Three Dog Night: Coming Down Our Way (2002)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )

The Gig: Three Dog Night
Saturday, September 25, 8:30 P.M.
Red River Arts Festival, Shreveport
Admission: $5


From 1969 to 1974, it was easy to be hard on Three Dog Night.

An anachronistic hit machine at the dawning of the Album-As-Art age, Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells made placing three-minute singles at the top of the charts look so simple it was difficult to believe they could be as “important” as “serious” stretcher-outers like, oh, Vanilla Fudge.

Time, however, has a way of winnowing away the chaff. And in retrospect Three Dog Night’s bite has proven the equivalent of its bark. The group’s twenty-plus hits have not only held up but also come to be seen as links in a grand interpretive vocal-group chain going back at least as far as the Mills Brothers.

That tradition has all but disappeared, but group founder Hutton believes that the unmistakable influence of Three Dog Night can still be felt.

“There’s the Three Tenors,” chuckles Hutton. “That’s a pretty blatant cop of us, isn’t it? I realized that right away. ‘Hmmm, three lead singers--I wonder where they got that idea!’”

Three Dog Night used to have three lead singers. The lineup that’s coming to Shreveport’s Red River Arts Festival, however, has two. Hutton and Wells, both sixty, patched up their differences long ago and are the group’s official face. Negron, who tours on his own, remains estranged.

Hutton won’t discuss the reasons, but chances are they have something to do with Negron’s many years of heroin addiction and failed therapy as chronicled by Negron himself in his autobiography Three Dog Nightmare.

It would be nice, of course, if all three would get together again, if only so fans could hear “Old-Fashioned Love Song” comin' down in three-part harmony the way it used to. Alas, such a reunion seems unlikely. Until recently, Negron’s website referred disparagingly to his former comrades as an “oldies” act, and Hutton and wells, whose current press-kit bio doesn’t mention Negron at all, have airbrushed him out of the vintage album cover photos that appear in their new DVD, Three Dog Night Live with the Tennessee Symphony Orchestra (Image). How, one wonders, can people be so heartless? Besides, isn’t two the loneliest number since the number one?

Apparently not always. In addition to the DVD--which, Orwellian erasures notwithstanding, is well shot and creatively edited--Hutton and Wells have also just released Three Dog Night with the London Symphony Orchestra (Image), a studio disc featuring re-recordings of eleven of their biggest hits, orchestral segues worthy of the Moody Blues, and two new songs, one of which, the melancholy country-folk-rock “Sault Ste. Marie,” is as likable as anything else ever recorded under the Three Dog Night name. “It’s kind of an area we don’t usually do,” says Hutton, who sings lead on the song. “But I like that one too--the words, just the whole feel of it.”

Time once was when a songwriter could receive no higher praise--or hope of hitting the financial jackpot--than to be told that Three Dog Night liked one of his songs. From Laura Nyro (“Eli’s Coming”), Hoyt Axton (“Joy to the World”), and Paul Williams (“Old-Fashioned Love Song”) to Harry Nilsson (“One”), Randy Newman (“Mama Told Me [Not to Come]”), and Elton John (“Your Song”), the group did more to pound the songs of post-Brill Building pop composers into the head of the American populace than any other act of the last thirty-five years.

Hutton says it was the success of Three Dog Night’s second album, 1969’s Suitable for Framing, that opened the song-pitching floodgates. “We were hot, so we were right at the front of the line. All the songs came to us.

“Now,” he admits, “we’re way, way, way at the end of the line. Celine Dion and people like that are getting all of those songs now.”

Nevertheless, Hutton remains an inveterate song hunter. His current cache of undiscovered gems , he says, is only three songs deep, but he believes that eventually he and Wells will come up with enough new material for at least one more all-original Three Dog Night album.

Meanwhile, he says, they wanted to do the London Symphony Orchestra disc so that people can hear “how we sound now” and that the task of re-recording many of the top-forty era’s most durable radio classics was not daunting. “I’m very proud of it. For old guys, I think we still have chops.”

“On the road,” he says, ‘when we arrive at a venue, I’ll always ask the promoter, ‘Who was here before we were?’ And he’ll say, ‘Oh, so-and-so.’ And I’ll say, ‘How were they?’ And he’ll say, ‘Well, not so good really.’ Then I’ll think of the group, and they were never any good. Their sound was all studio tricks and effects to start with.”

Not so with Three Dog Night.

“We sounded--and still sound--how we really sounded,” says Hutton. “We never used any tricks.”

"Two for Texas" Show Preview: Kinky Friedman & Billy Joe Shaver (2002)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana, October 2002)

Between writing detective novels, shooting the breeze with Don Imus, keeping several cigar manufacturers in the black, and helping out with the Utopia Rescue Ranch for animals in Medina, Texas, Kinky Friedman doesn’t spend much time in recording studios anymore. His most recent on-disc appearances--Live from Down Under and Classic Snatches from Europe--are collaborative live albums, with Billy Joe Shaver and Little Jewford Shelby respectively on Sphincter Records, the label he co-owns with Shelby and whose motto, give or take an apostrophe, is “Leaving Our Competitors Behind.”

Still, there is one song that Friedman wouldn’t mind returning to the studio to record. “It’s time for me and Willie Nelson to do our duet of ‘Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,’” he says, referring to Ned Sublette's camp-country classic. “I’d like to let everybody know that my heroes have always been faggots.”

Friedman, who’ll turn fifty-eight this Halloween, was politically incorrect long before political incorrectness was cool. A major-label country musician in the mid-’70s, he named his band the Texas Jewboys and gave the world such masterpieces of insensitivity as “Ride ’Em Jewboy” (about the Holocaust), “Men’s Room, L.A.” (about upholding high standards of personal hygiene with a gospel tract), “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in Bed” (about keeping women’s libbers in their place), and, his signature tune, “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews like Jesus Anymore” (about “a redneck nerd in a bowlin’ shirt ... a-guzzlin’ Lone Star beer / Just talkin’ religion and politics for all the world to hear”). By comparison, songs like “Ol’ Ben Lucas” (rhymes with “mucus,” about an inveterate nose-picker) and “Asshole from El Paso” (a parody of Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee”) seemed tame.

