Rubber City Review

This article was first published as “Guilty Pleasures” on Blogcritics.org.

It’s all in the ear of the beholder, isn’t it? For a blues hound, a guilty pleasure might be ZZ Top. For a soccer mom, maybe it’s 50 Cent or Kanye West. If you’re a fan of New Orleans music, it might be a tune that Steve Zahn wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot Mardi Gras scepter (more on that later).

For me, it’s really quite simple… Given that some of my friends and family members are a little nutty about American roots music, it’s usually anything that would make these music snobs recoil in horror if I admitted that I own it, much less listen to it.

In the movie “Office Space,” a computer-programming Michael Bolton calls his more famous namesake an “ass-clown” – then tries to ingratiate himself with a couple of soulless consultants (the two Bobs) when he tells them that the other Bolton is “pretty good.” In one of the movie’s best moments, the first Bob then confesses, “I celebrate his entire catalog.” So basically, a guilty pleasure is like admitting you’re a bit of a Bob, or even worse.

Recently, I connected with an old friend from college (check him out here). We quickly shared notes on stuff we’ve been listening to – turns out both of us are addicted to Sixties jazz – then we started talking about albums we couldn’t do without back in the Seventies. It got even better when we compared our expansive playlists of songs from the era.

Both of us listed the obvious culprits – the Rolling Stones, Taj Mahal, Joni Mitchell, the Allman Brothers Band, the J. Geils Band, Bob Marley, Little Feat… then things started to get a little more debatable, with forays into blooze-rock limbo (Humble Pie, Foghat, Savoy Brown), prog-rock purgatory (Yes, Genesis, the Moody Blues), and glam-rock hell (David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, Roxy Music). Now I enjoyed listening to the latter dreck back in the day, just like any other self-respecting stoner. But it’s hard to slap on the Pie’s “Rockin’ the Fillmore” or Yes’ “Fragile” today without a healthy dose of ironic detachment – the old wink-nod, as they say. And god help the ass-clown who whips out “The Best of Bread.”

Most of my guilty pleasures probably fall more into the category of cocktail music, and I can probably blame college life for this too. Back when I was struggling to graduate from Ohio University (see post on “Guns, Drugs, Money and Vinyl…”), I fell in with a few misanthropes who had lost the will to rock – probably the result of spending countless hours during our teen years in front of huge banks of PA speakers, head-banging to the Pie. We were searching for more sedentary pleasures involving smoking jackets and cocktail dresses (from Goodwill, of course), mixing high-balls in front of the hi-fi, and slow-grooving to Frank and Dino.

Yeah, I know… it’s a tired cliché. But it worked for us at the time. And we somehow convinced ourselves that we weren’t turning into our parents, mainly by throwing a few contemporary artists into the mix. The clear favorite? Robert Palmer… blue-eyed soulman Robert Palmer, that is – not the guy who hit the jackpot on MTV with his backup band of supermodels. (About 20-some years ago, one’s preference regarding the two Palmers seemed like something worth arguing about… today, not so much.)

Anyway, Palmer put out a few albums in the Seventies that seemed to us like unabashed love letters to the cocktail culture – particularly “Pressure Drop” and “Double Fun.” Since then, I’ve discovered the obvious pleasures of reggae legend Toots Hibbert, which makes it even more difficult to listen to Palmer’s cover of the Maytals’ Pressure Drop. But some of the stuff on these records holds up surprisingly well, in an earnest, pseudo-soul kind of way. Just don’t toss out any Marvin Gaye to make room for it on your CD shelf.

As I grew older, I abandoned any pretense of being “relevant” and started celebrating the catalogs of other artists from the original cocktail set. And I’ll thank the movie “Big Night” for giving me a greater appreciation of Louis Prima (a New Orleans native) and his sultry sidekick, Keely Smith. The movie is really an extended riff on “Waiting for Louis.” In short, a hapless entrepreneur and his brother, a master Italian chef, bet that their fortunes will change when Prima pays a visit to their struggling restaurant (he never shows up, but the party goes on without him). It’s also a commentary on the age-old divide between elitists and “philistines,” as the chef – wonderfully played by Tony Shahloub – likes to call diners who don’t appreciate his carefully prepared seafood risotto.

