obscured to win that fight for accomplishment as his specialty of skeptic tour. Oh, wait, sigh, the way it goes. Our shrub or skeptic snarls. The ruined old be must sash door, my lore, the way of toils. The thought afflicts for reason sits....."

And then I gave up - I could not make out the next phrase at all. I'm sure I have some of those words wrong, but I'm also sure I have most of them correct. Anyway, I think this bunch of gobbledygook is worth the two week wait, and I hope you do, too. 

Download: Halmark Productions - The Sketch

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Next up on side one is "I Love You Only", with Jack Kim sounding, to my ears, remarkably like Dick Kent. This is a largely boilerplate "You are everything to me" lyric, although it's fun to hear what the writer finds to be "classy" about his gal. The writer apparently didn't write nearly enough words to fit over the endlessly reused backing track, so we get some "do-do-do's" and a recap of earlier lyrics in the second half of the track. 

Download: Halmark Productions - I Love You Only

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~~

Side two starts with "A Hero Unsung", sung by Jack Kim's wife Mary, and which a grieving daughter clearly wrote about her coal miner father, and how he died from Black Lung Disease, apparently not living quite long enough to benefit fully from a crusading labor agitator, if I'm understanding the lyrics correctly. I guess that makes him her hero, because otherwise I'm not getting what was heroic about him. If everyone who works hard for their families at an awful job are heroes, the word loses pretty much all its meaning. 

Download: Halmark Productions - A Hero Unsung

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The Night is Almost Over, and The Year is Almost Over, Too

Happy New Year's Eve! 2026 can't get here quickly enough. Let's hope it's a damn sight better than 2025. As John Lennon once sang, "Can't Get No Worse". 

And speaking of things that are almost over: 

I don't know what was going on at the Tin Pan Alley label around 1969 and 1970, but for a short time, they chose to employ a couple of truly awful sopranos on a handful of releases. Just over a month ago, I wrote my latest post to feature Eleanor Shaw, who made at least a dozen records for the label in quick succession, and whose performances often have to be heard to be believed, and now, for the second time, I am featuring Madelyn Buzzard, who may have made only three or four records for the label. 

I featured her in a Christmas post at the now offline WFMU blog in 2012, and in a follow up post on this blog exactly 13 years ago today (and that one - Chicken House Blues - should be heard immediately by anyone who hasn't already heard it)

(Incidentally, someone with the very unusual name of "Madelyn Buzzard" had a small role in a tiny-budgeted horror film in 1973, titled "Three on a Meathook". I'm guessing that was the same person. Maybe she sang this way because she was dangling from a meathook.)

So anyway, today we have Madelyn warbling - and that is the right word - about how "The Night is Almost Over". The band is providing a pretty credible supper-club samba arrangement - the solo is sort of rote, but effective enough - but Madelyn fails to hold up her end of the bargain. 

And is that actually an encouraging "Yeah!" from a band member at the 2:20 point. Could it be? Someone in this combo actually thought this performance was good? 

Download: Madelyn Buzzard - The Night is Almost Over

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On the flip side, we have "Because of You". Somewhere between the recording of these sides, the bass went out of tune and this was not corrected. It's not as bad as the bass as heard on those ridiculous Bob Gerard records, but it's bad enough to be extremely distracting. And the oompah beat of this one doesn't do Madelyn any favors (as was the case with the nice groove on the flip) by distracting from her vocals, or the places where she lands on the wrong note. 

Download: Madelyn Buzzard - Because of You

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Well, They Can't All Be Winners - Not Even When They're By Rodd Keith

 

Today, I thought I'd get another pair of previously unavailable Rodd Keith songs out there into the ether. In this case, he's heard in his guise as Rod Rogers with the Film City Orchestra. However, these tracks offer up the proof that even Rodd Keith had his fairly awful days. If you previously thought (assuming that you thought about it) that it wasn't possible to be lugubrious and unctuous at the same time, these two tracks should disabuse you of that notion. 

I'd offer up thought that "well, what could he have done with these lyrics", except that he did so much better, so many times, with equally unpromising lyrics. 

First up is "Never". The most interesting thing here, to me, is this: although the track is dominated, as Film City releases always were, by the Chamberlin, this particular track appears to also have a real live piano part on it, and not the "piano" as heard on the Chamberlin (which was, in today's parlance, a extremely canned "sample" of a piano). I don't remember hearing so much real piano on many Film City releases. 