Friedman readily admits that such material “kept [him] poor” (“It kept down the airplay totally”), but he still performs it, and he’s not the only one. In 1999, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Delbert McClinton, Dwight Yoakam, Tom Waits, and other high-profile admirers of the “Kinkster” recorded Pearls in the Snow (Oarfin),a seventeen-track album of Friedman compositions that stands as one of history’s few genuinely useful tribute LPs. Currently on tour with his fellow Texan Billy Joe Shaver on what’s being billed as the “Two for Texas Tour,” Friedman performs tonight at Tipitina’s in New Orleans and tomorrow night at Rabb’s Steak and Spirits in Ruston. “We do a few songs together,” says Friedman, “but mostly it’s back and forth, so there is kind of a tension and a competition. There’s a good dynamic going on.”

For his part, Shaver, sixty-three, is touring in support of The Earth Rolls On (New West), the second in a series of what many had hoped would be a long run of albums featuring him in collaboration with his axe-slinging son Eddy. That the partnership was cut short by Eddy’s drug-related death on New Year’s Eve 2000 at the age of thirty-eight has only deepened the music’s appeal for many of Shaver’s fans, of whom Friedman himself may well be chief. “Kristofferson wrote some great stuff,” Friedman says, “and Harlan Howard did too. But Billy Joe is the best living poet in country music. I mean, the weight of the catalog that he has written is quite outstanding. The difference between us is I’m doing the same songs I was doing twenty years ago. Billy Joe is currently writing great songs.”

Another difference is that Friedman is currently writing best-selling detective novels. In keeping with a tradition established by its fourteen predecessors, the protagonist of the latest, Meanwhile Back at the Ranch (Simon & Schuster), is Friedman himself--or, at least, Friedman as he’d be if instead of a hard-bitten, cigar-chomping, liquor-quaffing, blisteringly satirical, novel-writing Semitic minstrel with friends like Willie Nelson and Don Imus he were a hard-bitten, cigar-chomping, liquor-quaffing, blisteringly satirical, novel-writing Semitic private eye (or, as Friedman would say, “dick”) with friends like Willie Nelson and Don Imus.

Fast-paced, profane, funny, suspenseful, and written in the first person, Meanwhile Back at the Ranch details Friedman’s attempts to find a missing three-legged cat in Texas and a missing, autistic ten-year-old boy in New York. It’s also rife with pop-cultural and rock-and-roll allusions, and Friedman knows how to use ’em: high noon is “Gary Cooper time,” midnight is “Cinderella time,” and a character named Hattie tells a character named Mattie about a thing she saw, just like in Sam the Sham’s “Wooly Bully.” The novel, in short, makes an ideal gift for that literate baby boomer in your life who has almost everything. “The books are what’s happening now,” says Friedman. “My interest and my energy are going into them.”

The effort is paying off. According to the “bibliography” link at kinkyfriedman.com, the novels are “now being published in Swedish, Japanese and fourteen other languages, two of which even Kinky cannot read.” Many of the “Two for Texas” dates, in fact, are doubling as book signings. According to Friedman, however, the audience for his books and the audience for his music seldom overlap. “They’re wholly two different audiences. If I could combine those two, I would have a huge audience.”

It is, he says, his “cross to bear.” “But the Lord only gives you as big a cross as you can carry, you know?”

Kinky Friedman & Billy Joe Shaver: Live in Baton Rouge (2002)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana, October 16, 2002)

A lower-key gig than the “Two for Texas” show at Chelsea’s Café in Baton Rouge last week would be hard to imagine. Even with Jeff “Little Jewford” Shelby’s one-man opening act in full swing inside, the eight-o’clock darkness and the café’s extinguished outer lights rendered signs of life invisible.

Those equipped with night vision, however, would have noticed a cowboy-hatted, mustachioed, cigar-smoking, beer-nursing figure seated at an outside table, and in so doing would have noticed Kinky Friedman, the novelist, country singer, and quintessential Texas Jewboy who would soon be joining his fellow Texan, the equally quintessential Billy Joe Shaver, for an evening of below-the-belt satire, old-time religion, surreal rabble rousing, gallows humor, and song.

It’s too late, obviously, for anyone who missed the show to see it now, but Live from Down Under (Sphincter), the recently released double-disc set of the tour’s Australian leg available at sphincterrecords.com and other fine Sphincter outlets, is a reasonable and entertaining facsimile thereof. Minor set-list discrepancies aside, the main difference between the Baton Rouge and Down Under shows is that the Sydney audience was far less rowdy than the one at Chelsea’s, which consisted primarily of middle-aged men given to hooting, hollering, clapping, guffawing, and flicking Bics to Friedman’s and Shaver’s every pronouncement, wisecrack, and exhortation.

(Friedman: “An intellectual is someone who takes a simple idea and makes it complex”; Shaver: “Simplicity don’t need to be greased”; Friedman: “I hate intellectuals, although I am one”; Shaver: “If you don’t love Jesus, go to hell!”; Friedman: [introducing bandmember Washington Ratso] “He’s the Lebanese boy in the band!”; Shaver: “Jesus is the one who made us all Number Two”; Friedman: [joining hands with Ratso] “Ratso and I consider ourselves the last true hope for peace in the Middle East”; Shaver: [singing “Black Rose”] “The devil made me do it the first time, the second time I done it on my own”; Friedman: “Naomi Judd used to tell her children, ‘Always say your prayers and wash your hands, because Jesus and germs are everywhere.’”)

