(As published in the Illinois Entertainer ... )
David Lee Roth
Your Filthy Little Mouth
(Reprise)
The last time Nile Rodgers produced a comeback album for someone named David--Bowie's Let's Dance, in case you'd forgotten--he hit paydirt. In David Lee Roth, however, Rodgers faces a bigger challenge. Roth is, after all, something of a one-trick stud. So we get a steady flow of sex jokes and boasts broken up by the occasional bluesy, world-weary lament. Not that the jokes aren't funny ("She was atomic / without a doubt. / The cowboy shirt she wore / contained a lot of fallout"), but coming from a playboy old enough to be Eddie Vedder's dad, they make Roth seem more like a self-parody than ever. Maybe if he'd trimmed the CD from fifty-six minutes to the thirty or so he was good for way back when, his raunch would sound less like paunch, his rock less like schlock. The lone exception: "No Big Ting," in which cabaret calypso meets Al Jolson in a catchy, goofy tribute to Roth's genius for musical miscegenation and not sweating life's "little shit."
David Lee Roth
Your Filthy Little Mouth
(Reprise)
The last time Nile Rodgers produced a comeback album for someone named David--Bowie's Let's Dance, in case you'd forgotten--he hit paydirt. In David Lee Roth, however, Rodgers faces a bigger challenge. Roth is, after all, something of a one-trick stud. So we get a steady flow of sex jokes and boasts broken up by the occasional bluesy, world-weary lament. Not that the jokes aren't funny ("She was atomic / without a doubt. / The cowboy shirt she wore / contained a lot of fallout"), but coming from a playboy old enough to be Eddie Vedder's dad, they make Roth seem more like a self-parody than ever. Maybe if he'd trimmed the CD from fifty-six minutes to the thirty or so he was good for way back when, his raunch would sound less like paunch, his rock less like schlock. The lone exception: "No Big Ting," in which cabaret calypso meets Al Jolson in a catchy, goofy tribute to Roth's genius for musical miscegenation and not sweating life's "little shit."
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