 Too Black Bad (2008)In July 2008 Davy arrived in Finland with over 90 new songs. The majority of them were eventually discarded but 36 were recorded by the Smugglers in an intensive two week session. This time they had some friends playing on the album and violin, saxophone, trumpet added a new dimension to their sound. The album, by now named TOO BLACK BAD, was complete but it had still all to be mixed so Davy flew back over to Finland in October and the band sat down and mixed it together. It would be interesting to see what category a record shop would put The Mescaline Smugglers albums under. Is it folk? Rock? Country? Jazz? Blues? The answer is 'yes' - it's all of them and the 2CD set TOO BLACK BAD is a distillation of everything that's gone before - a final crystalization of all they represent - it is in effect the band's EXILE ON MAIN STREET - which is as good as it gets. Yep, we have some wonderful guests this time. 'Hessu' Taittonen and 'Pertsa' Sopenperä, both familiar from our last album 'Harlequenesque' are having now more space with their instruments. Hessu seems to be able to blow sounds out of everything except the scottish pipes - or maybe no one has happened to ask for that yet? At the beginning Davy was not sure if we had any use for an eletric guitarist - with some computer magic we were able to change his acoustic guitar sound to almost real electric. But after listening some of Pertsa's solos Davy's comment was: 'we definitely need this guy!!'... Probably the listener can hear the difference between real and fake electric sound even if they both can be heard at the same time. AP Sarjanto, a man who hosts his own music club in town and who has had at least one real hit single in the Finnish music charts, got interested after visiting the Mescaliners website and downloading a few tracks! He came to jam in our sessions and brought also two of his songs with him. (They are included in this collection.) AP introduced us - or our website - to the band ANTS IN THE PANTS, i.e. Ilona Ala-Leppilampi & Lasse Suurkari and after that it was easy to ask Ilona to play fiddle and Lasse his tenor banjo on some tracks. Ilona played her fiddle also on some tracks on Kvester Melkk Quintet's new album called 'The Secret Door', which was recorded at the same time. We feel very lucky. --jore Davy's comments about the tracks: CD1 1. SWING OUT SISTER - This is part Lonnie Donegan (he sang the old folk song Jack of Diamonds) and part cocktail jazz piano from Tuomas. Nice to have a sax player on this CD too. I love the kind of jazz from early 1960’s old black and white footage and I suppose I was trying to capture the kind of Bohemian feel of those old TV shows. I think Swing Out Sister was the name of a British girl group in the 1980’s - I just steal names, lines and anything else I can find. I’m a very lazy lyric writer - that’s why so many songs are so short - I just can’t be arsed writing anymore. Guitar is tuned DF#BEAD 2. THE BALLAD OF DAVID ROSENBERG - Local Finnish music legend A.P. Sarjanto has been a fan of ours since Jore gave him a hint to our site at the folk club AP runs. He asked if I would write English lyrics for a couple of his songs and I was happy to oblige. Armed with a rough translation of the Finnish lyrics I tried to put the ideas into a rhyming format that kept the idea and feel of the song intact. He was happy with the results and came to the studio to record with us one afternoon. I think it’s a great melody and we all did well on the track which was recorded pretty much ‘live’ - though the four of us played ‘live’ twice to get the 8 tracks required - if that makes sense. 3. EVERY KINDA PEOPLE - Lovely dreamy piano from Tuomas to start off things. Basically just a ‘riff’ song - kinda funky in a laid back way. - maybe I was thinking of John Shaft. Nice flute from Heikki at the end . The tablas add an eastern tinge. And Tuomas playing great bass! Guitar is tuned DADF#AD (open D) 4. SAM BECKETT’S BLUES - It’s the Irish dramatist I mean here - not the sci-fi TV hero from Quantum Leap. I’d been watching a couple of Beckett’s plays and I needed a title for this song - so his name was in my head. I hated his plays when I was a teenager but age and experience has led me to ‘understand’ them much better. I wanted a garage band sound on the rockier tracks - Tuomas called it ‘crunchy’ and I think we just about got that sort of Keith Richards Rolling Stones sound here. It’s great