Little Jewford, after warming up the crowd, remained onstage to play electric keyboards, kazoos, and the melodica for both Shaver and Friedman. He also functioned as a one-man Firesign Theater, playing Ed McMahon to Friedman’s Johnny Carson and punctuating the proceedings with MC patter, deadpan asides, and impressively articulate belches.

And then, of course, there were the songs. Singing “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in Bed” always takes matzo balls, especially in a club whose audience includes women armed with beer bottles. But Friedman’s decision to open (after winning the who'll-go-first coin toss) with the sniper narrative “The Ballad of Charles Whitman” on the day that the shooting of a Washington, D.C., school boy highlighted a week of Beltway-area random shootings--well, let’s just say that Jesus ain’t the only Jew they ain’t makin’ more like anymore.

2002 Album Reviews: D-F

(As published in the Times of Acadiana unless otherwise noted....)

Dash: Sonic Boom (Write On)--Dash is the latest incarnation of Dash Rip Rock, the little Baton Rouge band that not only could but also did and still does. Album number nine leads off with ten new Bill Davis originals, the least of which echo his betters (e.g., Marshall Crenshaw and the Beach Boys on “Dream Together”) and the best of which give off Southern pop, rock, country, folk, and bar-band-boogie vibes as only songs awash in references to Mississippi, Evangeline, waltzes, and the South can. Then, in the true spirit of lagniappe, the album concludes with three covers that, name change or no name change, rip and rock: Rufus Jagneaux’s “Opelousas Sostain” (sic), the Beatles’ “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” and Steve Poltz’s “Monkeys,” which begins “Well, I went to the Zoo the other day. / I had seven hits of acid. / I was on my way” and ends with primates out the wazoo. Rating: Four jewels out of five.

Neil Diamond: Play Me: The Complete Uni Studio Recordings ... Plus! (MCA)--I used to think I had a soft place in my heart for Neil Diamond, but now I realize the soft place was in my head. I used to think that by playing his Jonathan Livingston Seagull for my dying parakeet when I was in the seventh grade I’d helped the little guy hang on a little longer, but now I think I probably hastened his end. I used to think I’d find lots to like on Diamond’s late-’60s/early-’70s LPs once I had the chance to investigate, but now that MCA has collapsed six of them into this three-CD set I realize I was wrong. In short: some hits, some oddball curiosities (e.g., “The Pot Smoker’s Song”), some O.P.K. (other people’s kitsch, e.g., “Mr. Bojangles”), and lots and lots of crap. Rating: Two counts of involuntary budgieslaughter out of five.

Celine Dion: A New Day Has Come (Epic)--With Barbra Streisand a political blowhard, Whitney Houston a (Bobby) brownnosing crackhead, and Mariah Carey a woman under the influence, Celine Dion is easily the most likable of her ilk. But except for her understated treatment of the jazz standard “Nature Boy” and maybe the temptation-acknowledging “When the Wrong One Loves You Right,” there’s no reason to listen to this hackneyed comeback twice. The gimmick is to graft gospel lingo onto secular schmaltz in a blind grope for something generically “inspirational.” Hence, references abound to “prayer,” “faith,” “miracles,” “heaven,” and being “touched by an angel,” but they’re really just metaphors for the chanteuse’s happy marriage, her baby boy, and her upcoming three-year concert engagement at Caesar’s Palace. She’d be more interesting if she’d sing about those topics directly. Rating: Two more Grammies anyway out of five.

Dirty Vegas: Dirty Vegas (Capitol/Credence)--The style is that trance-like brand of modern disco beloved of Ecstasy addicts, and although there’s no objectionable material as such, the limp philosophizing of lyrics like “There must be a better way / There must be a way to change ... Leave the past ’cos it don’t mean a thing” does get annoying. Actually, I’d prefer annoying to mechanical, which along with monotonous is what this disc nearly winds down to before the unannounced Pink Floyd cover at the end. In case you’re wondering, the Dirty Vegas guys don’t need no education. Or so they think. Rating: Two-and-a-half Wayne Newtons out of five.

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (DMZ/Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax)--I haven’t actually seen the movie--you think I’m a nut?--but the event is too overwhelming to ignore altogether. Don’t know whether this soundtrack will follow its predecessor, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to Grammy glory, but moving units should be no problem, not with three new Ann Savoy cuts helping sales in Acadiana, new Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, and Tony Bennett betokening demographic criss-crossover, some classic blues and Alison Krauss ensuring AAA airplay, and a new Dylan recording hooking the many unwilling to wait for Greatest Hits, Volume Four. Rating: Three-and-a-half platinum magnolias out of five.

Dixie Chicks: Home (Open Wide/Monument/Columbia)--Having been granted the serenity to accept what I cannot change--specifically, that this album will no doubt rule the roost for the foreseeable future--I’ve decided to make my peace with it early and hunker down while the hunkering’s good. Surprisingly, the experience has been largely pain free. Though the vocals are still as tightly strung as the mandolins, dobros, and banjos that bind the Chicks to country-music tradition, only on “White Trash Wedding” do they threaten to turn into the Cyndi Laupers of studied hickdom. Elsewhere they sing convincingly, if not always well, of love, home, pearls of water on their hips, and a soldier who’s no 9/11 stereotype. They also steal “Landslide” from Stevie Nicks. Can a reclamation of Patti Smith’s “Godspeed” be far behind? Rating: Three-and-a-half Easter eggs out of five.

DJ Sammy: Heaven (Robbins)--A novelty, yes, but one that by draping its gimmickry across the time-tested hooks of the Mamas and the Papas, Paul Simon, Bryan Adams, and Don Henley ("The Boys of Summer") affirms the durability and necessity of melody.

