Search - Rodd Keith :: I Died Today

Reflections from Rodd's daughter

Elizabeth Grant | Houston, TX United States | 06/19/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Rodd was the kind of megawatt musician who can't help but to vandalize himself. History is littered with men just like him: brilliant ne'er-do-wells who hit the wall with pyrotechnic penache. What redeems Rodd--from obscurity, at least--is his sense of humor. It is apparent in every line of every song he sharked. You will hear it, too, and perhaps something more. I do. To me, Rodd's song poems are like tinsel on an artificial tree: irrelevant,yes, but oddly memorable. Even haunting. When I listen, I don't hear a dead man. I hear a man who failed to bear up under life's perplexing ironies."

Shake those hips for me...

David G. Smith | Fairfax, CA United States | 01/19/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the 60's and 7o's, when normal people like you and I had a hankering to write a poem aqbout the turmoils and joys of their lives, they had a way to turn it into a song. Send fifty dollars to an organization and they would write a song and produce it. One of those composers was the amazing Rodd Keith. Woe is us. We have no outlet when we have to write about global warming, or Brad and Jennifer.....But the people in the 60's had the ultimate outlet to talk about such things as the hippie movement, America, General Custer....Ok, this work is a fantastic time capsule of a different era. Is the music great? Yes. Rodd Keith manages to find a way to turn peoples poetry into cheaply produced wonder...Are the songs great? No. Not at all. In fact they are hilariously bad. Hilariously bad.(How about the Dance Songs Do The Pig and Do The Turkey..,..) but they are so innocently written by people who thought they might be discovered that you can help but laugh and cry. These are songs by us....For something extremely different...check this baby out....and do the turkey now."

Rodd just plays the good notes...

smurdge | 08/06/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Don Bolles has described the song poem industry as "one of the richest motherlodes of pure unfiltered glorious wrongness to be found in any field of human endeavor", but the emphasis of this CD is on the music, which is totally right. Rodd Keith was kind of a low-budget Brian Wilson, taking lyrical inanities and investing them with meaning by wrapping them in some of the most evocative, creative, and occasionally funny musical sounds imaginable. The range here is wonderful. You get the the Chipmunk- sounding novelty of "The Music Man from Mars", the late 60s Elvis feel of "Don't Throw My Love Away", the mesmerizing riff 'n' recitation of "I Died Today" and the heartbroken minimalism of "In the Stillness of the Night". You can laugh at the words and marvel at the musical invention at the same time. Great melodies, great arrangements, not too much polish, some laughs, what's wrong about that?Yeah, a lot of this stuff is silly, goofy and strange, but most of it is no worse than the average pop, rock or country hit that's gotten played to death over the years. There's nothing here any more inept than America's "the heat was hot" or that Fleetwood Mac song with the imortal lines "thunder only happens when it's raining" (it doesn't), and "when the rain waSHES you clean you'll know" (horrible scan). Stevie Nicks and the America boys made tons of money from those clunkers, so it's maybe not so naive for the people who sent in their lyrics in response to a song poem ad to think that maybe lightening could strike them too (even if it isn't raining).The song-poem industry is often depicted as kind of a scam that preyed on poor dumb talentless people hoping to become the next Johnny Mercer. That maybe true to the extent that the industry fed on people's expectations and promised more than they could deliver, but those who sent in lyrics and were lucky enough to have Rodd Keith do the music got a work of art out of it, so maybe they got their money's worth after all. You will too if you buy this CD."