Download: Rod Rogers with the Film City Orchestra - Never

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The flip side is "Francesca", the less said about which, the better. 

Download: Rod Rogers with the Film City Orchestra - Francesca

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You Gotta Have Faith

 Quick, shout out the first few adjectives that come to mind when you think of Santa!

"Jolly?" Sure. "Fat?" Of Course. "Pretend?" Shh. Don't Tell. "Giving?" Probably less common, but not inaccurate. 

How many of you said "Faithful"? How many other words did you get to before you got to "Faithful"? 

Well, Sammy Marshall, in his guise (for Ronnie Records) as Ben Tate, is going to tell you all about "Jolly, Faithful Santa". This being Ronnie Records, the band is, of course, almost frighteningly sterile in performance style, and the most interesting thing here may be that Sammy hits a few bum notes while (probably) site-reading the song - indeed, this is one of most low energy and generally poorly sung songs I can think of from Sammy. Anyway, can you imagine a child being captivated by any of this?

Download: Ben Tate - Jolly, Faithful Santa

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On to the next song, and I have this to say: Ronnie was the wrong label, and Sammy Marshall the wrong singer, to have sent a song called "The Blues and Me". This musicians are competent, and no doubt had an intellectual understand of what The Blues is - and perhaps even an appreciation of the genre. But they were in no way capable of producing a Blues number. See if that isn't clear within the first four bars of this track. 

And I have NO idea what the Blues "Usually Make a Home Run" means. 

Download: Ben Tate - The Blues and Me

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~~

I mostly posted this EP for the first song - I wanted to offer something Christmassy. And then there is the ridiculousness of that Blues song. But I have VERY little to say about the remaining songs. 

The two songs on the other side sound awfully to each other, at least to my ears. Neither has anything to recommend it. The first is "I'm Sitting Here Alone". 

Download: Ben Tate - I'm Sitting Here Alone

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"My Heart and I" is, as I said, similar to the above song, but it does have a nice, loping beat and as a result, it swings a little bit, making it, I suppose, my choice as the least-bad among four poorly written and performed songs. Even the guitar solo called for here seems to be more or less in this guitarist's wheelhouse. Or at least in that neighborhood. 

Download: Ben Tate - My Heart and I

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The Crafty Styles of Stylecraft Records

Right off the bat, I'm going to acknowledge that I don't know for certain is Stylecraft was actually a song-poem label, or if it was always a song-poem label, or if it was sometimes a vanity label, or.... something else.  The song-poem archives website does not question the designation as a song-poem label, but also doesn't show any links to any other song-poem labels, which is a rarity. Fewer than a dozen records on the label have been documented, as AS/PMA or elsewhere. And the artists heard on Stylecraft records rarely made more than one or two known releases, and with a couple of exceptions, never for any other labels. 

The records I've shared on Stylecraft, here (click on the Stylecraft link, below) and at the recently deceased WFMU blog (no link available, unfortunately) are typically several steps more professional sounding than most song-poems, yet the songs themselves tend to seem fairly amateurish. And for one of today's songs, the composers actually self-published sheet music for the song, two years after this record was made. That fairly well screams out to me vanity release. But I think this record is fairly interesting, the A-side may qualify as a song-poem, and regardless, if this is a vanity release, it's one which seems closer to a song-poem record than a lot of vanity records do. 

The singer on both songs is Bobby Kaye, backed up by Eddie Kaighn leading the orchestra. The more interesting song, by a wide margin, at least to these ears, is "My Huddle-Up, Cuddle-Up, Lovin' Baby". Just that title alone suggests to me amateur songwriting and at the very least a vanity release, if not a full blown song-poem. The fact that two authors are credited might make me lean towards vanity. Regardless, no established and legitimate label was going to try to make a hit out of something with that title. 

The song sounds to me more like a 1940's composition than a record from 1956 - what passed as big band vocalist records in the mid '50's had blanded its way down to irrelevance, with the exception of a few big names. That caveat aside, it's a cute song, and like I said, the arrangement was far more than a song-poet would have gotten out of anything but the earliest days of the Tin Pan Alley label, and a very few other, smaller labels. 