Donna the Buffalo: Live from the American Ballroom (Wildlife)--What does it mean that a band can exist for fifteen years, record four studio albums, tour never-endingly, achieve an impressive ragged-right balance, yet never show up on one’s radar until it plays the Festival International? Or that the Village Voice can compare it to “Ralph Stanley sitting in with Bob Marley and the Zydeco All-Stars” when its real synthesis is obviously the Grateful Dead (average song length: eight minutes) and BeauSoleil (accordion, Step Rideau cover, song called “Revelation Two-Step”)? Or that my classical-musician wife can enjoy these spirited jams as much as I do when nearly everything else in the review pile drives her nuts? Rating: Four Godchaux’s out of five.

Donovan: Pied Piper (Music for Little People)--This album is allegedly for children, but when Donovan sings “The sun is a very magic fellow” on track three, you can’t help thinking, “Yes, but the sun’s yellow is most definitely not mellow.” At which point you realize that Donovan’s music has always been child-centered, that the aesthetic accomplishment of songs like “Mellow Yellow,” “Sunshine Superman,” and “Jennifer Juniper” is their transformation of the nursery rhyme into a folk music that--with no sacrifice of naïvety, whimsicality, or charm--can retain its appeal even when sequenced between mannish boys like the Rolling Stones and Eric Burdon on oldies radio. Several of these songs, re-recorded here, did, in fact, begin their lives on Donovan’s ’60s albums, but the best ones sound as timeless as Donovan’s voice. Rating: Four epistles to Dippy out of five.

Bob Dylan: Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Review (Sony/Legacy)--The tour this box commemorates has become legendary not on the strength of Dylan’s then-current sound but on the strength of his then-current look and his then-current friends/band. In theory, the spectacle should’ve been as fun to hear as it was to look at, but even “Isis,” this collection’s one undeniable highlight, sounds better on Biograph. And Hard Rain, the single-disc LP that Columbia released from this tour’s 1976 leg in ’76, preserves more must-hear performances. On the plus side, this box includes a bonus DVD with a video of the Biograph “Isis,” thus preserving the look. Rating: Three-and-a-half Renaldo’s and Clara’s out of five.

Echobrain: Echobrain (Chophouse/Surfdog)--If this trio sounded even a teensy bit like Metallica, the mere mention of Jason Newsted’s presence in it might move metalheads to illicitly download its music. But this trio sounds nothing like Metallica: “Keep Me Alive” has the kind of acoustic guitars and violins that have been coloring ace melancholia since “As Tears Go By,” the acoustically wispy “We Are Ghosts” feels every bit as spectral as its title, and the mellotron-like sounds of “The Feeling Is Over” recall days of future past. Even “Highway 44,” a song with obvious roots in Cream-era electric blues, emphasizes melody, hook, and Dylan Donkin’s almost effeminately vulnerable Left Banke singing over brawn. The words make no sense (they’re supposed to, I think), so I guess the group’s more echo than brain. But what echoes! Why, the whimsical untitled hidden track even sounds like a Paul McCartney outtake. Rating: Three-and-a-half swapped MP3s out of five.

Walter Egan: Apocalypso Now (Gaff)--“Magnet and Steel” fans not-shy enough to give this solid and consistently entertaining modern-rock album a try (and to overlook the absence of Buckingham and Nicks) will be abundantly rewarded--not only by the Mac-ish “Only Love Is Left Alive” and the very pretty “Better Days” but also by the surfin’-Byrdsy “The Reason Why” and the hard-rocking, organ-driven “Stubborn Girl.” Who says heroes are hard to find? Rating: Four future games out of five.

Eminem: The Eminem Show (Aftermath)--Legend has it that in the days of royalty common folk had no qualms about proclaiming naked emperors to be well dressed. In our day, when Jerry Springer is king, it’s rappers to whom we attribute imaginary qualities. Mathers has been misidentified by many who should know better as an artistic genius. Still, as a case study in the extremes of mass-marketable pathologies, he’s not without interest. Those who listen between the lines will note that he fully acknowledges his own wretchedness, considers homosexuality abnormal, claims he won’t let his own daughter listen to him, warns parents that if they’re not careful their kids could turn out like him, and otherwise seems one with the conservative Republicans he criticizes for criticizing him. But conservative Republicans don’t criticize him for what’s between his lines; they criticize him for the lines themselves, lines which in their relentless profanity, vulgarity, obscenity, and narcissism provide overabundant evidence of an intelligence too underdeveloped and solipsistic to take seriously. Conservative Democrats would probably criticize him too--if there were any. One-and-a-half James Trafficants out of five.

Evangeline Made: A Tribute to Cajun Music (Vanguard)--Having married into Cajun music instead of absorbing it as part of the atmosphere in which she grew up, Ann Savoy loves and champions the tradition with an erstwhile outsider’s awareness of what it takes to get the attention of the world-at-large. And never before has she made as much of that awareness as she has on this future winner of a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy. First, with haunting ballads interspersed among the waltzes and two-steps, there’s simply a greater variety of music than one usually encounters on Cajun albums. Second, with singing courtesy of a veritable folk, rock, and country Who’s Who, there’s a greater variety of voices as well. Oddly, with the exception of Richard Thompson and maybe Patty Griffin, none of the singers sound particularly like themselves; even the usually irreducible David Johansen and John Fogerty take on the nature of their surroundings. What the singers do sound like is natural-born Cajuns, a testament, perhaps, to their acting as much as to their singing. And the music, performed as it is by ensembles of “all-star Cajun musicians” (Steve Riley et. al in the case of Nick Lowe) is never anything less than worthy of the attention of the world-at-large. Rating: Four-and-a-half French immersions out of five.

