(Items from the Vault)
Johnny Dowd - Cemetary Shoes Bongo Beat Records
Originally released: 2004
Morbidly funny and possessing a strong, clear artistic vision, Johnny Dowd has drawn plenty of favorable comparisons to heavyweights ranging from Raymond Chandler to Richard Hell, but remains a tough sell even to fans of gothic Americana. The problem in Dowd's case is that we often like to spot the feet on the ground professional behind the darker stuff, but there is no such artifice to be found here and it can throw your equilibrium. This is not to suggest that Johnny Dowd himself is some sort of Halloween monster, only that his music doesn't show us the wheels turning to give us a safe exit. Making savvy use of his deadpan drawl, Dowd is able to simultaneously convey humor, horror and heartache with just the right turn of phrase. Not wanting to be pigeonholed as a novelty spookster after his first two albums, Dowd eased up on the body count with Temporary Shelter and The Pawnbroker's Wife and revealed a sophisticated, mature musical talent armed with a sack-full of trenchant observations about relationships and the hardships of daily life.
"Nothing is real until you kill it/Nothing is myth until it is gone," Dowd opines on “Garden of Delight,” one of the standout tracks off of his latest album, Cemetery Shoes. Working with longtime collaborators Justin Asher and Brian Wilson (ed. No, not that Brian Wilson), the end result is an album that's like a Walker Evans photograph on acid. Noticeably absent this time around though is Kim Sherwood Caso, whose indelible vocals provided such a perfect foil for Dowd's on all of his previous albums and it might take a few listens for some fans to get over this and enjoy the album on its own merits. And there is certainly a lot to enjoy. Kicking off Cemetery Shoes is the wry “Brother Jim,” which features lyrics such as "Life gets meaner and meaner/As the years stumble by/We're born in blood/Buried in the mud/It's all just whimpers and sighs." Track for track, this stands right alongside Pictures From Life's Other Side as his strongest set of
songs.
“Wedding Dress” is classic Johnny Dowd. The narrator begins talking about his early childhood where he dressed up in his mother's clothes and glided through the bedroom "like a butterfly." The boy's father is a domineering butcher who takes his son to work and orders him to watch "and see how a man carves his place in the world" and the child eventually grows up to marry his high school sweetheart only to wonder, during the ceremony, if he should be the one wearing the wedding dress. There's a horrible story of abuse and loneliness between the lines of this song and yet it is so damn funny and pitiful at the same time.
Christmas has become something of a running theme in Dowd's recent albums. Temporary Shelter featured “Death Comes Knocking,” with a lead vocal by Caso, and the song is reworked on The Pawnbroker's Wife as “On Skakey Ground,” along with a jokey cover of “Jingle Bells.” Here with Cemetary Shoes we get “Christmas Is Just Another Day,” which plays like a Norman Bates' rewrite of Nick Lowe's “Man That I've Become." “Don't forget your mom at Christmas/It's a mother's special day/Without the sweet Virgin Mary/Christmas would not be a holiday." Move over Leon Redbone!
"I know what I know/I do what I do/If you don't like my coat/Fuck you/A coat with no future/The public insists/I'm tired of hearing it/I'm getting pissed," Dowd laments on “Dylan's Coat,” a wickedly sinister and threatening lament on the trapped-in-amber curse of fame. It's an ironic statement coming from Dowd, much like Randy Newman singing “Lonely At The Top” in front of a few dozen people on his early 70s live album. And yet, the joke is no joke.
Make no mistake about it, getting into Johnny Dowd might require a little leg work and the patience to give his albums repeated listens. You might not respond well to him at first simply because there really isn't anything like him, but the rewards are plentiful for those diligent enough to give it a try. He is one of the most creative and unique artists working today and his albums show a new, exciting direction for Americana music fans if they want to take the journey.
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Original Release: 1975
Original Release: 1977
Reviewed by Adam D. Miller
Like many of their 60s counterparts that would last more than a decade (Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and The Who to name a few), The Kinks have more than a handful of albums that most people, even those who consider themselves fans, have no idea about. This is often with good reason. (Take Dylan’s Knocked Out Loaded or The Stones’ Dirty Work for instance). Often, however, there are albums that are simply unnoticed because they pale in comparison to the group’s strongest efforts and came at a time in their career that lacked much relevance.
Soap Opera (1975) and Sleepwalker (1977) are the latest Kinks albums to be reissued by Koch in glorious remastered hybrid SACD. Both are albums that originally came out in the mid-to-late 1970s, after The Kinks’ two-album Preservation series. The two albums were not consecutive; Schoolboys in Disgrace appeared between them.
The Kinks Present A Soap Opera is a concept album, where Ray Davies takes his mantra from the early 70s Kinks hit “Celluloid Heroes” and proclaims “everybody’s in showbiz!” The album’s opening track, “Everybody’s A Star (Starmaker)” finds Ray Davies taking the role of the Starmaker, who takes the place of a typical Englishman named Norman. On songs like “Ordinary People,” “Rush Hour Blues,” and “When Work Is Over,” we find Starmaker living Norman’s life, working hard as an ordinary person. Occasionally we hear vocals from Norman’s wife Andrea (performed here by June Ritchie). Towards the end, Starmaker realizes that living someone else’s life isn’t what it’s cut out to be. As Norman’s wife says in “You Make It All Worthwhile,” “You’re not a star Norman. You’re just a plain ordinary little bloke and even if you walked down the street in a silver suit people still wouldn’t recognize you. You’re dull, ordinary and uninteresting! You’re a drag!”
