FRESH BAKED
Guns N’ Roses
Chinese Democracy
2008 | Geffen
D

Unless you’re alien to this galaxy, you probably know that Guns N’ Roses latest release, Chinese Democracy, was somewhere between ten to fifteen years in the making before finally being made available to the public in November 2008. Given the excessive amount of time taken to complete the record, and the passing of an entire decade since GNR lost the limelight, it seems mathematically impossible that Chinese Democracy can be any good.

If Chinese Democracy were to have been an addition to the golden record NASA launched into deep space in the late 70’s, and an extraterrestrial were to have formed its first impressions of mankind around the music, the creature would see humanity quite clearly: Man is stubborn, idiosyncratic, hard to work with, and downright selfish, spending great amounts of time and money salvaging the remnants of his dusty glory days; Man is egocentric, parting ways with close friends and exhausting multiple relationships to achieve his goals; and lastly, confused and disjointed, Man creates his work blinded by an impending finish line, and will do whatever it takes to safeguard his legacy. But Man pushes too hard on things that cannot be moved, and lacks the foresight to let the present be and the past pass.
More on Fresh Baked: Chinese Democracy

Hidden Gem:
The Sir Douglas Quintet
The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!
2000 | Sundazed Music Inc.

Just looking at the cover of The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!, you’d be excused for mistaking The Sir Douglas Quintet for a cheap Animals or Herman’s Hermits knockoff. Everyone’s doing their approximation of a young British Invasion sensation of the day: leader (and namesake) Doug Sahm doing his Pete Townshend and drummer Johnny Perez looks an awful lot like Keith Moon, albeit a Keith who’d spent a little more time at the beach. Organist Augie Meyers (later famous for his Vox work on Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind) could have been replaced by Mick Jagger, he’s got the look down pat. It’s almost as if somebody in a position of power thought they could make a quick couple of dollars fooling American teens into buying Is Back! based on cover photo, in hopes that Sahm and Co. could pass as lesser UK popsters. What a shock those kids would have suffered when they set the platter on the hi-fi and The Sir Douglas Quintet’s brand of weird “cosmic” country barreled through the speakers.
More on Record Review: The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!

Fresh Baked:
Andre Williams and the New Orleans Hellhounds
Can You Deal With It?
2008 | Bloodshot Records
C-

Andre “Mr. Rhythm” Williams, a mainstay of the Motor City R+B scene for over fifty years and hands-down owner of his own style of “talk-singing,” churns out new new records semi-annually, and to varying degrees. Early hits for the Fortune label, such as “Bacon Fat” and “Jail Bait,” felt like a much bawdier cross between Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and early Motown-era Stevie Wonder. Best renowned for more popular performers’ (such as Ike and Tina Turner and Parliament/Funkadelic) versions of his songs, Williams earned a great deal of money and respect for his songs in the 50s and 60s, spent the 70s and 80s semi-retired and resigned to poverty, then reemerged in the 1990s for a third act varying between hokey and transcendent.

Can You Deal With It?, with its slicker-than-owl-shit production, falls into the former category. And it’s unfortunate, because when Mr. Rhythm’s, well, rhythm stick, is firing on all synapses, an Andre Williams record can sound like a sweaty, grimy dancefloor packed with hedonists bumping and grinding to archaic R+B grooves that reek of sex and never even approach irony. 1999’s country-inflected Red Dirt, which featured the ever-present Sadies as backing band, is the best platter of recent Williams tunes, but 2001’s Bait and Switch (featuring a duet with Rudy Ray Moore, of Dolemite fame) isn’t far behind. Can You Deal With It?, backed by a crackerjack team of New Orleans soul musicians, just doesn’t generate the same sweaty, sexy sound as those earlier, superior efforts.
More on Record Review: Can You Deal With It?