to have a guitar player like Pertti playing on the CD - I would never call myself a lead guitarist but he sure can! My guitar was tuned DGDGBD (open G) 5. ALL MY LOVE - It’s for me to know and you to wonder if I had someone in mind when I wrote this. Fantastic piano from Tuomas - I couldn’t have dreamed of a better fill in between verses and a wonderful nylon string solo from Jore at the end. These guys just bring everything to life and I can never begin to thank them enough for what they’ve played on my songs over the past few years. Guitar is tuned DGDEGD 6. OH MY MARIE - It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Reggae isn’t something I’m a huge fan of but I like to listen to a couple of Bob Marley tracks now and then. I’ve no idea where this song came from but I’m glad it appeared. Lovely organ solo from Tuomas. Nice sax from Heikki. Jore on a couple of guitars on this somewhere. I don’t know anyone called Marie by the way. My choppy acoustic guitar at the start was tuned DGDGBD (open G) 7. BLACK CAT TANGO - Jore e-mailed me one day to say he had a video of Tuomas at school playing piano and singing a song called Black Cat Tango with his class. I just thought the name was great and I wrote lyrics before I even heard it - the surprise was that they fitted the tune when I did get to hear it! We shuffled the melody up and a bit and although it’s short it turned out OK as far as I’m concerned 8. IN A TOWN DOWN SOUTH - this has a great violin from Ilona and Lasse on banjo. A sad story of the credit crunch I suppose . I meant to sing Highway 49 - but sang 59 instead. I think that’s in Texas so I suppose it qualifies as being down south - not sure if there are any levees there though……Guitar is tuned DF#BEAD 9. CHAUVINIST BLUES - Tom’s always telling me I’m chauvinist, racist and sexist - seems Red Indians are ‘Native Americans’ and idiots are ‘intellectually challenged’ Well I decided to write a tongue-in-cheek jug band song in an attempt to live up to my bad habits. 10. TOO BLACK BAD - This stems from a short story I wrote about a fictional bluesman called Po’ Boy Hayes. He sang a song called TOO BLACK BAD in the story - so I thought I’d better write it. It was meant to be a country blues song but somehow it ended up as a wild screech at the world in general - though there is a little acoustic slide guitar at the end. Main guitar is DGDEAD 11. MOLLY’S IN A HOLE - Happy tune but where did this grim lyric come from? Who knows. Poor Molly got a paper cut, caught septicaemia and died! Wonderful fiddle from Ilona and some tasty mandolin from Jore. Bluegrass at last! Guitar is DGDEAD 12. LIVING FREE - We had messed about with this for a while without it ever sounding anything less than tedious and I decided to scrap it - but Jore dragged it up again and said we should try some new instrumentation on it so we did - and it sounded better than it had before so we kept it. A couple of CATCH THE WIND references - I always like to get a few Donovan asides on the CD’s. Guitar is DADEAE 13. SHE SAY WHAT? Tom would say this was my racist streak coming out - but to me it’s just some fun with accents. Jore had a bass riff and I wrote the lyrics around that. Ilona is great on this and shows her versatility by sounding like Stefan Grappelli. Lots of clichés and bits of stolen blues lyrics here - which is fairly normal for me - but I think it works all the same. 14. LONG BLACK TRAIN - Again a standard blues lyric which I really shouldn’t be putting my name to as 40 other blues singers have written it before in one form or another. The trains are so bad here the girl would probably still be waiting at the station! Guitar is DGDGGD 15. DREAM - This felt strange when it fell under my fingers. I don’t think I’ve written anything like this before. It certainly confused Tuomas for a while as he struggled to find out what the chords were - I had no idea - the guitar was in a funny tuning. Again a happy melody and bleak lyrics - don’t ask me why - I just write what comes into my head! Great piano and bass - the little tinkles are made by a wind chime I bought in Belgium in 1971 16. HEART OF THE BLUES - We had already recorded this when Ilona came to visit for the first time and overdub her violin. I was already pretty drunk when she arrived but as I listened to her play I just poured out whisky after whisky and got completely gaga! It seemed incredible to me that someone with her talent was playing on a song