In contrast to Soap Opera (and indeed most of the Kinks’ 70s albums), Sleepwalker (1977) is not a concept album, but rather a collection of songs in a generic rock ‘n’ roll style. While largely forgettable, there are some excellent songs on the album, including the lead-off track “Life on the Road,” which may be interpreted as a self-described ode to Ray Davies’ devotion to touring with The Kinks, and “Sleepwalker,” which is something of a vampire song. If there is a concept to Sleepwalker, it is similar to the one explored on 1970’s Lola versus Powerman and the Money-Go-Round: success and what it does to people. This is a theme explored on “Mr. Big Man” as well. Unfortunately, by 1977, the whole exploration-of-celebrity thing was a tired topic of discussion for The Kinks, and it comes across as preachy at times.
While neither Soap Opera nor Sleepwalker serve as ideal places to start for someone interested in discovering The Kinks, both have their strengths as Kinks albums. Still, there are probably at least four or five Kinks albums to visit before these and one would be much better off listening to those.
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Steve Burns - Songs For Dustmites Pias America
Original Release: 2003
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hayes
You might remember Steve Burns as the superior host of Nick Jr.'s irreplaceable Blue's Clues. You might have also felt some serious lament, when you flipped on to watch the Matlock mysteries of the tot world only to find a horrible imposter with a less lovable persona who calls himself (pause for dramatic effect) Joe. There were even vicious rumors for a while that Steve had died, but fear not, for I have found him. My goal is to pluck him from obscurity and shout it from the rooftops that Steve is in fact alive and well, with a CD for all of you slightly-closeted adult fans.
Songs for Dustmites comes as a surprise to unsuspecting bystanders, but even more shocking is that it is worth a listen. This album is probably not going to change your whole view on music like the onset of grunge or a rockin' Led Zeppelin LP, but it would fit oh so snuggly in a hip indie film or in a coffee shop to create that cozy ambiance.
When first listening to the CD, one could easily compare the slightly out of tune and unrefined vocals to that of Phantom Planet, but as the disc progresses, the more patterned of bands from time immemorial are prevalent. Perhaps the most obvious example of this can be heard during the last two tracks, "Sniveling Mess" and "Henry Krinkle's Lament." Seeming to be heavily influenced with sound effects that might have been heard on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album, the CD is froth with the generic chord progression that most tend to associate with the Beatles. Check out "Troposphere" to attest to my claim.
Coming at you with the vibrant flavor of a Flaming Lips or Radiohead tune, "What I Do On Saturday" sends this groovetastic CD to the last stop before Trip Hop. If the whole work were composed of songs like "Music for Montgomery County, PA," then it would go all the way to the end of the line and live somewhere in the land of electronica.
The Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd and Micheal Ivins helped produce Songs for Dustmites, along with longtime Flaming Lips producer David Fridmann, who gave several songs on the album a more electronic feel. Mr. Burns will also appear in the upcoming Flaming Lips film, Christmas on Mars, which the IMDB still categorizes as "in production." So keep your eyes to the stars for signs of Burns and Lips goodness coming to a theater near you.
This musical venture is a way for Steve to distance himself from his adorable role as the weird guy who in his spare time gets overly excited playing games with a dog that has mysterious re-inkable paw powers. He really would like to be an adult now, if we, the public would let him. All in all, he maintains a sense of humor about his involvement with Blue's Clues and other aspects of his life in general. In a FAQ page on his website, www.steveswebpage.com, a question was asked about his new adult, shorn hairstyle: "[Steve], why did you shave your head? Are you making a statement?" "Yes," he answers. "The statement is, 'we have male pattern baldness.'"
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Funnymen Scribner
By Ted Heller
Original Release: 2002
Reviewed by Shel Desormeaux
When I’m in the grocery store and I see those big tables full of books, I always stop. It’s not as if I’ve ever found any that I would ever read; I don’t know what it is, but novels about spunky twenty-somethings who don’t have real jobs but adore Gucci just can’t hold me. Like I said, though, I always stop. And I always skim over everything. And there was something about Funnymen that made me stop. It was probably the yellow cover, but the blurb at the back of the book was interesting too.
The novel was written by Ted Heller, a former GQ contributor and the son of the late Catch-22 author Joseph Heller. This is his second offering, a welcome follow-up to Slab Rat, apparently an equally demented romp through the world of journalism. From what I was reading, Heller was probably a bit nuts.
Funnymen is the surprisingly engaging story of Vic Fountain and Ziggy Bliss, an unlikely, yet strangely compatible, comedy duo sweeping post-war America. Vic, the son of first generation Italian immigrants, is a struggling crooner when he meets Ziggy, the only child of an untalented and doomed Vaudeville duo. Though wary of each other, they quickly realize how well they mix. Their delightful chemistry onstage hid the difficult relationship they maintained offstage. They fought with wives, children and siblings; they fought with managers and booking agents and mistresses. It was, however, each man’s selfishness that drove a wedge between them.
Told in snippets by numerous different people who spent a significant amount of time at the fringes of the Fountain/Bliss limelight, the novel introduces about 70 characters, none of them uninteresting. It is this constantly changing tone and mood that keeps the book fresh all the way through. While the two main characters have been obviously modeled on the legendary and tumultuous team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, it’s also a godsend to gossip freaks everywhere, as bits of might-be Hollywood scandal/history are tossed about liberally.
So yeah, I bought the book. I brought it home, I carefully peeled the $2.99 sticker from the front, and I tucked it into my purse for a subway pastime. I was reluctant about it right until I started reading. I was snagged pretty much immediately. And I found out that when I laugh to myself on the subway, I look like a moron.
The Gun Seller Washington Square Press