The subtitle to this album calls it "a musical about life, love, and the pursuit of fabulous."

In a genre begun by Zebedy Colt in New York (1969)—one that introduces a man's voice singing love songs to another man—Rick Knight is currently finding his place.

It is not always a welcoming realm, as Zebedy—the original man-to-man troubadour—found out when his album, "I'll Sing for You," was released.

Zebedy wasn't a song writer as is Rick Knight. A baritone, he sang old standards like "The Man I Love" paying a major orchestra and chorus to serve as his backups. A hairy leatherman, Zebedy was zesty and confident before launching the album. He came to my house, left a copy and relied on me to pass it along to a competent reviewer.

Bob Amsel, the reviewer, was a smooth writer and, at the time, president of The New York Mattachine Society, one of the first gay lib groups. But he failed to give Zebedy the praise the singer had hoped for. Amsel wrote:

"Don't be suckered into buying these old standards just because they're sung by a guy. The orchestrations and male chorus were enough to turn me onto Lawrence Welk, who does that sort of bubble musak so much better. Zebedy (where did he ever get that name) may be a nice guy, but his taste stems from Early Tacky to Late Forest Hills, and his music (mucous?) album typifies everything that was wrong with the Eisenhower years."

I'd desperately hoped I wouldn't feel this way when Rick Knight's CD arrived in the mail. And I wished I'd sworn allegiance to the adage: "If you can't say something nice about somebody then don't say anything at all." But I hadn't sworn.

I became particularly fretful as I thumbed through the lyrics-booklet accompanying The Rainbow Room. And when I put the CD on my player, I marveled at a feeling that recalled for me what H.L. Mencken had once said reflecting on President Warren Harding's speaking style:

"Reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line: of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a kind of grandeur creeps into it."

Like Zebedy Colt, I'm certain that Rick Knight is a nice guy. But he's no lyricist, no poet, no great singer. Lounge lizards may love him, and bless them. He's a lounge singer after all, though his voice has little range or depth. "Some say I'm wasting my precious time holding out impossible notions," says one lyric. Impossible notions? Maybe. But sloppily sentimental ones to be sure-- worthy of an 8th grade dramatics class.

There are many people, after all, who don't grow much beyond 8th grade. They hear of romancing and make their own awkward adolescent stabs at it. This is what has happened on this CD: a series of unmemorable melodies have been linked to a host of grotesque caches of lovelorn words purporting to entertain.

Listening to Knight I was whisked back in time to a Texas lounge where Houston hosts had taken me on the night of my arrival. There, a wooden pianist sang for a rather staid audience. Neither his singing nor the piano were in tune. And yet, surprisingly, his audience treated him as though he were absolutely real, applauding him warmly.

Oh, that I could do as much for Rick Knight. But alas, as another of Knight's lyrics puts it, "Surely his suffering will drive us all insane."

You see, the trouble with The Rainbow Room is that like all bad art, it gushingly overdoes itself. In the lyric pamphlet, for example, thanks to the deity are rendered in the midst of lengthy listed acknowledgements:

"Inspirational thanks to God, my higher power, the Great Spirit, or however you describe the wondrous, mysterious and intelligent origin of thought and creativity." Following this outburst thanks are also rendered to two unknowns for having made Mr. Knight their "grand piano foster parent." Whew.

Not all the songs are male productions, though the album cover shows two male hands clinking long-stemmed lounge glasses. There are a couple of numbers sung by one Robin Minnerly and by Knight's lover, Tom Ochoa. Ochoa's a sweetheart. There are photos of Rick and Tom together, but no photos of Robin Minnerly. Who is she? An 8th grade dramatics class soul-mate, no doubt.

What I suppose I hate most about this album is its show-tuney staginess. Cutesy rhymes to unknown melodies. Lyrics for the second song, in fact, talk about: "cute new material." Cute, my mother once told me in an effort to make me abandon the word, means bow-legged.

But if you like lyrics about a "guy who stars in all my dreams," and if you'll just "loosen your tie and have another drink" or if you're "the fool who thinks if he offers you breakfast you might be more likely to stay," or if you go looking for love and "all (you) end up with mostly is jerks," because you're making "a list of all the things (you) want in a man," perhaps, you may enjoy The Rainbow Room more than I do.

Robin Minnerly sings, "I just want to be someone who gets to be human." Well, at least there's a glimmer of self-recognition in this lyric. Before its author succeeds, however, there are still musical hurdles he must jump and long miles to go.

Hopefully, Rick Knight won't react to me as did Zebedy Colt after he'd read Bob Amsel's less than stellar review. Zebedy's reply said:

"Who in the fuck is Bob Amsel? Out of what pile of shit did he emerge to decide what is good or bad? His review of my album is so stupidly biased and ignorant of the kind of war I'm waging that his opinions made me want to vomit all over him…If Asshole Amsel wishes to debate publicly, privately or in print, I'm ready to cut his balls off with a rusty razor blade any time."

I'm sure there are plenty of folk who will applaud The Rainbow Room, and I wish Rick Knight, Tom Ochoa and Robin Minnerly nothing less than a long run on Broadway. When it happens, I'll be in the audience like Guffman, the Manhattan-based reviewer in the wonderful film Waiting for Guffman, a film that that somehow puts me in mind of The Rainbow Room.