The Miami Herald Song

Rochester Slim has, in the past few days, received quite a bit of attention from an old song he did in the mid 90s titled The Miami Herald Song. Apparently a cassette tape that sent to my sister, who worked at The Herald at the time, turned up during a recent office move. Then it started spreading via email and blogs. I'm kind of amazed, amused, and pleased at the same time.

Dave Barry blogged about it and received a number of comments - a mixture of admiration, perplexion, derision - just what any hard-working artist would love to get.

"ow"

"Oh. My. God. The Rock Bottom Remainders have got to cover this (Dave Barry's band)."

"Oh dear Lord. Who is this???... punctures eardrums with sharpened pencils"

"Does Gerald deliver the Herald to NC? I thought it was kind of catchy but when I started playing it my lab got up and left the room. Everybody's a critic." (ain't it the truth!)

"From the inaugural and (as it happened) last episode of "Everglades Home Companion."

"Who pronounces Herald as "Hear-ald?"

"Someone should force Barry Manilow to listen to that over and over, so he'd know how it feels to suffer like that."

"I knew they were getting desperate for sales in the newspaper industry, but I never knew it was THIS bad."

"It would have been a darned shame to have inadvertantly thrown that one out, huh? What was that originally produced for? It actually is pretty good, except for the fact that newspapers aren't usually big on jingle-type audio promotions."

Greg Cote did another blog about it today. He said: ".... the oddest song you have ever heard or ever will ... I believe it actually is an unearthed demo from a 1970s promotional campaign that never aired. And with good reason...The song probably is not Top 40 or dance-floor material. If only we could have found this in time to have Michael Jackson overdub a hiccup or a hee-hee. Nevertheless, remember that, although times may be dark for our industry and this song sounds oddly and perhaps presciently funereal, always, for God's sake always remember, no matter what: The Herald is your friend!"

Well. My late sister Liz Donovan who worked at The Herald for many years. I wrote and recorded the song for her amusement I think around 1996. Liz was my favorite person in the world. It was meant to be funny, but I guess it had a point about newspapers that now in 2009 is all too evident.

I was in the early stages of figuring our recording technology and used a small, cheap 4 Track cassette recorder. I did it quickly, warts and all, and sent her the crude copy of the cassette. I know she found it funny enough to play it for then-publisher Dave Lawrence, who actually wrote me a letter telling me that "it made my day."

I always though that The Herald should use the song for a TV spot - a gospel choir in the Orange Bowl singing the chorus to a packed crowd at a Dolphins game. People would have thought that The Herald was hip and circulation would have grown accordingly.