Download: Bobby Kaye, Orchestra Conducted by Eddie Kaighn - My Huddle-Up, Cuddle-Up, Lovin' Baby

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The flip side, "The New Hampshire Waltz", is the one with the self-paid printed sheet music, which you can see here. To my mind, this is clearly someone's idea of an answer song to "The Tennessee Waltz, albeit with a happy story from start to finish. There's really not much to this song - I think one has to be a really good songwriter (or, again, in this case, a songwriting team) to make an interesting song entirely about how happy you were on a single day from your past. These guys are not "really good". 

Download: Bobby Kaye, Orchestra Conducted by Eddie Kaighn - The New Hampshire Waltz

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Give the Drummer Some!

 

I don't have a lot to say about today's offering, particularly not the first of the two I'm sharing. The singer is Eleanor Shaw, who we last heard doing the utterly ridiculous "Ohoo Made a Sing Out of Sex". For this song, "Fountain of Hope", I have listened a few times, and I really don't know - or much care - what she's singing about, not only because it's sounds pretty vapid, but more so because as the song goes on the drummer is killing it. The guitarist has some nice moments, too. This is the same basic minimalist lineup that appeared on Tin Pan Alley for over a decade, but they rarely sounded this good. And for song poem drumming, I usually only expect to hear playing like this on 1960's Preview releases. 

Download: Eleanor Shaw: Fountain of Hope

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The flip side is "A Soldier Dies", and I liked this less and less as it went on. First, Eleanor Shaw does not appear to be the right singer for this type of material. But more than that, the gung-ho view of Vietnam soldiers - even at the time of this release (1969 or 1970), but certainly in retrospect - doesn't sit well with me. I daresay at least a good portion of soldiers who found themselves mortally wounded at that point in the war did not consider themselves willingly doing a job "they had to do" or that their deaths allowed others to be free. And when, in the end, the song-poet ties the soldier's death into the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers", that was way too much for me. 

Download: Eleanor Shaw: A Soldier Dies

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Feeling Lower Than a Cold Duck's Instep (I'm Not Hitting the Bottle Anymore)

First up, I definitely want to share this. Two posts ago, I shared two insane songs about dancing and Cupid. And I pointed out that the song-poet had written a third Preview release about Cupid, as well. Well, Sammy Reed has laid his hands on a copy, and posted it (and a few other Gene Marshall tracks, including the entertainingly silly "It's Clock Time", here. It's just was mind-numbing as the two I posted. Thanks for sharing that, Sammy!

And now for a couple of.... well, it is a song-poem records, but I don't actually think there are any "songs" here, so maybe "-poems" would be a better descriptor.

I guess maybe these fit into the category of "Cowboy Poetry", but really, the A-side sounds like the nearly random, Idaho-obsessed observations of a man who is losing his ability to think straight, and the B-side sounds more like an audio letter to a gal-pal than it does like poetry. But these are stellar examples of the more whack-a-doodle edge of song-poetry, and more than worth a share. 

Lance Hill was one of the lesser lights at the Globe song-poem factory, and he does an adequate job here of putting the team of song-poets who wrote these two pieces into action. Up first is "Without the Wind", which consists of nearly random western clichés, with a few odd turns of phrase thrown in. There doesn't seem to be a story here, or even a common thread, aside from "Me Like Idaho". Maybe I'm just not familiar with Cowboy Poetry. Maybe someone out there can tell me if this would get a performer applause or boos. 

Download: Lance Hill - Without the Wind

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As mentioned, "Bit of Idaho Haven" strikes me as an audio letter to Suzie Bell, who has left Muskogee, OK to come to see her former (and future?) sweetheart who has moved to Idaho. He extols the many virtues of his new home state, making sure Suzie (now named Ida Bell, after her own new home state) pays attention. More than anything, he wants her to know that he's not hitting the bottle anymore. 

What a weird record. 

Download: Lance Hill - Bit of Idaho Haven

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A Devilish Walk and Standing with Jesus

As I have written about, ad nauseum, the earliest records on the Cinema label mostly feature a single solo male singing, accompanied by one of those all-in-one console organs, complete with drum effects and chording, that were so popular in living rooms in the '60's and '70's. I certainly always wanted us to get one. They are by far the most direct, simplest and perhaps most scammy of song-poem releases, although on occasion, they were brilliant. 