Freddy Fender: La Musica de Baldemar Huerta (Back Porch)--Not until he hooked up with the Texas Tornados was Freddy Fender considered much of an album artist, and even then he had to wait for the best-of. Now, after more than four decades of striving for hits and with the government-mandated retirement age just around the corner, he relaxes, settles back into the music of his youth, and comes up with the best album of his career. I always knew he could sing, but I never knew that he or anyone else for that matter could ever sing well enough to make me put on a traditional conjunto album of my own volition and enjoy it all the way through. Beautiful and haunting, the drumlessness a gift to the violins, guitarron, and muted trumpet, the album is so of a piece that by the time the bonus cuts (“Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” “Secret Love”) bring the program to a close, they feel like the nice but extraneous encores they are. Rating: Four-and-a-half lone stars out of five.

The Flying Burrito Brothers: Sin City: The Very Best of the Flying Burrito Brothers (A&M)--In case you don’t know, the first eleven tracks (out of twenty-five) are Gilded Palace of Sin, a seminal masterwork long considered the touchstone of much of the best country, rock, and country-rock of the past thirty years, with a bona fide dead avatar front and center to boot. That’s a lot of hype to hear through, but the music (especially “Wild Horses” and “If You Gotta Go”) rewards the effort.

The Forever Fabulous Chickenhawks Showband and All-Star Revue Starring Big Luther Kent: Live from the Gypsy Tea Room (Louisiana Red Hot)--It’s like this, fellas: I only get 480 words per column, and there are twenty-one in your group name, album title, and record company alone. That leaves barely any room to tell folks that this live disc, like the two you licensed to CSP in ’99, proves you’re the real-life Commitments; only instead of soulful amateurs you’re soulful pros. Meters, Bland, Melvin, Wither, King (Albert)--where else can a poor boy go to hear them together again for the first time? But what happened to Al “TNT” Braggs? And why not identify the sister doing Etta on “Tell Mama”? I mean, any dozen-or-so-member all-male revue will smell fishy enough to the Title IX gang as it is. Rating: Three salmon daves out of five.

John Fred and His Playboy Band: Somebody’s Knockin’ (TJ)--I respond readily to the slow pretty songs and can relate to the ones that boogie. In between I note synthesizers and programmed drums (apparently the Playboy Band is a fiction these days), religious-conversion songs (apparently sixty-two isn’t too old to be reborn), and songs about partying in the South during the summer (apparently sixty-two isn’t too old to appreciate girls in bikinis). As for the nostalgia and LSU references, I can relate to those too. Rating: Three Judy’s in disguise with Botox out of five.

2002 Album Reviews: A-C

(As published in the Times of Acadiana unless otherwise noted...)


Abba: The Definitive Collection (Polar/Polydor)--The definitive "video" collection, that is, and definitive proof that never were more attractive people made to wear such unattractive outfits. It’s almost as if Fate, having decided she’d gone overboard with the foursome’s looks, decided to overcompensate with clothing. It’s not so much a ’70s look or even a ’70s pop-star look as a Swedish approximation of a ’70s pop-star look. Yet, given that Abba outsold everyone else during the ’70s--the Bee Gees, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots--perhaps it was right. Or perhaps the sales would’ve been even better had the videos that were this seldom-touring group’s main medium of international exposure not disseminated the look worldwide. Did matters improve with the ’80s? Clothes-wise, yes; hair-wise, no. Meanwhile, film majors will note the occasional Bergman homage, and the music, as always, sparkles. And the kimonos--I like the kimonos. Rating: Three-and-a-half don’ts out of five.

Abandoned Pools: Humanistic (Extasy International)--Slightly anachronistic, thoroughly catchy, and occasionally beautiful one-man-band electronica.

The Acoustic Folk Box (Topic)--Ultimately, you don’t warm up to a four-disc, eighty-five-track, five-hour box such as this for of its historical, anthropological, or even aesthetic value, considerable though its value in these areas may be. You warm up to it for the same reason you warm up to any album: the songs. These being primarily British Isles folk (and folk-based) songs recorded primarily by British Islanders ’tween 1960 and 2000, the order of their appeal to Americans is likely to be melodies (sing-along) first, vocals (astringent) second, instrumentation (unplugged and largely drumless) third, and words last (if at all)--been a long time since anyone I know got too worked up about the agonies and the ecstasies of the Labor Party. The archetypical stuff of which the trad. ballads are made, however, endures, especially the stuff involving tales of adultery, murder, corrupt clergy, and other topics of contemporary interest. Spend a few weeks with this collection and at least one eighty-minute homemade CD’s worth of tunes will have burrowed themselves into your head. And while Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, and Maddy Prior do appear, the emphasis is on heroes and heroines of the genre heretofore unsung by those of us this side of the Atlantic. The Incredible String Band obscurity is amazing, the Martin Simpson instrumental a real ear opener. And I definitely intend to track down more of Nic Jones, Fernhill, and Kate Rusby. Rating: Four-and-a-half lucky charms out of five.

Air Supply: Yours Truly (Giant)--This audio valentine came and went last year without so much as a yawn from any discernable segment of the music-buying audience, yet it (the record, not the audience) deserved better. Close your eyes at almost any point in this swoonfest and you’d swear you were hearing the latest comeback single from the Bee Gees or the Moody Blues, neither of whom appears to be in any hurry to score with such prime fluff these days. So why not settle for the stuff as purveyed by these inspired phonies? And why not admit that “Learning to Make Love to You” cuts closer than “How Deep Is Your Love” and “Your Wildest Dreams” combined? Rating: Three-and-a-half nights in white satin and-or on Broadway out of five.

Eric Alexander: Summit Meeting (Milestone)--The Young Man with a Sax keeps on coming, although what elevates this one above his first two is admittedly a matter of perspective.

The Rev. Vince Anderson and His Love Choir: The Thirteenth Apostle (Dirty Gospel)--Those who consider it foolhardy to weld Tom Waits to gutter-gospel themes are directed to the fifth and sixth movements of Gavin Bryar’s Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, after which this raucous shouter’s descent into a booze-fueled hell will feel purgative indeed.