I had written! I felt so lucky - it was a humbling experience - so humbling I almost fell over several times and I’m sure I had drunken tears of gratitude in my eyes! 17. SOME KINDA LOVE - This was one that we tried various instruments on but I was never happy with the outcome. Eventually we decided on this ‘stripped down’ version and I really like it. The words have a lot of space to breathe in . Guitar is DADEAE 18.ONE MORE CHANCE - We had completed all the mixing and actually made the master CD’s when Jore ‘found’ this in a folder on his PC - we had forgotten all about it! Having added a couple of instruments to it we mixed it and put it on the end of the first CD. It’s basically the old HONEY JUST ALLOW ME ONE MORE CHANCE Bob Dylan standard folkie song put to a Pentangle type acoustic guitar riff with some great electric guitar from Pertti and lovely piano from Tuomas. I’m sure I don’t mention Jore enough in these notes - he’s fantastic on double bass on many tracks and adds banjo, mandolin, percussion - we just tend to forget what he and I play on the songs! Guitar here is DGDEAD CD 2 1. JUNGLE JACK - So....what’s all this about? Tarzan and Jane into a bit of sado-masochistic bondage? Lyrics are strange things that pop into your head with lines you really don’t want to sing - but somehow they seem to fit the tune, so you keep them - even if it makes you look like a sex pervert! This started life as a nice simple riff but took on a life of its own when the words arrived. Nice sax from Hessu at the end. Guitar is DF#BEAD. 2. I’ll NEVER BE HAPPY AGAIN - This song came about after a guy in the folk club came in one night with a folder full of country song lyrics and insisted I read virtually all of them. He thought they were fantastic - I thought they were dire and almost burst out laughing a few times as I read through them. I decided to write a spoof country song myself with as many clichés as I could in it and everything was going according to plan until Ilona started playing her violin - and it suddenly turned into a REAL song! Damn that girl - she makes everything sound so bloody good! 3. WORLD’S GONE MAD - Here I go, ranting and raving again. There’s an obvious Tom Waits influence here but I feel the lyrics are sincere enough to my own heart - everything seemed much simpler when you actually had to OWN the money before you could buy something and anyone who denies the existence of dinosaurs is as nutty as a nut tree is my book. Great guitar from Pertti at the end - sadly I’ve yet to meet him as he did all his overdubs after I had left in July. Maybe next year we can have a beer together and I can thank him personally for all his great guitar work. My guitar is CACGAE 4. THREE BLIND MONKEYS - Jore was pissed off as there was only one jug band song on the album (Chauvinist Blues) so he suddenly pulled out the lyrics for another two which I’d left in the studio in 2004 or something! He has a huge pile of every piece of paper I’ve ever had down in the basement! Anyway, there was this and Everybody Looking For Something so he insisted we do them. I’d recorded Three Blind Monkeys on a solo CD a few years back but I suppose maybe only 3 people in the world have ever heard it previously so I guess this will be new to most folks. 5. WHISPERING WIND is a sort of countrified J J Cale sound I suppose. I had originally written it as Hickory Wind but something kept nagging at me that there was already a song with that title and when I googled it, sure enough, I found Gram Parsons had got there first. Well to hell with him - I think Whispering Wind is a better title anyway! Great whistling from Jore to give it a Sergio Leone feel and some fantastic mandolin playing from him at the end too. Guitar is DGDGGD 6. SEA MINER BLUES - a play on words of course, as the guitar is tuned to an open C minor chord. I wanted to try to capture the feel of Skip James playing with a jug band in 1928 - so I sang falsetto and we added some crackles to try and make it sound like an old recording. Me on guitar, mandolin and jug and Jore on banjo - which isn’t too audible but it would be missed if it wasn’t there. Guitar is CGCGCEb 7. NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF ENGLAND - One night in the folk club one of the crazier tattooed guys got up and played a song where he only covered the top 4 strings of the guitar with his capo at the 2nd fret - this seemed pretty weird to me - but he got a nice mellow sound from it and I decided to try it out. This song was the result. Tuomas really took it to a whole new stratosphere with his wonderful piano arrangement and of course Ilona’s violin is also beautiful. So thanks for making me sound so good folks - I could never have done it without you! If I ever write a rock-opera you’ll be the first people I contact! 