Off The Charts Directed by Jamie Metzler Shout Factory DVD (2004)

Profiles of outsider musicians are becoming an identifiable subcategory of the rockumentary subgenre. Recent years have seen the release of biopics of Wesley Willis and Genghis Blues, and each of them examines how intensely the private and the performative are bound together in artists existing so far outside of the margins. Jamie Metzler's debut film is no different.

Off The Charts introduces us to a section of the music industry of which few, if any, of us are even cognizant -- the song-poem industry. Song-poetry is the practice of writing poems or lyrics and then submitting them to a small agency (often a musically inclined entrepreneur's apartment) for the purpose of having music recorded as accompaniment to the words. The music is essentially made and marketed for the people who submit their work -- the payoff is limited to owning a copy of your recorded song, and that's really all that is expected. Who would have thought that there was a devoted crop of individuals who send in their most private or most puzzling thoughts for the song-poem treatment as a life-long hobby? These are the people director Metzler befriends and examines over the course of his film.

Research is a critical component of any doc, but it is often the personal relationship between the filmmaker and the subject matter that creates the proper atmosphere for a truly successful work. The outsider musician biopic is a very special case. The reason? Outsider artists are outside for a reason, so there is generally very little for the filmmaker to go on, apart from the spark of an interest and a gut-level commitment to not trivialize the subject. The eccentric cast of characters Metzler finds is thoroughly endearing, entertaining, and earnest in their consideration of why they participate in the subcultural practice of song-poetry.

Given song titles like "I Am A Ginseng Digger", "Gem Your Igloo", "Jimmy Carter Vs. Dick Nixon" and "Blind Man's Penis", there's little doubt that the mainstream prospects for song-poetry are slim to none. Caglar Juan Singletary is a young man who channels his passive obsessions of Annie Oakley, kung fu and Christ into his work (the out-of-this-world "Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers" has to be heard to be believed); Nilson Oritz is offered as an example of a song-poet unimpressed by the musical manifestation of his written words. Iowa Mountain Tour is the most humbling example of the role that ambition plays in the cycle of song-poetry. This father and son duo decide to put their money where their mouth is and take their show on the road, travelling across their home state to perform a few songs at a rural folk music festival. The performance (excerpted in the film but included in its entirety as a special feature on the disc) is a car-crash of botched notes, forgotten lyrics and an unresponsive crowd. But in the end, more than a few in attendance congratulate Iowa Mountain Tour on their courage and conviction -- really, it's not every day that songs about "chicken insurrections" are presented to a bunch of senior citizens in lawn chairs.

To be certain that the makers of the music are properly figured into the song-poem phenomenon, Metzler follows both independent home-recording agency and marginally industrialized studio-based ventures, the latter in the form of Sunburst Studios and the iconic Gene Merlino. Merlino is a past-his-prime session vocalist whose claim to fame is backing-up Frank Sinatra, as well as having several successful theatrical roles. But as a song-poem interpreter, Merlino brings an unmatched degree of swagger and pseudo-sophistication to the game; to see him perform is to understand both how quickly these recordings come together and how the foster parents of these bastard children truly feel about their spawn.

While a director's commentary fully fleshes out the creative process and the scholarly foundation of the research, the real treasure here is "Columbine Records Presents: America Sings!", a paid programming variety television show from the late-1970s or early-1980s featuring the musical performances of song-poems by B-level talent endorsed by a then-prominent song-poem studio. It's an eye opening look at the machinery behind the song-poem industry at what would appear to be its peak. And it's a wonderfully daft parallel to the work Metzler presents twenty-years on as a tribute to these people who refuse to be cast as talentless and exploited, just off-the-charts eccentric.

-- Mike Baker