Wow. Talk about not knowing where to start\u2026<\/p>\n
First off, let’s define song-poems. From the back of the DVD:
\n“In this little known sub-culture, ‘ordinary’ people send in their
\nheartfelt, but often bizarre, poems to companies that — for a fee
\n— turn them into full-fledged musical productions. Advertising in
\nthe back of magazines, these companies lure the would-be
\nsongwriters with promises of fame and fortune.” It goes without
\nsaying, but we’ll say it anyway — fame and fortune rarely
\nmaterializes, and in fact many song-poem publishers are
\npyramid-scheme snake oil salesmen, adding new costs on the basic
\nrecording fee like Chico Marx gone haywire.<\/p>\n
So why make a DVD about it? Well, there’s a couple of reasons.
\nFirst off, many of these songs are damned funny — whether funny in
\ntheir odd combination of ineptness and earnestness or in their
\nutter lack of reference to reality. Second, some of the song-poem
\nartists interviewed in
\nOff The Charts<\/i>, the debut documentary from Jamie Meltzer,
\nare\u2026um\u2026unique individuals?<\/p>\n
We have Caglar Juan Singletary, the author of “Nonviolent Tae
\nKwon Do Troopers”, and his loving grandmother. We have the unique
\nsong stylings of Nilson V. Ortiz. We have Gene Merlino, the fastest
\nvocalist in the West, who once (or so he says) recorded 80 songs in
\nfour hours. We have a touching tribute to Rodd Keith, the man whose
\ncontemporaries called him the greatest song-poem artist of all
\ntime.<\/p>\n
In short, ladies and gents, we have a veritable cornucopia of
\nAmericana weirdness, all set to the some of the most gawd-awful
\natrocious — yet strangely fascinating — music you’ve ever heard.
\nMeltzer makes the trivial seem utterly important, yet still
\nmaintains a light touch with his direction; you end up caring about
\nthis stuff, and go from laughing at it to laughing with it. Rarely
\ndoes crass, money-grubbing mercantilism turn into an art form. Off
\nThe Charts documents the process with an unblinking eye, and you
\nend up having fun watching it.<\/p>\n
Is this for everyone? Well, maybe not; one of the folks who
\nwatched it with me actually thought it was a Christopher Guest
\nmovie for the first fifteen minutes, and by the end we decided it
\nshould<\/i> be a Christopher Guest movie. But if Mitch and Mickey
\ncan appear at the Oscars, why not care about song-poems?
\nOff The Charts<\/i> is a funny, funny DVD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5827],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-37894","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-various-artists","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37894"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}