8. SOUTHERN FACE - I felt this turned out really well. The drums give it a Little Feat type shuffle and although the lyrics are nothing special it doesn’t really matter as the general ‘groove’ is the most important thing here. Nice Stevie Wonder style keyboards from Tuomas and effective banjo from Lasse. Guitar is DGDEGD 9. CHAMPAGNE ON ICE - A fairly standard ‘rocker’ - but Pertsa’s chugging guitar gives it a bit of balls and once again it has that garage band feel we like so much. Guitar is DGDGBD 10. SURVIVAL GAME - Another A P. Sarjanto song which I wrote some English words for. I suppose anyone who has reached 45 and been working for 30 years can relate to this song. More than three chords here so it was a bit of a challenge for me - but of course no problem to REAL musicians like Tuomas and Jore. 11. GLAD TO BE - Not my usual style at all - this falls into the same category as Dream and the final track Straight. Weird tuning, weird voicing. I was a bit unsure what the guys would make of this but Tuomas loved it and added some backing vocals as well as piano and organ. The single piano chord is especially spooky! And Jore’s bass is brilliant . How lucky am I to know these guys?! Glad To Be! 12. SOUTHERN FRIED BANJO - When Lasse left he forgot to take his banjo for some reason or other so I picked it up and started doodling and came up with this crazy ‘old time country’ track. I’m sure there’s a real country song called Cluck Old Hen so it must have been in my subconscious. Of course the lyrics are very tongue in cheek - though once again Ilona makes it sound like it’s for real! 13. SPECIAL FRIEND BLUES - Same initials as the last track! Synchronicity or what? This was another track we rescued from the outtakes. Nothing was working right with it - it was boring - but again Jore wanted to dust it down and try something new - so I added a picky guitar and some nylon string lead and he added accordion and suddenly it didn’t sound so boring after all. Guitar is DF#BEAD 14. EVERYBODY LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - As I already explained on Three Blind Monkeys this was an old song Jore had the lyrics for. I think I originally recorded this in the early 1990’s on a solo CD. Well, the guys were happy enough with it - but I’ve told them the days of jug band are now over for the Smugglers…. 15. SAY GOODNIGHT - Standout organ solo from Tuomas at the end of this. Great bass from Jore. Took us a while to get this together - it was too cluttered but I’m very pleased with the end result here. Lyrics may not mean anything to anyone but me. Guitar is DF#BEAD 16. BOTTLE OF BLUES - Another roadhouse ‘crunchy’ blues song. Really picks up after the first verse when Pertsa’s guitar kicks in. Sounds like we’re all a bit lost at the solo but that’s the way I like it sometimes. ‘You can tell my friends they can look for me somewhere between Hell and Santa Cruz’ is a line I’m particularly proud of! Guitar is in open G tuning DGDGBD 17. SHINE MY SOUL - This was one of the first songs I wrote for this collection. I’d been at a concert in Glasgow to see John Martyn - who was pretty poor - but the support act was a guitarist from Devon called John Smith - who told the audience the guitar tunings for some of the songs he was playing. One of them was CACGAE - something I’d never heard of before. So - I went home and duly tuned my guitar that way and found the riff and thought ‘That’s a big strange - but I like it’. It struck me as being a bit different from my usual. When I’d finished writing the words I remember I poured myself a whisky and celebrated going in a slightly new direction. 18. STRAIGHT - But this was an entirely different direction again. I look on Dream, Glad To Be and Straight as a kind of trilogy of songs I’d never expect to have the ability to write. The thing about different guitar tunings though is that you can play Dsus7#13 just by playing an ordinary Em shape - so you never know what sounds you might stumble upon. Wonderful bass and piano from my fellow band members - and Hessus’s trumpets at the end at just perfect. The lyrics came very quickly - I felt I was repeating myself in songs all the time and playing the same things continually - so maybe I’ll give it up and try something else - or maybe the muse will kick my arse in the New Year and I’ll get back into writing some more of the same. I don’t feel it can get any better than this double CD - but I’ll carry on if the guys want to - after all Van Morrison and J J Cale have been repeating themselves for years - so why shouldn’t I….Guitar is DF#BEAD