Badly Drawn Boy: About a Boy (XL/Artist Direct)--I haven’t actually seen the movie--you think I’m a nut?--but this evocative Manchester pop is worth a matinee ticket at least.

David Ball: Amigo (Dualtone Nashville)--Finally free of his major-label obligation to follow up “Thinkin’ Problem,” Ball eases into a Western-swing so easygoing it could accompany siesta and fiesta time both. Those of us in-between get the dual pleasure of hearing Ball sing and hearing him sing lyrics worth attending to, including but not limited to the hit friendly-ghost narrative “Riding with Private Malone” and the soon-to-be bumpersticker classic “When the Devil Wants to Wrestle (Put Jesus in the Ring).” Rating: Three-and-a-half Texas echoes out of five.

Jason Becker: Perspective (Warner Bros.)--For most of the ’80s, Becker was just one more hard-rock guitarist racking up notches on his axe, eventually replacing Joe Satriani in David Lee Roth’s band. Then in ’91, while in the initial stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he began composing on the computer, getting other people and machines to play the music, and coming up with songs so soaring, celestial, moving, and strange that at times they sound like what post-Vatican II Catholic composers might have come up with had they spent less time honing the folk mass and more time listening to progressive rock. Independently released in ’96, Perspective came out last year on Warners at the behest of another hard-rock guitarist with an intimate knowledge of ravaging illnesses, Eddie Van Halen. A portion of the proceeds go toward the ALS Therapy Development Foundation, but this is one fund-raising album you don’t need a well-formed conscience to enjoy. Rating: Four luckiest men on earth out of five.

Bellamy Brothers: Redneck Girls Forever (Curb)--“Let’s Roll America,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” and “Come Back Gene and Roy” may capture common sentiments, but sentimentality has never been a Bellamy strength. What has been is satirical songs like “What I Used to Do All Night,” credited here to David Bellamy although Billy C. Wirtz copyrighted a similar Viagra anthem under the exact same title four years ago. I’m glad these fellas are back on Curb, and I wish them the best. But even more I wish us their best. This isn’t it. Rating: Three Rafael Palmeiros out of five.

Ron Block: Faraway Land (Rounder)--Don’t be fooled by the inside photos of Block’s Inklings library; these country-bluegrass gospel songs are as sweet, simple, and American as any he’s recorded with Union Station.

Blues Around the Clock (Pablo)--From Joe Turner's "Blues Around the Clock" to Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson's "Just a Dream on My Mind," raunchier, funnier, and more rockin’ than Marshall Mathers.

David Bowie: Heathen (ISO/Columbia)--Bowie recently told Vanity Fair that his music has always been “about style,” an admission, perhaps, of what those of us who liked him when he was good have long maintained: that he has nothing to say and (sometimes) cool ways of saying it. The cover sticker proclaims Heathen “classic Bowie circa 2002,” and to the extent that he’s still saying nothing in cool ways, I guess it is. But little in its dark, carefully wrought electronic suavity will endear it to today’s youth, for whom “cool” requires profanity, rapper cameos, and a look entirely at odds with Bowie’s dapper elegance. And while the Neil Young, Frank Black, and Legendary Stardust Cowboy covers go with the flow, neither they nor the flow shed light on why the album’s called Heathen when it should be called Pagan. Classic Bowie would’ve known the difference. Rating: Three golden years out of five.

Randall Bramblett: No More Mr. Lucky (New West)--Bramblett’s been around a while: solo debut in ’75, member of Sea Level, oft-covered singer-songwriter. The album with which he finally returned to solo recording in 1998, See Through Me, was O.K. but hardly adequate preparation for the depth, catchiness, and masterly execution that radiates from these songs at nearly every point. “Hard to Be a Human” aside (Bramblett should try being a panda), the Georgia native’s eminently replayable rock and soul hooks, mystic sax, and funk pulse constitute the ideal backdrop for a wisdom that’s freshly phrased, well sung, and eminently plainspoken. As for the Van Morrison fan in me, he’s happy to report that “Peace in Here” is a perfect song. Rating: Four-and-a-half Veedon fleeces out of five.

Brandy: Full Moon (Atlantic)--If teachers have to pass certification exams before gaining access to the classroom, shouldn’t pop singers, who wield a far greater influence on the young than teachers ever will, at the very least have to fail an airhead test? Writes Ms. Norwood: “I have been on a journey to search for my higher self, bring my life into harmony, transform my perceptions, and expand my awareness of love.” And, believe me, it shows. Rating: Two-and-a-half one-way tickets out of five.

The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir: Be Glad (M2)--In which the number-one multi-racial pop-gospel ensemble in the land seeks beauty and joy in the middle of the road and finds it.

Stephen Bruton: Spirit World (New West)--The albums of sidemen who go front and center after years of toiling in the shadows tend to be dreary affairs, and until now the output of this Texas axeslinger-for-hire has been no exception. This time, however, he beats the jinx. He still goes on too long (only one song under four minutes) and is content to let sleeping clichés lie when he should be kicking them in the head, but these defects are portable with other graces, and Bruton finally has some. For one thing, he now writes melodies that stick. For another, his backbeats groove and shuffle a little when they absolutely must. Third, and most pleasantly surprising of all, Bruton is now singing less like a guitarist and more like the relaxed, confident, and sometimes even thoughtful 54-year-old he is (when he’s not singing exactly like Mark Knopfler, that is). Rating: Three-and-a-half dire straits out of five.

the b-sides: Yes, Indeed, the b-sides, quite (Rock)--Who says punky, rinky-dink nerd-pop is dead? Certainly not this rag-tag collective of indie-rock cast-offs and hangers on, whose passionate commitment to the residual sweetness at the bottom of the bubblegum barrel is positively bracing. The collective thinness of the three main voices makes for unnecessarily prepubescent-sounding harmonies, but the infatuation with cool effects that results in the occasionally gratuitous deployment of vintage electronic doodads lends the fun-sized hooks and melodies a winsomely adolescent urgency. Recommended to fans of the Cowsills, the Pooh Sticks, the Vandalias, Poole, the eels, and Throw That Beat in the Garbagecan! Rating: Three-and-a-half Ron Dante’s Infernos out of five.

