Song-poem Archived Music, Volume 1

One of my favorite websites of all time was the American Song-Poem Music Archive.  Back in 2004, all the song-poem mp3s from the ASPMA site mysteriously disappeared.  However, I've managed to collect all the tunes from the site and squirreled them away into my collection on randomly-sequenced audio CDs.  I always wanted to make them available again and thanks to Otis Fodder and the WFMU team, I now have a means of doing so.

I humbly present the Song-Poem Archived Music series - I have at least nine volumes planned for re-release and I will be posting one each month.  All tracks have been fixed up (I hesitate to say remastered) and re-encoded at a higher bitrate for maximum enjoyment.  Any audio quality problems are with the original files, and this is the best they can be.

And of course, a huge thank you to Phil Milstein, who hosted these files in the first place.  And from his original mp3 page he also thanks "MP3 contributors: John Fitzpatrick, Brian Linds, Tom Ardolino, Jeff Miller, Jeremy Pisani, Michael Greenberg, Will Louviere, Barbara Economon, Pea Hicks, John Trubee, Robert Dayton, Chuck Foster, Jim Blanchard, Bob Purse, Narkspud, Marc Smith and Gregg Turkington."

Volume 1: It's Not The World, It's What's In The World  (download full artwork zip)

1. Joe Stanton - A Has-Been

2. The Tune-Timers - Mental Letter

3. Sonny Marshall - South Bend, Indiana

4. Jim Wheeler & The Swinging Strings - Go-Go Girl

5. unknown - It's Not The World, It's What's In The World

6. unknown - Temptations and Desires

7. unknown - Pinch Me

8. unknown - Daddy Don't You Love Us Anymore

9. unknown - The Birth Of Spring

10. unknown - Jesus The King Of the Jews

11. unknown - My Glory Ladder

12. unknown - The King

13. Karen Kimberly and Big Action Sound - Heart Break Of Love

14. Dick Kent - Pucker Up

15. Dick Kent - On Blackness

16. Bobbi Blake - Shadrach, Meshcak and Abednego

17. Dick Kent - Mind Of Mine

18. Bobbi Blake - Too Many Babies

19. Bobbi Blake - The Yo-Yo

20. Bill Joy - Livin' In Sin

21. Rodd Keith - Run Spook Run

22. Rodd Keith - The Watchin' Man

23. Milford Perkins - The Vacant House

24. Rodd Keith - Don't Look Back, Babe

25. Gene Marshall - This World Was Planned

26. Gene Marshall - Doing The Wagon-Na-Gal

27. Gene Marshall - Crazy House Twist

28. Gene Marshall - Love Can Strike You

29. Norman Burns - Blue Atoms

30. Gary Roberts & The Satellites - You Need Time

31. Gary Roberts - What I Am, You Know

32. Mary Kaye - I Don't Want A Bracelet or Diamonds

Comments

[motordog]

Much thanks for these! I love me some song-poems...well, some of them, that is. I really look forward to the others in the series!

[Michael]

Excellent! What a great resource! Thanks for making them available again.

[John]

I hope you are going to post "Ripoff U.S.A", one of my favorites!

[Andrew]

You're going to Heaven for this, Lee.

[Dan Willems]

Yes, indeed, we shall raise a glass of Bourbon in your name.

[Jeff Gee]

We don't deserve this. You are the best. And I miss "Fudgeland."

[David Snusgrop]

You're such a hero!

[Bob Purse]

Thanks SO much for doing this. I lost some of the early tracks in a computer melt-down, and by that time, those tracks had been taken down from ASPMA to make way for newer ones (including a bunch of my own!).

Thanks again - Bob

[Stu]

Thank you.

[Rob Lett]

This is so great, thanks thanks thanks.....

[simple mike]

I'll join the chorus of praise. I've manage to hold on to a few of these (My Glory Ladder, Funk With Us) but the rest were lost to time. Thank you!

[Joe]

I adore these Rodd Keith songs. Thanks to everyone who helped put this together.

[G]

Thanks!

[Hawkster]

Better throw a saddle over the stove, Mama, 'cause we're ridin' the range tonight!!

--Hawkster

[Rob Lett]

How many volumes will there be?

[Lee R.]

Eight right now, with the possibility of more in the future...

[Joe S.]

Thanks for doing this. However, I just want to point out that re-encoding MP3s at a higher bitrate doesn't make them sound better. All the artifacts that were introduced the first time the files were encoded are still there, plus any new artifacts that occurred in the second encoding. Better to have just left the original files alone.

[Lee R.]

Hi Joe,

Yes, I realized that the files sound no better in the new encode. However, they are presented in 192 (instead of the original 128) simply because all of the mp3s were converted from 128 mp3 into .wav and then fixed (balanced, topped and tailed each one, and eliminated large pops).

Then they were burned onto CDs years ago, and now for this project I've re-encoded new mp3s from the CDs. I thought since there was more time spent on them, I wanted them to sound better than 128, so it didn't make sense to me to just encode them at the same 128 bitrate and introduce even more artifacts. I know there's artifacts with mp3s, no matter what - but I figured it wouldn't hurt to make them higher this time round.

Also, each mp3 had to be re-named and ID3 tagged, and if I'm going to do that much work, I might as well go a little further.

Plus this way, nobody can confuse these encodes with the originals if they discover them.

[Joe S.]

Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Muzik indir]

Thanks for doing this.Ah, I seem

[therichanator]

Thanks for your series of song-poem postings, it's been a very enriching listening experience. I noticed a striking similarity between three songs in your first installment, and decided to pursue the matter further. Admittedly, the results are a little uneven; perhaps the usage of headphones will prove more rewarding.

http://soundcloud.com/war-incident/pinch-whats-in-the-king

Happy listening!