I certainly was familiar with Louis Prima before I saw the movie. You had to be if you spent any amount of time in Akron’s North Hill or Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhoods. But I used to think of him more as a jokey purveyor of novelty songs (Just a Gigolo, Angelina/Zooma Zooma), as opposed to a real player, with a first-rate band run by fellow Crescent City badass Sam Butera… Oh Marie/Louis Prima with Sam Butera

Louis Prima and snobbery – cultural, musical, culinary, you name it – are just two of many topics covered on “Treme,” HBO’s new series about post-Katrina New Orleans. I’m getting a little tired of the show’s constant trashing of tourists, the very people who help keep the city afloat. And I’m still hoping to find one character I actually like. But the music alone makes “Treme” worth watching. In one episode, an especially annoying DJ portrayed by Steve Zahn refuses to play any of the old warhorses – like Iko Iko or Walkin’ to New Orleans – during a fundraiser for his radio station (you’d be hard-pressed to find more self-righteous blowhards in one program). Instead, he sits back and savors the joys of a less-obvious choice, Prima’s Buena Sera: Buena Sera/Louis Prima

A nice moment, musically speaking – but not exactly what I’d call “sticking it to the man.”

There’s really no moral to my story, other than this: With a little time and the right context, one man’s garbage can turn into the same man’s gold. Or vice versa. And if you visit New Orleans, don’t be afraid to request Iko Iko.

At the risk of losing my mail-order degree in ethnomusicology (and your attention), I’ll leave you with a few more of my guilty pleasures:

• “Reggae Pulse 2 Hit Songs – Jamaican Style”: Reggae versions of Motown and soul hits like Just My Imagination, Ain’t No Sunshine and Papa Was A Rolling Stone… Beats the polka covers.
• Dolly Parton – Jolene: Honky-funk? Jolene
• Ramsey Lewis Trio – The “In” Crowd: It’s a real toe-tapper, daddy-o! The “In” Crowd
• Shakira: You had me at hola.
• Junior Brown – Venom Wearin’ Denim: Sometimes the name of the song is all you need.
• Dazz Band – Let It Whip: The Bucket Shop was Akron’s ultimate den of iniquity. When this song started playing at glass-shattering volume, you’d just blown right past the point of no return. Let It Whip
• Lou Reed – “New Sensations”: I’d never admit it to cousin Robert, who left Reed right before this album was recorded, but I’ve always had a soft spot for I Love You, Suzanne.
• Greg Allman – “Laid Back”: The Voice of Southern Rock croons over big, orchestral arrangements. This album was big in Milledgeville GA back in ’73… Maybe the locals had it right all along. Multi-Colored Lady
• Chris Isaak: because he steals from the right sources.
• Mahavishnu Orchestra – The Dance of Maya: Head-banging for nerds, in a time signature I couldn’t even begin to identify (a waltz, maybe?). The Dance of Maya
• Robert Gordon: Reheated rockabilly… But when your guitar players are Link Wray and Danny Gatton, who cares?

What are some of yours? If you prefer to send them anonymously, don’t worry… I’ll only share your true identity with a few friends and family members.

Break out the Champipple!  Our fledgling operation is celebrating its 10th post with an “Editors’ Pick” from blogcritics.org for this little number on Nick Hornby’s new book — a good excuse to revisit the late, great Lowell George.

Several people suggested I read “Juliet, Naked” by Nick Hornby.  And now I’m worried, because one of the main characters in this bittersweet and often hilarious novel is an obsessive-compulsive music blogger.

The story focuses on a couple living in Gooleness, a sad, rundown town on the coast of England – sort of a “Canton by the Sea” (Clevelanders: feel free to substitute Akron for Canton).  Duncan is the ringleader of an art-damaged internet community obsessed with the life and music of a long-lost American rock artist, Tucker Crowe.  Annie is director of a museum few people visit and struggles to find meaning in her relationship with Duncan.

