Audio Files

By GINA VIVINETTO, ROBERT FRIEDMAN and GERRY DOYLE

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 17, 2000

WOODY GUTHRIE, DUST BOWL BALLADS (BUDDHA) Recorded in 1940, Dust Bowl Ballads is a slice of Americana from our nation's most socially conscious singer-songwriter. Woody Guthrie was telling it like it was back when Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Guthrie's own boy Arlo weren't yet glimmers in their pappies' eyes.

The most important folk artist of the century, Guthrie wrote Dust Bowl Ballads as a musical portrait of Southwestern migrant workers in the 1930s battling drought, dust storms and financial hardship. It resonates as powerfully as John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes Of Wrath, chronicling the same post-Depression angst. Sure, Guthrie cribbed some of Steinbeck's characters, including Tom Joad, to tell his stories, but songs such as Tom Joad, Pretty Boy Floyd and Vigilante Man tell tales you'll never forget.

There is no better introduction to Guthrie's wry wit, his poignant understanding of the human condition and his sharp commentary on social issues. Dust Bowl Ballads, his most successful recording, is Guthrie whittled to perfection.

This reissued version offers a bonus alternative track of Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues, snappy photos and Guthrie's original liner notes written for the RCA recording. And, don't worry, even if it is all remastered and high tech and digitally spanky, it hasn't lost a whit of its timelessness. GRADE: A.

- GINA VIVINETTO, Times pop music critic

DAN HICKS AND THE HOT LICKS, BEATIN' THE HEAT (Surfdog) Legend has it that Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks used to be listed in the San Francisco yellow pages under "bar fixtures."

But Hicks has been more phantom than fixture for the past 25 years, and there was no reason to think his irascible, jive-talking muse would ever get the full studio treatment again. So Beatin' the Heat, the Hot Licks' first recording since 1976, is something of a godsend, sort of like that long-lost wedding ring that turns up in the belly of a beached shark.

Back in San Francisco's psychedelic heyday, Hicks' shambling acoustic troupe was regarded as quaintly retro. Today, those same loopy, loungey, Django Reinhardt-meets-R. Crumb compositions are as fresh and bracing as a new coat of varnish. With the help of several kindred spirits (including Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones and Elvis Costello), Hicks smartly scats and mumbles his way into the new millennium.

Even the estimable Ms. Jones can't fully replace Maryann Price and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg, whose angelic harmonies graced the original Licks' discs. Still, her duet with Hicks on the classic I Scare Myself is priceless. And Eisenbergless.

Hicks' lyrics usually skitter along the DMZ between absurdity and profundity. I Scare Myself is one of the most brutally honest love songs ever written -- once you stop laughing long enough to consider it further. Hell I'd Go! is either a novelty song about alien abduction or a contemplation on the meaning (or lack of same) of life.

Thirteen other tracks testify to the top-of-form return of one of the few truly sui generis characters of modern American music. Hicks told Rolling Stone in 1973 that he was "gonna be makin' a slow comeback." He was a man of his word. GRADE: A.

- ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Times staff writer

SHAGGY, HOTSHOT (MCA) At some point in all our lives, we have thought we were musicians because we could program a synthesizer to play a nifty beat and hit the keys to the rhythm. Maybe, if we were feeling adventurous, we'd sing.

The thing is, Shaggy somehow got a record contract to do the same thing.

His latest album, Hotshot, is filled with self-aggrandizing reggae-style rap laid over the most '80s-sounding, cliche beats the music world has ever known. Catchy? No. Clever? No. Musically sophisticated? Sure, in the same way a phone book cover is fine art.

He used to say people called him Mr. Boombastic. Now, in the title track, he says, "They call me Mr. Hotshot." Okay, sure, whatever. But the lyrics don't get much more interesting than that: Pump your fist because you know it's hard to resist/that's how you know you're rolling with the love specialist, he sings in the supremely undanceable third track, Dance & Shout. To be fair, though, it does kind of make you want to shout.

And the music isn't all that much better. In fact, it's not better at all. It sounds like he bought a down-on-its-luck Casio synthesizer for $2 at a garage sale, played all the prerecorded music in the studio and laid down his lyrics and background sounds over it. The drums sound fake. The horns sound fake. And one track's main hook sounds exactly like the theme from Ghostbusters. Really.

Whether he's saying "This one goes down to my ladies," laughing unnaturally or simply rhyming inanely, Shaggy's most recent effort has no redeeming qualities. One track -- one -- starts out promisingly: When I was young I used to dream of being rich/have a lot of houses and cars couldn't know which one was which/finding me a chick and getting hitched/living the fairy tale life. It's kind of a touching little song about people who have it worse than you.

On the other hand, if Shaggy keeps this up, his life will be far from a fairy tale. He'll be lucky to get a contract to sell office water coolers, let alone records. The actual CD is a nifty orange color. But other than that, Hotshot is a display of some seriously lukewarm talent. Grade: D-

- GERRY DOYLE, Times staff writer

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