B2K: B2K (Epic)--I know, they’re just kids (average age fifteen according to b2klovesyou.com, which also says they’re home-schooled, yeah right), but seeing as how their legal custodians see nothing wrong with their singing about wanting a girl “so damn bad” or assuring her it’s O.K. to play Truth or Dare after school, they may as well learn that part of what it means to be a big boy is occasionally being told that J-Boog, Lil Fizz, and Raz B are really stupid-sounding nicknames. Rating: Two spur posses out of five.

Built to Spill: Ancient Melodies of the Future (Warner Bros.)--Going from imitating Neil Young to imitating the Buggles may not be an improvement, but it certainly increases the catchiness quotient.

Jonathan Butler: Surrender (Warner Bros.)--Albums recorded in the afterglow of religious conversion can be bracing, as fans of Bob Dylan, Al Green, Maria Muldaur, Arlo Guthrie, and Van Morrison know. Why Butler, a forty-year-old South African nearly a decade past his Jive Records best-of, is more bracing than his jazz-lite settings at first make him seem is his Stevie Wonder of a voice, which makes his Scripture-lite (and romance-lite) clichés go down easy. Of course, he’d be more bracing without any clichés at all, but giving up pat phrases cold turkey is a lot to ask of someone who’s re-learning the language of love from scratch, and his foregoing of words altogether on the five instrumentals suggests he’s more aware of his verbal limitations than the average enthusiast. Rating: Three-and-a-half revivals-lite out of five.

J.J. Cale: The Best of J.J. Cale: 20th Century Masters, the Millennium Collection (Mercury)--Budget prices or no, Universal’s Millennium Collections are often too little of a good thing or just plain redundant. In the case of this Oklahoma miniaturist, though, the format makes sense; much more Cale would require a warning against operating heavy machinery. He gave Clapton "After Midnight" and "Cocaine" (both included) and did them as well if not better. He gave Knopfler a voice, a shuffle, and a picking style. Too bad Knopfler refused Cale’s humor--"I’ll Make Love to You Anytime" is a real fanny slapper. Rating: Three-and-a-half moneys for something out of five.

Calliope: Braille (Thick)--There’s genuine ebb and flow in the way Andy Dryer’s languorous whisper floats atop the hazy electronic washes, and when these boys set their guitars on “chiming,” their brass on “oracular,” their tempos on “bouncy,” and their melodies on “upbeat,” they open up their hearts and let the sun shine in. As for “Detroit Girl,” it’s the slacktronica masterpiece you always hoped someone had in him. Rating: Three-and-a-half Motor City mad chicks out of five.

Eliza Carthy/Nancy Kerr: On Reflection (Gadfly)--A boiling down of Carthy and Kerr’s traditional, acoustic, fiddle-and-vocal ’90s, the logical next purchase for fans of Carthy’s cuts on The Acoustic Folk Box.

Johnny Cash: Ride This Train (Columbia/Legacy)--The corniest of the seventieth-birthday reissues, but what would you expect from a “stirring travelogue[s] of America in story and song”?

Johnny Cash: Hymns by Johnny Cash (Columbia/Legacy)--The second-corniest of the seventieth-birthday reissues (“Johnny’s second Columbia album,” says a sticker on the promo copies, “the album he came here to make!”) But what would you expect from an “all-time country classic” containing “Johnny’s originals and his take on his favorite gospel songs” and an “alternate version of ‘It Was Jesus’ (previously unreleased in the U.S.!)” and a “new personal reflection by Johnny Cash” and a “new essay” and the “original liner notes and many previously unpublished photos!”? Rating: Two-and-a-half sweet chariots swung low out of five.

Celebration of America (Music for Little People)--Music for Little People’s concept albums often list toward the sentimental Left. The recently reissued Peace Is the World Smiling (sic), for instance, features Holly Near, Pete Seeger, a Harry Belafonte lyric, and enough puerile self-esteem to make Oscar the Grouch kick the can. Thus it is that this compilation’s unabashed patriotism, best exemplified by the robust triptych of “America the Beautiful,” “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” that closes it, comes as such a pleasant surprise. And there’s plenty of pluribus amid the unum: hitmakers (Ray Charles, Randy Newman), Broadway (James Cagney, “Seventy-six Trombones”), even Commies (Paul Robeson, the Weavers). I’d replace Linda Ronstadt’s Chuck Berry song with Chuck Berry’s, Jane Siberry’s “Shenandoah” with Bob Dylan’s, and Buckwheat Zydeco’s “Cotton Fields” with Leadbelly’s (or Al Jardine’s), but until Ken Burns documents 9/11, this album is an attractively efficient way to introduce American tykes to their musical roots. Rating: Three-and-a-half cheers for excluding Lee Greenwood out of five.

A Cellarful of Motown! (Motown)--Because Berry Gordy always had his performers put their best feet forward, this two-disc collection of recent vault findings that were never released because they were nobody’s best foot contains no revelations. Plenty of pleasant surprises though (Brenda Holloway, "Who You Gonna Run To"; Barbara McNair, "Baby a Go Go"; Kim Weston: "Don’t Let Me Down"; the Contours, "Danger, Heartbreak Dead Ahead").

