Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Even in these days of cheap downloads you'd still say $1.50 for 13 pieces of music and a spoken word track is kinda cheap. Possibly even good value . . . until you play the Teen to Teen Around the World album put out on the Word label from Illinois.
According to the liner notes, the Youth for Christ organisation would send out groups of American teenagers ("each including half a dozen of our more charming, talented and Christian young people") to all corners of the globe to assist local missionaries and to testify about the power of Christ in their lives.
It was no holiday however (as the girl here hints at). The notes say "it takes more than a top talent to carry a teenager through five grueling months of five or six meetings a day, living in the homes of the nationals, changing diets, lack of sleep and the constant giving of themselves".
Yes, that does sound tiring -- and our teen here sounds, unfortunately, utterly bereft of enthusiasm and a spark of joei de vivre as she reads the message.
Sad to say, if her uninspired talk wasn't enough to put you off the mission, the music which follows might be. I also wonder how the light opera went down in some part of the globe at the same time as the Stones were climbing the charts with Satisfaction and the Beatles were releasing Rubber Soul.
So a $1.50 wasted? Not really, but maybe.
For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory use the RSS feed for daily updates, and check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.
post a comment