Here we have one which is not so brilliant. The song-poet who submitted "Pretty Red Curl", couldn't be bothered to submit a poem of more than nine lines, resulting in our friends at Cinema needing to pad the record, with an instrumental intro and solo section, and with repeated lines, just to get to 112 seconds. Note that the lyrics start at 0:13 and end 38 seconds later - everything else is just a repeat of earlier lyrics. At least the lyrics are stunningly well composed. Oh, wait, no they aren't. 

Download: The Real Pros - Pretty Red Curl

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The flip side, "For Jesus I Will Stand", contains precisely the lyric that you would expect from a song called "For Jesus I Will Stand", and the stultifying arrangement and performance leaves me cold, with nothing else to say about it.

However, I would like to refer you to the author credit, which is to Dovie Beanblossom, which has to be one of the great names of all time. Further yet, an online search tells me her full name was "Dovie Lenguilliams Beanblossom", and all I can say is, I wish that was my name (although I wouldn't want to sign for anything). 

Download: The Real Pros - For Jesus I Will Stand

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Two Insane Dance-Related Song-Poems from the Pen of John Lester

 

Okay, I must admit that when I first saw the title of this Barbara Foster (aka Bobbi Blake) 45, "Germination", I sort of assumed the lyrics would be some sort of play on words regarding certain reproductive activities. 

However, this only seems to sort of be the case - any such reference is buried in something entirely other. That is to say, not only this side, but both sides of this record seem to have come from a rather batshit crazy cranium. In the simplest terms, both songs seem to be about dancing. And yes, love-making certainly can be and has been described as a dance, and song-poet John E. Lester even makes reference to Cupid here, but the dance steps in "Germination" won't get you there. 

The opening lines of this song are a mystery to me. I've listened several times and simply cannot make out every word of what is being sung in the first verse. What I can make out is non-sensical (something about Java? "Delilah in Iceland without no fur"?, "Let's Begin like in 'Begin the Beguine'"?). We are then encouraged to "Germinate Love, It's Cupid's Thing". Having said that, though - as I mentioned, - we then are instructed in some very vague dance moves.

Maybe this makes more sense to one or more of you out there. 

Download: Barbara Foster - Germination

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The flip side features Gene Marshall doing "Cupid's Review" by the same song-poet. And it's worth noting that the only documented song-poem (other than these two) credited to this song-poet was called "Cupid's Thing", so Mr. Lester certainly had an area of interest. 

If anything, this one befuddles me even more than "Germination". You know you're in for a good time when Gene speaks over the introductory music. I can't make out one of the words for certain: 

"Make like you're on the way to the city, you know in your best <clothes?>

Know your color, love? Well anyway, you're it - YEAH!"

The rest of the song is about going to something called "Cupid's Review" (don't act too extreme, by the way). By the 38 second mark, Gene is talking again, explaining that apparently the review is a series of classic dances - whether we are watching or participating is unclear. There is an important moment when Gene questions what time signature is being used, and a bit later, he has a conversation with an unheard participant. The talking goes on for a full 70 seconds of this 150 second record.

I have literally no idea what this song-poet was on about. And I'd like to hear "Cupid's Thing". 

But - and I mean this entirely sincerely - Gene's last note is one for the ages, truly a thing of beauty, and deserved to be on a better record and song than this. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Cupid's Review

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Square Dancing With the Navajos

Hoo-boy do I have a backlog of comments and such to get to. 

Someone named Shane commented - while offering up some very nice words about my site - that he is trying to start up a song-poem page on Facebook. I am not really on Facebook, but I did try to find it, without success. Please write back if you have a page, Shane, and I will link to it. 

In mid-September, someone asked about a specific Noval song-poem called "Lonesome Cowgirl Blues," lyrics by Barbara Sylvester. Unfortunately, I would have to say that Noval is the single most mysterious label in the song-poem universe, and I've never heard anything about the label that has unraveled that mystery. I'd like to hear it though. I have a backup email address that is my first and last name, no spaces at Gmail, if you (or anyone) wants to send me song-poems. 

For another anonymous poster, I am diligently trying to get and answer regarding whether Rodd Keith played saxophone - efforts are being made to ask those who might know, on my (and your) behalf. 