Kasey Chambers: Barricades and Brickwalls (Warner Bros.)--This attractive lass from Down Under has been accumulating kudos for her somewhat edgy take on the Appalachian sound, and kudos she deserves. But the sound’s not hers, it’s Julie Miller’s. Program this album’s “Not Pretty Enough,” “On a Bad Day,” “Nullarbor Song,” and especially “Runaway Train” and “I Still Pray” as bonus tracks on any of Miller’s recent Hightone albums and no one would notice the sleight-of-hand, probably not even Miller’s husband Buddy, who sings on some of these tracks just as he does on his wife’s LPs. As a longtime fan of First Class’s Beach Boys rip, the Knickerbockers’ Beatles rip, Billy Joel’s Four Season’s rip, etc., I willingly admit that there’s nothing wrong with a musician’s looking around, noticing less of the music she loves than she’d prefer, and making more of it. I cannot, however, blame those who find the dopplegänger effect a little creepy, or deny that Chambers’ suggestive cover poses and occasionally dirty mouth are hers alone. Rating: Three-and-a-half O sisters where art thou out of five.

Cher: Living Proof (Warner Bros.)--One expected a bad album, but not this bad. One expected more techno-disco, but not this much. One expected more electronically treated vocals, but one also hoped one would be wrong, that in attempting to stretch her hit-making into decade number five Cher would avoid repeating the same gimmick twice in a row so as not to seem crass. No such luck. And no sneaking into the Vocoder Hall of Fame on the coattails of Roger Troutman and Laurie Anderson either. Rating: Two dying proofs out of five.

Chumbawamba: Readymades (Republic/Universal)--These anarchists must be doing something right because you don’t have to buy into their notion of the ideal society to get with their notion of the ideal music. So skillful is their deployment of gentle techno touches and pretty-sad melodies that to sense the gravity of their concerns you need no more be moved by the details of the real-life injustices behind “Without Rhyme or Reason (The Killing of Harry Stanley)” or “Don’t Pass Go” (way to get in a side dig at “monopolies,” guys) than with the New York mining disaster at the heart of their last album’s Bee Gees cover. In the end, of course, you might be moved anyway. And if you think they have no sense of humor, check out “Ask Britney Spears” at chumbawamba.net. Rating: Four-and-a-half slaves 4 U out of five.

Bruce Cockburn: Anything Anytime Anywhere: Singles 1979-2002 (Rounder)--What would you think of a woman who, having been raped, reproached herself for bringing out the animal in her attackers instead of organizing a posse and going for their gonads? What do you think of Arthur Miller, who in discussing the WTC attacks recently said, “I think that more people are prepared now ... to inquire as to why [Americans] are so hated in so many places”? What did you think of Bruce Cockburn’s “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” back in ’84, when those opposed to the Contras could wish violent death on U.S.-backed forces without seeming unpatriotic? What does Cockburn himself think of the song now, or is his inclusion of it on this, his third or fourth best-of (and his second best-of to include it), answer enough? Do you think maybe if he had a hammer he’d hammer out love between his brothers and his sisters all over this land? Or would he just use it to beat dead horses? And although “Wanna Go Walking”--the catchiest song he ever recorded -- was never a single, don’t you think someone could’ve snuck it on? Rating: Three MIA’s out of five.

Counting Crows: Hard Candy (Geffen)--“People began taking melody for granted when they started thinking of songwriters as poets,” says Adam Duritz, and he’s right. “Poetry is great,” he continues, “but I haven’t the slightest interest in being a poet.... I’m a songwriter, and I want to engrave my songs in people’s heads.” The problem is, Duritz does have the slightest interest in being a poet, hence the evocative but ultimately unfocused pictures presented by these songs. He likes girls, he loves travel, he hates sleep, and he wishes he still liked getting high--from a younger man, such shamblings might come off charmingly waifish. From a thirty-eight-year-old whose real-life rootlessness comes fully funded by royalties and major-label advances, they come off immature, even irresponsible, and as a singer the head Crow’s still no songbird (compare his “Big Yellow Taxi” with Joni’s). Still, he does well by details (n.b.: the Band-like piano on “If I Could Give All My Love or Richard Manuel Is Dead”), and he has quit taking melody for granted--“Why Should You Come When I Call?” and “Butterfly in Reverse” could engrave themselves in the head of a pachyderm. Rating: Three brain salad surgeries out of five.

Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff: The Best of Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff (Milestone)--We’re sorry, all of our operators are currently busy helping other customers. Please stay on the line, and your call will be answered in the order it was received.

Sheryl Crow: C’mon, C’mon (A&M)--As long as she retains her gift for the hook, Sheryl Crow will make for a livelier aging party girl than Joan Jett has in a while, though not than Joan Jett ever did. Although Crow appears fated to out-point Jett in terms of hit quantity, there are no junk-culture totems on the scale of “I Love Rock ’n Roll” on her horizon. She still wants nothing more than to have some fun, and with breezy-lightness the secret of her charm, ambition is gone with the wind. Even the lasting-relationship business that informs her ballads seems little more than a reason to duet with Don Henley. Will she ever dig deeper? Probably not as long as the air-brushing of her beauty mole remains a priority. As for the over-eagerness to please implicit in her swimsuit-issue booklet photos, it puts me in mind of an answer song I once composed: “Amazons, they make me sick. / Are you weak enough to be my chick?” Rating: Three-and-a-half cock-a-doodle-doo’s out of five.

¡Cubanismo!: The Very Best of ¡Cubanismo!: ¡mucho gusto! (Hannibal/Rykodisc)--Leading off with a definitively classic mambo followed by a definitively classic descarga followed by a definitively classic Arsenio Rodríguez composition, this compilation comes on like Jesús Alemañy’s answer to Bob Marley’s Legend and doesn’t so much let up later on as level off. Not that it levels off much, not with a definitively classic salsa ending things with a bang and two well-done Bob Marley covers keeping the legend alive (always nice to hear a Cuban telling his brethren to stand up for their rights). Rating: Four-and-a-half upside-down exclamation points out of five.