It’s been a bad week for deaths in the music world, first it was Tangerine Dream-founder Edgar Froese, then Demis Roussos and now Rod McKuen, the spoken word poet dubbed ‘the King of Kitsch’. He wrote over a thousand songs, several books and released hundreds of records in his lifetime and there’s sample gold in that silky voice.

Listen to one of my favouties by Rod, ‘The Mud Kids’ from ‘The Earth’ LP and tell me it’s not genius, transports me back to a time I never knew but can imagine existed. Keen-earned listeners might also recognise the opening strings from a certain mix I did with PC and DK way back.

Guilty pleasure, ‘Seasons In The Sun’, the 70’s hit by Terry Jacks, was an adaptation of a McKuen piece which was itself taken from a Jacques Brel song that he translated. He jumped on many bandwagons, aligning himself with the Beat Poets on ‘Beatsville’ and the Hippies on ‘Rod McKuen Takes A San Franciso Hippie Trip’ but the results were never convincing.

The Rod McKuen disco LP? Sure, ‘Amor, Amor, Slide… Easy In’ has at least one decent break on it and was also as used by Christian Marclay in one of his album sleeve assemblages (the hot pants side).