Veteran folksinger Bob Gibson had been a friend of Shel Silverstein's long before he devoted an album to singing compositions by the country and novelty songwriter.Silverstein, the author of "The Cover of Rolling Stone" and "A Boy Named Sue," supplied Gibson with a characteristic collection of mostly comic story songs for this release. "The Man Who Turns the Damn Thing Off and On" poked fun at automation, for example, while "Golden Kiss" was the tale of a country songwriter who encounters the ultimate country music muse -- so she says, anyway -- and "Makin' a Mess of Commercial Success" was a first-person account of a beer drinker's recruitment to make a beer commercial. There was some gallows humor, too, including "Nothin's Real Anymore," a complaint about artificial substitutes of various sorts; "Killed by a Coconut (complete with Silverstein's own interjections); and "Still Gonna Die," which expressed skepticism about fashionable attempts to improve one's health.