In 1916,
Hugo Ball would fulfill his own
dadaist manifesto by reciting his own nonsense poetry at the
Cabaret Voltaire (not that
Cabaret Voltaire), while wearing a
Cubist costume or a
cylinder with the number 13 covering his face. Ball's poem,
Gadji Beri Bimba, inspired the Talking Heads song,
I Zimbra, but his most famous poem is
Karawane, a pioneering example of
sound poetry. Karawane has more conventional
avant-garde versions on YouTube, but none is more surreal than the
recitation from memory by Marie Osmond (yes, that
Marie Osmond) from a
1980s broadcast of
Ripley's Believe It Or Not!
posted by jonp72
on Mar 9, 2009 -
21 comments
Ramsey Kearney was a teenage country music prodigy
nicknamed the Dixie Farmboy, a rockabilly singer with
the Jimmie Martin Combo, a
songwriter for Brenda Lee, and a producer of the most cloying
Elvis tribute single ever recorded. Kearney would have almost no connection to alternative music whatsoever until John Trubee,
a notorious crank phone caller and sideman for
Zoogz Rift, found an ad in the back of the
Midnight Globe tabloid from Kearney's
Nashco Records label, a
song-poem company offering to
put his words to music for a small fee. Trubee sent his own
disturbing LSD-fueled lyrics to Nashco, but to his surprise, Nashco accepted the lyrics after taking a $79.95 fee from Trubee. Kearney tweaked the lyrics slightly in order to avoid a
lawsuit from Stevie Wonder, but the end product was the cult classic novelty song,
Blind Man's Penis. (more inside)
posted by jonp72
on Aug 3, 2006 -
12 comments
