I have a decent-size collection of very old sheet music from the early 20th century given to me by a family friend. I've sold some of it and donated the proceeds to the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, since the family friend died from breast cancer. But I still have a fair amount, and I've been perusing it of late, trying to find just the right cover illustration into which to Photoshop a great title for a nonexistent song that just happened to emerge in conversation last week: "What If They Knew (I'm Really a Liberal)". Songs in the nineteen-teens really did have titles like that; great titles like "The Little Good For Nothing's Good For Something After All" and "I'm So Miserable Without You (It's Almost Like Having You Here)." OK, that last one isn't real, at least not from that time; according to the
Car Talk web site, it's a line from =gak= a Stephen Bishop song.
I just recently purchased this truly amazing specimen from Ebay...the song is called "Everybody Wants a Key To My Cellar":
Now the title itself is pretty racy, but add to it the fact that it's from 1919, and the hands are both brown and white, and you've got one heck of a subversive piece of sheet music.
So while I'm taking a stroll down Memory Lane doing trivial stuff like this,
Billmon has been busy creating
the next generation of anti-AARP ads. Go take a look; it's pretty funny stuff.