by Greg: Too Black Bad - Review - CD one A double CD! Anyone familiar with the Mescaline Smugglers music for the last few years waits like the Pigeons in Skinner’s Box to push whatever buttons we can to get the next package of wonderful music from Tuomas, Jore and Davy.. A two CD set becomes a treasure unlooked for. Quadrupled up with the release of the Kvester Melkk Quintet’s SECRET DOOR, Davy’s SHE’S A MYSTERY and the KMQ-MS DEMOS AND OUTTAKES and you have hours of listening enjoyment ahead of you and to share with friends. Having being recently gifted with a 16gb IPOD, I immediately loaded 19 albums worth of music by Jore, TJ band, TJD band, MS and KMQ. This time we get a veritable orchestra with brilliant session work by AP Sarjanto on guitar,banjo and Mandolin, Ilona Ala-Leppilampi on violin, Lasse Suurkari on banjo, Heikki Taittonen on flute, sax and trumpet and Pertti Sopenpera on electric guitar along with Davy, Jore and Tuomas on every other instrument imaginable. Jazz, blues, reggae, country, rock and folk all mixed in this highpoint of the MS discography. Thanks for all of the tuning notes, I played along with a couple of these! 1. Swing Out Sister - Great Jazzy blues number, very earthy, with definite touches of a pre beatnik, smoky 1950’s jazz club, at the birth of the cool. Excellent piano work, striking electric guitar and jazz sax that levitates the song to a new level. Opens up the album to a very high standard. 2. The Ballad of David Rosenberg - Love this kind of retro-cowboy ballad. Great guitar beginning Guitar is joined by a great rolling banjo throughout accompanied nicely by mandolin, adding jaw harp and harmonica as they are needed to complete the ambiance perfectly. A sprawling saga in 3 minutes of an emigrant to America in love with the girl he left behind. 3. Every Kinda People - Back to the jazz club again, very eccentric and ethereal. Great piano and percussion, rhythmically hypnotic, interesting point of view observational lyrics. Would be great as a straight instrumental, piano, guitar, flute and percussion melds so nicely. 4. Sam Beckett's Blues - Fantastic rocking blues song with a great back beat, amazingly good rock guitar, rhythm and especially lead by Pertti. I hate to say, but the lyrics are almost transparent because the music is so damn good, you just want to dance and don’t really give a crap what the singer is saying as long as the song goes on long enough for you to show your dance moves to the girl with the long brown hair. Well done! 5. All My Love - Another great jazzy, blues fusion, with wonderful piano, sounding both like a piano and harpsichord. and percussion again. The Bass player is as smooth as velvet and Jore is up front with a great guitar lead with elements of Jazz and classical mixed together. One of my favorites. 6. Oh My Marie - Speaking of danceable, who doesn’t like a great reggae song once in awhile to keep your body moving? A great festival of instruments here, popping all along like fireworks in Jamaica. Wonderful organ and sax accompanying the multitude of guitar sounds, all mixed to perfection. 7. Black Cat Tango - Perfectly delightful little song, can’t keep from smiling while listening to this, and oh yes, the feet are tapping out a little tango while listening to this. 8. In a Town Down South - I oughta recuse myself, the mix of banjo, slide guitar and echoey harmonica sets up a Pavlovian response for me, a hot, moody swampy land, filled with undesirable characters. The lyrics are a little cliché worn, but serve the purpose of carrying the wonderful music. I’m ready to buy a ticket to this B movie, because I love this kind of story and the music. 9. Chauvinist Blues - Nice tub thumper type of song. Cutely non PC outrageous lyrics, carried right along by everyone that seems to be having a great time. 10. Too Black Bad - This is great, everything is distorted and slightly outre. Feels like the ravings of a possessed soul with all the instruments turned to eleven. 