Sammy Reed offered a link after I shared Gene Marshall singing about a nurse. His link was to a YouTube posting of another nurse song from the same vocalist, which is heard here.  

Apesville responded to my most recent previous post, agreeing with my about the timeframe on the record's release, despite the numbering system which would appear to indicate otherwise. He also linked to his Arco label website which is here, and which names some records not listed in the AS/PMA site for the label.

My best pal Stu pointed out that the songs on that most recent post, sung by "The Reputations" would have been considerably better if their labelmate at Globe, Sammy Marshall, had been assigned to sing them. I agree completely.

In more important news from Sammy Reed, though, he has found another one of those insane Bob Gerard Records - one of seemingly a dozen or so, perhaps all made the same day, where apparently no one present knew how to play a bass, so they had someone play the same three notes, in the same rhythm, on nearly ALL of them. These are nearly uniformly terrible records, in the most entertaining way possible (although "Snow Man" and especially "The Proon Doon Walk" are far more ridiculous AND far more entertaining). The songs Sammy posted are of the same quality, with that three note pattern recurring throughout the first side and, as a bonus, an absolutely incompetent guitar solo, too. 

Whew - that's a lot. Thanks so very much to everyone who writes in, and I'm sorry if I missed anyone. 

~~

It's Indigenous People's Day, and what better time than that for the following record: 

I feared that "The Navajo Reservation", warbled by Tin Pan Alley's Mike Thomas, would be one obnoxious misrepresentation after another, if not downright racist. My review of the lyrics does not really confirm the presence of those problems, although it is rife with stereotypical (if not truly inaccurate) descriptions. 

Actually much of the lyric is about the physical beauty of the land, and the biggest flaw of the song (aside from its gormless arrangement and performance), is the attempt to squeeze in such downright unmusical phrases "ceremonial clothes" and "turquoise jewelry". 

But my biggest grin came from the reference to the Navajos participating in a "Square Dance" as well as another dance whose name I cannot make out - all the spelling I tried failed to find any references. I did find that some tribes - Eastern, primarily, which makes sense - probably did contribute to the styles involved in square dancing, but only added to an existing dance form. The Navajos do not appear to have played a role in this development. I have a close relative of Native heritage and have been to many Native events, festivals and performances and have never seen anything called a "Square Dance". 

Perhaps the song-poet wrote "Squaw Dance", which IS a Navajo tradition, and Mike Thomas pronounced it wrong. 

My favorite Native American song-poem (or it may be song-poem adjacent) remains "Navajo" by Anne and Bill Calhoun, which I shared over 13 years ago, in this post. 

Sing it, Mike!

Download: Mike Thomas - The Navajo Reservation

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The flip side of this record "Right Way", poses a conundrum it never answers. What, exactly, IS the right way. I've listened to this record three times, and while Mike offers up some versions of what the wrong way is, he never tells us what the right way is. Maybe it's supposed to be self-evident, like these truths. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Right Way

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Bad Reputations

The Arco label seems to have primarily been yet another one of the fairly tiny labels that housed the productions of the Globe song-poem factory. That's not the only thing they did - they released some really interesting records by a bandleader named Joe Noto and his "thrush" (as Billboard would have called her), Phyliss Ruby. You can hear my favorite of those records here. Those may or may not be song-poems, although the same writer I mention below wrote one of those songs, as did song-poem master Lew Tobin.

But virtually everything else I've heard on Arco seems to come from Globe. Except, I didn't think this one did. It's by a group, identified as "The Reputations", and has the lowest label number of any Arco release yet documented. For a long time, I hesitated to share it here because I wasn't sure it was a song-poem at all. 

But I saw a copy listed on eBay and listened to the songs again, and also looked more closely at the label. The lyrics are not great, the sound is remarkably close to the standard Globe bland production and antiseptic groove, and, the kicker, one of the two writers listed, Joe Brulo, paid for song-poems on another of Globe's labels, sung by Globe stalwart Lance Hill, who most definitely was a song-poem singer. 

That convinces me that this is a song-poem record. One thing still confuses me, though - the other known Arco records are all documented to be from 1956 to 1962. This one's label number pre-dates all of those, yet it sounds like nothing which would have been made during that period to me. The start of "Runaway Girl", for example, clearly is meant to remind the listener of "Oh Pretty Woman", which was released in 1964. It's all very confusing. 