Annie has come to realize that Duncan’s fixation on every little detail involving Crowe’s life has gone far beyond anyone’s idea of normal.  She admires the artist, but couldn’t care less about various “shrines” to Crowology – including a restroom in Minneapolis – that the couple visit on a trip to the states.

Trouble arrives in the form of an “unplugged” version of Crowe’s masterwork, “Juliet,” which Duncan receives from a press agent eager to generate a little publicity for an eventual release.  Duncan believes the acoustic version, “Juliet, Naked,” surpasses the well-documented majesty of the original.  And he quickly posts a fawning review of “Naked,” mainly to bolster his status among his blog-followers as lord and master over all things Crowe.

Annie, on the other hand, smells bullshit… and her completely different take on “Naked” (which she posts on the same blog) alienates Duncan while winning over the reclusive Crowe, a determined dropout who is both amused and annoyed by his misguided fans.

Hornby uses sharp dialogue, filled with honesty and wit, to get us to really care about his characters — especially Annie and Crowe as they develop a long-distance relationship based on a shared desire to get on with their lives.  And, as he did in “High Fidelity,” Hornby perfectly captures the whole subculture of music nerds and collectors of which I’m painfully familiar.

Tucker Crowe is Hornby’s best conceit, giving us the opportunity to fill in the name of any artist, dead or alive, who has ever been fussed over by a cult following, virtual or otherwise.  And there’s a long list to choose from – Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, Joni Mitchell, Paul Westerberg, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Alex Chilton, and on and on.

The Fat Man… Although “Juliet, Naked” is a good read, as they say, it made me a little squeamish as I recalled some of my own music-nerd moments back in my younger days (I’ll date myself by calling it the post-hippie, pre-punk Seventies), when I followed every move of Lowell George and his band Little Feat.  Basically, Little Feat is what happens when a slightly deranged singer-songwriter from L.A. combines his love of Chess blues with the funky rhythms of New Orleans and the Meters.

Aside from being a great singer and slide guitarist (and a pretty mean harp player to boot), George was a true original as a lyricist.  He didn’t write songs as much as come up with oddly memorable words and phrases that seemed to work perfectly with the music… Sailin’ Shoes

Little Feat’s high water mark was in the early-‘70s, when George was still firmly in charge of the band.  On albums like “Sailin’ Shoes” and “Dixie Chicken,” all of George’s strengths are on display and undeniable – especially on the title songs and cuts like Fat Man in the Bathtub, Cold Cold Cold, Trouble, Willin’ and Allen Toussaint’s On Your Way Down.  “Dixie Chicken” even features a pretty decent tune called Juliette… although it doesn’t hold up as well today as the others.

I even like “The Last Record Album,” where the tension between George’s earthier instincts began to clash with the rest of his band’s longing to sound more like jazz-fusion juggernaut Weather Report.  Here’s George with his usual deft touch on Long Distance Love… Long Distance Love

And here’s the rest of the band gettin’ freaky with their bad synths on Day or Night… Day or Night

As this last cut might suggest, things went straight downhill for Little Feat after that, and eventually George decided to go it alone and put the focus squarely on his singing on the fairly straightforward album “Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here.”

Maybe George had a Crowe-like moment and decided that he’d had enough of crazy fans trying to extract layers of meaning from his surreal lyrics.  Or maybe his band mates just got tired of his worsening drug problem.  But unlike Crowe, he didn’t “go gentle into that good night.”

I had the pleasure of seeing George on his last tour in 1979.  He stopped at Bogart’s in Cincinnati with a terrific band – probably session guys from L.A., but they all seemed excited to play old-school rock ‘n soul with a rejuvenated George.  The show was much more satisfying than a Little Feat concert I’d seen a few years before.  He was in fine form – although clearly overweight – and it was great to hear the band blast away all the production sheen from the songs on his solo album.

A week later, George died of a massive heart attack – right after he performed the same show at George Washington University in D.C.  And in that grand showbiz tradition, he left us all wanting more.

Dixie Chicken