11. Molly's In a Hole - This is a deliciously wicked song, kind of what Edgar Allan Poe would write if he played in a bluegrass band. Please listen to this at least twice! Excellent musicianship here all around, Ilona’s fiddle and Jore’s mandolin work wonders with the other instruments to make this an outstanding song, one of the best on this CD. 12. Living Free - Another favorite of mine, the jazzy feel, slightly scatty and with the lyrical references to Donovan’s Catch the Wind. Feels very improvisational, but the instrumentation is very tight and spot on. 13. She Say What? - Jore’s bass figure here, complimented by Ilona’s fiddle picking is amazing. Great lyrics that make you smile, partly because we’ve all been down that road before. 14. Long Black Train - Another great blues piece with a rock back beat and a distorted vocal. Delightful banjo sound at the front and the overarching blues harp keep you bopping to the great drum beat. Could dance all night long to this. 15. Dream - Nice jazzy piece, interesting guitar sounds and fine piano work by Tuomas. Great philosophical lyrics about why we are here and for what purpose. 16. Heart of the Blues - Ilona’s violin again adds a wonderful dimension to a great song. Tuomas’ piano sounds terrific as well, honky tonking right along down that country mile. Another Davy blues song that sounds authentic. 17. Some Kinda Love - Another philosophical journey. I like the stripped down feel, spare guitar joined by piano on the instrumental and flute at the end. Leaves room for the great lyrics to come through, with a feel of three a.m. in the darkened club, with your last whiskey and cigarette in front of you. 18. One More Change - Great piece to end the first CD. A wonderful rock-blues interpretation of an old folk song, updated and turned on it’s ear by the boys. Again, Pertti’s guitar stands out, but everyone sounds fantastic on this. CD TWO Part of the mythology that surrounds these musicians is the ability to continually come up with this wonderful music, lyrically elegant and musically brilliant at a pace that would make most bands half their age go nuts. Three CD’s worth of superlative music in 2008 from Mescaline Smugglers, not to mention the KMQ releases and Davy’s own MYSTERY TO ME. Lovely thing about TOO BLACK BAD CD Two is that it bounces around from jazz to blues to rock to Country and traditional music and you are never sure what’s coming next, just that it will be brilliant and it’s honest to God music. 1. JUNGLE JACK - Beautifully crafted jazzy piece, heavy on the rhythm and percussion that swings cool. The lyrics are almost incidental to the music, even the guitar fret squeaks seem to be a part of the ambience. But, the lyrics are delightfully perverse and made me blush a little. 2. I’LL NEVER BE HAPPY AGAIN - Fantastic country song. Started out as a parody, but took wings and grew into the Gila monster that ate Austin, Texas. Some Country songs are full of clichés that bite cow patties, this song shows how you can craft those clichés into a great ballad with lyrics and music that is so damn catchy, you’ll be whistling it tomorrow at work. The lyrics themselves are slyly wonderful, and coupled with the terrific bass, Ilona’s woven tapestry of fiddle square dancing in the mid ground, the banjo accompanying the guitar and Davy’s country boy vocals, (and the harmony vocals) that raise this from a parody to Austin City Limits material. 3. WORLD’S GONE MAD - I defy you to categorize this song. Partly Tom Waits, very Dylanesque to me, with very topical, angry lyrics about how blind we are to the incipient insanity surrounding us. Nice acoustic guitar up front with at least one electric guitar joined by Pertti’s amazing bluesy guitar riffs painting a Kadinsky like back ground, while Tuomas moves in and out like Jack the Ripper on a key board. 4. THREE BLIND MONKEYS - A song that makes you smile and gets your foot tapping every time you hear it. Crazy funny lyrics and a great jug band shuffle sound with everything from kazoo to blues harp ostracized well with Tuomas keyboards. 5. WHISPERING WIND - European/ American country fusion, with emphasis on “European”. Starts with a spacey whistling, resolving into a nice dreamlike sound from the guitar that almost sounds like a round, very engaging. As other instruments enter and the lyric starts, the lyrics paint a story, that feels like it is in black and white on a deserted hillside in Montana, Definitely a treat to listen to on headphones, especially when the mandolin solos at the end. 6. SEA MINER BLUES - Cracking good blues/ jug here. Very authentic sounding, though maybe a little heavy on the crackle. Love the compressed, falsetto vocals, and mandolin. Only complaint is, even with headphones, I can’t hear the banjo. 7. NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF ENGLAND - Geesh, has anyone in Hollywood optioned this song for a movie??. This is so fucking fantastic, I get shivers every time I listen to it. It really is an amazing piece of music, full of ambiance and color that opens up vistas to the imagination.. Tuomas piano is overwhelmingly amazing and Ilona’s violin wonderful. The lyrics are a movie in themselves while retaining a little mystery for the listener. Not enough superlatives for this song. 8. SOUTHERN FACE - Terrific ensemble piece. Love hearing the electric piano in one ear and the chunky banjo in the other ear while the harmonica soars over the top. Lyrics are fine, but mainly serve to move the great instrumental from one part to another. 9. CHAMPAGNE ON ICE - Roll up the carpets and move the furniture out. The boys are rocking tonight and it’s time for dancing til the cops show up! Excellent rocker… too damn short for me, I wanna hear this jam go on for at least another three minutes 10. SURVIVAL GAME - Nice little song. The music outshines the lyrics by a good margin on this one. Thought provoking lyrics, but perhaps a little prosaic when matched with the wonderful mandolin and cake walk piano solo. 11. GLAD TO BE - Really Superb jazz piece, love the Dave Brubeck sound on the piano and guitar with Jore’s bass doing a staccato rain drop dance just at the realm of your sensibilities. Tuomas’ killer organ comes in and then the little guitar solo, just really great sounds, very retro 1960’s cool jazz. Nice dreamy lyrics, even the vocal delivery has a surreal feel. This is about perfect. Another album favorite. 12. SOUTHERN FRIED BANJO - It’s disturbing how authentic this sounds. Davy and Ilona get the idiom so perfect, you can feel the heat and humidity of Southern Louisiana before a thunderstorm and see the Spanish moss hanging from the trees. The lyrics are fun and well done, typically twisted. I’d like to see this played over the titles for a movie, possible about some weird characters in the deep south.. 13. SPECIAL FRIEND BLUES - Good blues song that develops and grows into a great song as the tune progresses and the instruments are added. Grows on you so much that you wish it went on a little longer to see how far the musicians will take this. 14, EVERYBODY LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - Please don’t say this is the last jug band song from the Smugglers! Great song that underscores the value of this kind of music… your feet start tapping and you start smiling and order another round of Guinness all around. How could life get better? Please don’t stab my jug band heart! 15. SAY GOODNIGHT - This feels so intensely personal, so honest, its almost uncomfortable. Nice unusual guitar sounds, bass and percussion moves the talking blues right along. At the end, Tuomas’s great organ solo dances all over the keys to round this out. 16. BOTTLE OF BLUES - All of the elements of a great rocking blues song are here, the sound of Pertti’s guitar riding low and easy in the background during the first two verses and then bursting out after third verse, Tuomas’s great barrelhouse piano rolling right along and then the over arching blues harmonica.. Inspired lyrics, elegant phrases reaching into that subconscious that we all share. “Look for me between Hell and Santa Cruz.“ Damn, that‘s good! 17. SHINE MY SOUL - Very different sounding--Really interesting--the sound is stripped down to curiously delicious sounding guitar, bass and off set percussion, with blues harp in the back ground. Great world weary, hard bitten lyrics. Not sure if we could categorize this, but it’s great. 18. STRAIGHT - Perfect song to end the double CD really excellent. We’re back in the realms of jazz and the non traditional. Subtle bass work and superb piano with horns at the end…wow. Really wonderful. Scary lyrics for any MS fans. Has everything been said that needs to be said, are there more songs out there, will there be more music, will Lassie get Timmy out of the well? We can only wait and hope that the muse will smile on Glasgow once again. |