Fresh Baked:
Kanye West
808′s & Heartbreak
2008 | Roc-A-Fella
B-

The title to Kanye West’s latest release, 808′s and Heartbreaks refers to the TR-808, one of the first programmable drum machines. Kanye West used the TR-808 on every track “for a more ‘tribal drum’ to add more tribal feeling to his music” according to Wikipedia. The Heartbreak part of the title is more obvious, especially with songs like “Bad News”, “Welcome to the Heartbreak”, “Heartless” and “The Coldest Winter” (which unfortunately is a shameless rip-off of Tears for Fears’ “Memories Fade”). Not to say it’s all despair. On “Paranoid,” 808’s most solid track, it’s obvious West is smiling throughout. And how can you not with the canned drum beats and Stevie Wonder-esque synth?
More on Record Review: 808’s & Heartbreak

Fresh Baked:
Kanye West
808′s & Heartbreak
2008 | Roc-A-Fella
B-

The title to Kanye West’s latest release, 808′s and Heartbreaks refers to the TR-808, one of the first programmable drum machines. Kanye West used the TR-808 on every track “for a more ‘tribal drum’ to add more tribal feeling to his music” according to Wikipedia. The Heartbreak part of the title is more obvious, especially with songs like “Bad News”, “Welcome to the Heartbreak”, “Heartless” and “The Coldest Winter” (which unfortunately is a shameless rip-off of Tears for Fears’ “Memories Fade”). Not to say it’s all despair. On “Paranoid,” 808’s most solid track, it’s obvious West is smiling throughout. And how can you not with the canned drum beats and Stevie Wonder-esque synth?
More on Record Review: 808’s & Heartbreak

Hidden Gem:
The 5.6.7.8’s
Teenage Mojo Workout
2008 | Time Bomb

Otherwise known as “that rockabilly band of Japanese women in Kill Bill,” the 5,6,7,8’s occupy a niche all their own. Their obvious competence at their instruments keeps them squarely out of the realm of “outsider music”-a group of “differently-abled” musicians represented most infamously by talents like the “minimalist dance music composer” Wesley Willis, the raw confessional folk songs of Daniel Johnston and the absolutely-untalented-but-hard-working Shaggs. Yet singer-guitarist Yoshiko Fujiyama and singer-bassist Yoshiko Yamaguchi’s grasp of the English language seems trepidations at best: the ladies seem often to be sing-speaking the lyrics phonetically to R&B classics like “Harlem Shuffle” and “Hanky Panky.” Perhaps tellingly, the 5,6,7,8’s biggest hit to date is “Whoo-Hoo” – a simple rockabilly jam who’s only lyrics are the title repeated ad nausea – that has been used both to provide background for the bloodiest swordfight in recent American cinema and…a Yahoo! commercial. So, versatility and simplicity are key.
More on Record Review: Teenage Mojo Workout

Hidden Gem:
Lee Michaels
Barrel
1970 | A&M

Thumbing through dollar bins at record shops can be depressing, particularly when the pickings are slim. Plumbing the depths of milk crates jammed with forgotten vinyl, which no longer lie on shag carpets and basement floors, but in mounds that neglect their prior value, that reject what they once might have meant to someone, somewhere, upon their original release, is a real downer. Here lie bands without a myth, un-legendary singers, devalued albums that once topped the charts, last names written in faded Sharpie ink on moldy album covers. Indefinitely, these albums and their memories remain in $1.00 purgatory, doomed to a needle-less existence.
More on Record Review: Barrel

Hidden Gem:
George Strait
It Just Comes Natural
2006 | MCA

I first heard George Strait’s music by lucky chance while driving around in Florida, flipping listlessly through radio stations until settling on something that sounded really good. This something really good happened to be a song by Strait that the local 99.9 Kiss Country Station was playing. Even through a rattling, busted old car radio, his music beamed with the warmth and sincerity that make It Just Comes Natural a great album. It exudes the legitimate Texan Cowboy persona that Strait embodies both in spirit and in sound.
More on Record Review: It Just Comes Natural