Les Crane, 1935-2008
So I guess it's an indication that the unnecessary music trivia is finally seeping from my mind, that I didn't see the Les Crane obit yesterday and immediately think, "Oh yeah, the guy who did 'Desiderata,'" as I probably would have 10 years ago. But lately between everything I haven't had much time to 'go placidly amid the noise and haste' and retain stuff like that (or upkeep a blog apparently). So I didn't pick up on the the fact that Crane was the 'recording artist' behind the 1971 pop-mystic novelty hit until I discovered it buried at the end of the NYT piece, which included a quote from Les basically disowning the song. (“I can’t listen to it now without gagging,” he told The Los Angeles Times. - way to dis your loyal fans there, Les!)
But anyway, 'Desiderata.' Kitschy, certainly, and ripe for parody (see below). But it holds up in the line of spoken-word one-hit wonders that would stretch at least from 'Ringo' to '(Everybody's Free to Wear) Sunscreen'. And a fine tradition it was, too - though is there still a place in the world for the spoken-word novelty record? Probably not at this point...
Of course no discussion of "Desiderata" would be complete without its answer song "Deteriorata." This one from '72 comes courtesy of the National Lampoon, and was in fact written by Tony Hendra and Christopher Guest, who went on to greater things as manager and lead guitarist of a band of some note 10 years later....
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