Download: The Reputations - Runaway Girl

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The flip side is "I'm Burning Up the Telephone", which features the classic lines "My baby went away, you see, rather suddenly", and "I even called the twilight zone" (oh, and he wants her back "rather suddenly", too), along with a couple of delightful clams from the bass player. 

Download: The Reputations - I'm Burning Up the Telephone

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Piano Bar Sammy and Three Song-Poem Lesser-Lights

Today, it's another Air EP for y'all, featuring a Sammy Marshall track where he is heard in a setting I do not recall hearing Sammy in, before. 

I don't really want spend a lot of time recapping the Air Records craziness yet again. Suffice it to say that Air seems to had connections with several of the largely song-poem factories and released some of the product, more often than not with two or three labels represented on the same release. Again, I have no idea how this worked, but Air doesn't really appear to have done any in-house work at all. On this EP, there are tracks from at least Globe and Film City, and maybe another company, as well. 

But hey, whatever their story was, the did use, for a time, one of the best label designs I've ever seen:

Globe is represented - at least, if not more - by Sammy Marshall, identified here as Sonny Marshall. And as I said, I don't think I've heard him in quite this setting before. It's almost demo-simple - Sammy and a piano, in a very Piano-Bar-Like setting. The song is "Footprints on the Moon" - this is the second song I've shared with that exact title, by the way (this one, unlike the other one, does not feature plagiarism). 

This one is an interesting little tribute, naming the Apollo 11 astronauts by name, acknowledging that there were voices in America who thought the whole endeavor was a waste of money, and praising them for having the "courage like a stone". I guess I'll need to start being more aware and impressed by the stones I pass, perhaps even basking in the radiance of their courage. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Footprints on the Moon

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Next up is another piano-and-voice number, so this could be from the same company (Globe) as the previous track. But compared to the ultra-professional Sammy Marshall - well, compared to 98% of the vocalists ever recorded on a vinyl release - the singer here, identified as Andy Gordon, is a rank amateur, and he offers up a laughably bad performance. It's not quite as bad as Bob Lloyd's greatest hit, but it's in that ballpark. I am reminded of the Stan Freberg record where the producer grabs the first kid he runs into on the street and asks him to sing on his teen pop travesty. 

The song-poet, meanwhile, clearly had Gilbert and Sullivan on his mind when he wrote "Sing Willow, Willow, Willow", but sadly, did not have the lyricism of W.S. Gilbert and did not pay for music to be created at the level of Arthur Sullivan. 

Download: Andy Gordon - Sing Willow, Willow, Willow

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~~

Side two gives us two Christian-themed songs. The first of the two is credited to Jack Carver, but even a momentary listen proves that the singer is none other than Film City low-light Jimmie James, who made a series of terrible records - and one hilariously bad two sided disc - at the very end of that label's existence. You can hear the other Jimmy James tracks I've shared here with this link, two more tracks I've credited to "Jimmy James" are here (including one credited to "Tony Markham"), and the two ridiculous tracks I just referred to ("Free Love For Sale" and "Mini Girl Song" are buried inside this WFMU post. There is also this Christmas song. 

Anyway, if the voice of Jimmie James didn't give away that "There is Something" is a Film City production, there is the omnipresent Chamberlin backing, as well. The song is a somnambulistic two minutes, with the most boring backing imaginable and that inimitable, awful voice. 

Download: Jack Carver (Jimmie James) - There is Something

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We finish up with yet another piano-and-vocal thing. Perhaps all three are from Globe, but I don't recognize two of the three singers, so who knows. The piano and the production does sound the same on all three. 

This one is sung by Margie Murray, who shows up on about a half-dozen Air releases around this time. She's not as bad as Andy Gordon, but she's several steps below good, and at least a few below okay. I'll say this, I'm glad there's not an Andy Gordon/Margie Murray duet on this record. I'm picturing them doing a version of that stupid Lita Ford/Ozzy Osbourne song now. Actually, they'd likely improve on the original...it'd be a challenge not to. 

Anyway, the song is "Jesus Suffered", which, in its construction, sounds to me like the song-poet was trying to capture some of the intense energy and feeling of the song "Where You There?", without any of the effectiveness of that songs tune or affectivity of its lyrics. 

Download: Margie Murray - Jesus Suffered

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