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(Apr 6, 2005)

Interlude & Thoughts on Alligator Stomp Vol. 2

The pressures of finding good new music take their toll. Things get shoved into little straightjackets - based on the answers to the questions: Is it new enough? Is it original? Does it have commercial potential? How old are the artists? Are they on the way up or on the way down? What is the genre? Does this genre belong on World Of Gigs based on its clientele? and on and on ad nauseam.

Enjoyment of the music, which should be primary, takes a distant back seat to all these other concerns. Of course, once you stop enjoying the music, you start viewing everything with a jaundiced eye. Nothing is quite good enough; everything is a disappointment.

So when I wandered into Amoeba the other day I decided to just pick up some new stuff and listen to it and not worry about whether it fit all these self-imposed straightjackets I'd set for myself and this column. I came across a Zydeco/Cajun compilation published in 1991, but many of the songs are far older than that. I was familiar with only 2 songs of the 20 or so selections on the CD - "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" and "Jambalaya." The latter was popularized by John Fogarty in his first solo effort after the CCR breakup, and was always a favorite of mine. But it was written by Hank Williams, Sr., so we're reaching back a ways. "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" I'd heard as a between-sets toss-off by some bar band that used to play at Hoagie Barmichael's back in the early 80s. Both outstanding songs. The whole CD is like that: It's shit-kickin' music - accordion, violin, strong rhythm section, blasting out boogie woogie and blues nonstop.

And I got to thinking as I listened to the first music I'd truly enjoyed without any reservation in about 6 months: what is missing from the current rock/pop/alternative scene that was present in this Zydeco genre? The answer is so obvious that it was staring me in the face all this time. HEART. Zydeco has heart. Boogie woogie has heart. Blues had heart, before it started getting watered way, way down. You don't have to try and like shit-kickin' music - you can't help but like it. What a far cry from The Mars Volta, which I actually gave a decent review to because it's the best of a very poor litter of new releases (but see upcoming review for Queens of the Stone Age, which is very good.) Rock has lost its heart. Huey Lewis told us back in the late 80's that "The Heart of Rock and Roll is Still Beating" - but it beat slower and slower, and Huey himself helped to slow it down with some of his later pap like "Happy to be Stuck With You." What a waste of vinyl that was. But, as usual, I digress.

So, give me music with HEART. I don't care if it's an 80 year old blues singer like RL Burnside, or a 90 year old Cuban legend like Compay Segundo, or bless their hearts, young up and comers like Bronco Tatonka and I Am Alpha, who are the future of Rock and Roll, if it has one. When music has HEART it sounds like it came up out of a well in the ground, already composed, like the notes all had to be exactly the way they were. Seamless. When music lacks HEART, it's easy to hear the seams. Rhymes are strained; lyrics are stilted; guitar solos are forced; hooks stand out like pink and green pushpins on a white wall.

Let's look at the bands out there right now with our "HEART" glasses on and see how they stack up.