But the most remarkable element of his non-children's-lit career was Silverstein's nine albums worth of songs he recorded—and especially the album's worth of unreleased material that might even surprise fans of Shel's adult side.

As a recording artist, Silverstein brought a raspy vocal style (not unlike Tom Waits's satanic older cousin) that came from his teenage years as a Comiskey Park hot dog vendor. And his firsthand knowledge of various scenes (Greenwich Village Beats, the Chicago folk music world, Nashville's Music Row) led to a varying array of song styles and production values. By the late 1960s, this songwriting acumen helped Silverstein move into rock circles, thanks in large part to the New Jersey-based Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show.

Dr. Hook also backed Shel on his most commercially successful album, Freakin' At the Freakers Ball. "Commercially successful" is a relative term for a group of raucous and risque songs like Masochistic Baby." Shel sweetly intones that ever since his baby left him, "I've got nothing to hit but the wall." Dr. Hook gave it as much oomph as its own, Rolling Stone-cover-worthy album Sloppy Seconds, adding a sense of gleeful disconnect to the whole musical affair. The album cracked Billboard's Top 200 and recording label CBS provided a marketing budget, something beyond Shel's resources at the time. The one-sheet ad featured Shel, clad in a jean jacket, patterned shirt and cowboy boats, and what can only be described as a piratical beard, trumpeted as some sort of heir apparent to Gilbert O'Sullivan (!)

But Freakers Ball was likely the compromise point on a series of songs Shel recorded a couple of years before the final album was released, songs with eye-popping titles like "Fuck 'Em", "I Am Not a Fag" and "I Love My Right Hand.". Some of these songsare available on YouTube. Others may wish to seek the bootleg.

The titular track, so to speak, is astonishing. It starts out like a dirge, with Shel intoning that he's "all strung out, his money spent/couldn't even tell you where last year went/But I've given up payin' my bills for lent/and now the landlord, he wants his rent..." a litany of staggering and despairing proportions that demands only one answer: "Fuck 'Em." What follows is a playful series of shrieking, baleful grouses and complaints until Shel is at death's door, doing an uncanny imitation of a tubercular cough, waiting to become "the Devil's favorite pet." Then a strumming coda erupts, dissipating into a knowing chuckle and "how's that" to the obviously amused producer behind the glass door. Listening now, "Fuck 'Em" is all too apt for today's turbulent economic times, when it would be great to dismiss mere trifles like bills and rent and relationships knowing full well it isn't so simple.

A good two decades before the Divinyls teased a mass audience with "I Touch Myself", Silverstein mined similar masturbatory territory in "I Love My Right Hand" with considerably more bluntness. Rhyming "Some men prefer adolescents" with "sexual acquiescence" is rather ballsy, not to mention off the beaten phrase track. That said, considering the song peters off into patter after about two minutes - admittedly, deliberate, amusing patter about threatening to amputate the right hand for daring to stray with other limbs and objects—it does feel like a warmup for the similarly bawdy "Get My Rocks Off" performed with deadpan aplomb by Dr. Hook's basso profundo George Cummings (and later covered by Marilyn Manson, perhaps the last person one would associate with Silverstein) and the biggest laugh of "Everybody's Makin' It Big But Me", when nerdy Rik Elswit sings "they got groupies for their bands/all I've got is my right hand."