:-(
special introductory
paragraph!
Vol. 1
Vol. 3
That hurt a lot.
That also hurt. Stop doing that.
Hi, I'm Mark Prindle, leader of the online track team www.MarkPrindle.com. You know, when the world first heard about the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup comprised of wildly successful hitmaker Tom Petty, the legendary Bob Dylan, the legendary George Harrison, the legendary Roy Orbison, and some asshole, it didn't know what to think! "What the...?" it collectively asked itself. "This is amazing! Five artists at the top of their game! George Harrison, still counting the money from that cover tune! Bob Dylan, hot off of Down In The Groove! Tom Petty, having just sold 15 copies of Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)! Roy Orbison, having won the 1981 Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal! A guy from E.L.O.!
Strangely, the Traveling Wilburys weren't the absolute shittiest band in the history of the world.
The Traveling Wilburys may have been a 'just for fun' project between friends, but it's also a wonderfully energizing listen for people who aren't their friends at all (ex. fans); the beats are mostly uptempo, the camaraderie bleeds through in the way they trade off lead and background vocals with each other, and a handful of the songs are catchy as hell! The sound is that of crisp drums, strummed acoustic guitars with understated electric lead, and high-in-the-mix vocals with group harmony accompaniment. As with all Jeff Lynne productions, there is a sort of slick gloss on top of everything, but the music still manages to feel homey and scruffy (especially compared with what he did to Full Moon Fever).
Though the general sound of the band might be described as 'folksy acoustic shuffly fun,' the songwriting incorporates a number of influences, including melodic pop (the hits "Handle With Care" and "End Of The Line"), bitter swamp blues (the hit "Tweeter and the Monkey Man"), Jamaican reggae-ska (the hit "Last Night"), rockabilly (Lynne's "Rattled"), soul balladry (Dylan's "Congratulations"), early '60s rock (Orbison's "Not Alone Any More") and even experimental Brian Wilson-meets-Pete-Townshend vocal/synth mayhem (brilliant oddball "Margarita"). There are also two other songs on the album. One sounds astoundingly like Bob Dylan, and the other inexplicably has a real 'George Harrison' feel to it.
Why can't I go a single day without getting this spam email where the girl holds a gigantic dick in her hands and stares at it with amazement? The one with the two giggling Hispanic girls spreading their fingers apart to demonstrate their preferred cock length is bad enough, but this girl holding the gigantic dick has the most weirdly-spaced eyes I've ever seen. And they're staring at a gigantic dick! I don't need people seeing that on my work computer. And even if it will "separate (my)self from other men" and make her "love (me) more than any other guy," I really don't have the disposable income to purchase a Penis Enlarge Patch RX at this time. Especially if it's just going to attract a bunch of giggly Hispanics with their eyes in weird places.
This music is so peppy and the vocals so exuberant that the album will undoubtedly make you feel happy, and that's probably why so many people like it so much. But if you're looking for something more than a goodtime roll in the hay, a lot of these compositions come up a bit short -- especially since the first song has the strongest melody on the whole album! Too many of the others are more fun than memorable. For example, I love boogie-woogie piano as much as the next guy also loves boogie-woogie piano, but is that supposed to make me want to sit through "Rattled" more than once when there doesn't seem to be any melody at all? Likewise, "Dirty World" is plenty funny with its 'making fun of sex innuendo in music' lyrics (which I'll quote later), but the non-descript chord changes just point the way towards Under The Red Sky. And to be honest, I just don't think Tom Petty tried very hard on "Last Night." I've heard him when he tries, and the result usually has more than three chords and bothers to differentiate the verse from the chorus.
But these are just personal preferences, really. I absolutely love Dylan's slow "Congratulations" and you might think he didn't try very hard on that one, so let's just agree to disagree on 'personal faves,' accept that my 7 grade is indicative of nothing more than my own personal like/dislike for this particular set of melodies, and focus on the fact that this is a great optimistic listen that will show you a hardy time and leave you on a very up note: "Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine/Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line!"
On the lyrical bimtickler, most of these are pretty basic and unremarkable; the girl in "Last Night" unexpectedly ends up robbing Tom Petty at gunpoint, but aside from that, only two songs stand out from the pack. As Mr. Dylan (Bob Dylan, an old singer from the 50s) vocalizes both of these tracks, I'm going to assume that he wrote them as well. The first is "Dirty World," which starts off by making you think you're listening to the stupidest piece of crap you've ever heard ("He loves your sexy body, he loves your dirty mind/He loves when you hold him when you grab him from behind"), but then slowly weaves in a series of hilariously stupid sexual innuendo that ultimately culminates in a song-ending show-stopping laundry list of the grossest, dumbest and most confusing lewd symbolism ever expressed in song:
"He loves your electric dumplings!
He loves your red bell peppers!
He loves your fuel injection!
He loves your service charge!
He loves your five-speed gearbox!
He loves your long endurance!
He loves your quest for junk food!
He loves your big refrigerator!
He loves your trembling wilbury!
He loves your marble earrings!
He loves your porky curtains!
He loves your power steering!
He loves your bottled water!
He loves your parts and services!"
The other notable lyric is "Tweeter and the Monkey Man." This one is obviously a Bruce Springsteen parody, with its turgid story of desperation, betrayal and murder in the badlands including such familiar plot devices as an undercover cop, the Jersey Line, a stolen car, Highway 99 (okay, "Johnny 99" at any rate), Vietnam, a mansion on the hill, Thunder Road, a state trooper, an old abandoned factory, a Jersey girl, the river, and a lion's den. But my question is... why!? It's not like Dylan is exactly innocent of telling pointless stories about people with dumb nicknames ("Napoleon In Rags," "The Jack of Hearts," "Jokerman," etc). Plus, the music doesn't sound a thing like Springsteen, instead coming across a lot like a bitter 70's Bob Dylan song ("Hurricane," for example). Was he trying to respond to the way critics once hailed Springsteen as the 'new Dylan'?? And if so, shouldn't he have done so about a decade and a half earlier!?
Actually, now that I think about it, the whole Wilburys project was so spontaneous and light-hearted that he probably just thought it would be funny to make fun of Springsteen's overly-cornball cliche'd songwriting, simple as that. It's a shame we can't ask him ourselves, but as I'm sure you're aware, Bob Dylan unfortunately passed away earlier this week.
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Sorry, typo. Bob Dylan passed out earlier this week. He was tired from a long day. He's awake now though.
As for the Wilbury's. Good for folks finally coming together and re-releasing these albums. Nothing spectacular aside from the collaboration itself, but just good clean fun for the kids and I'm 97 years old.
Then again, "Dirty World" may simply be the Wilburys' dramatic interpretation of the Van Halen lyric brainstorming session for "Panama."
Yesterday, the wife and I took Mr. Henry to Ward's Island as we so often do on spring/summer weekends so that he might enjoy a bit of swimming. We were on a particularly 'beachy' segment of the island, standing on a stone wall and hurling sticks into the East River so he could excitedly swim out and retrieve them like a good boy. Because the wall was fairly high and he didn't like lying down in the sand, whenever he needed a rest he would trot like half a block down the beach until there was a break in the wall and he could climb up to the grassy area and chew on his stick. So at one point late in the day, the wife and I realized that one of the two main sticks was missing. She'd checked all over the grassy area with no luck, but I was pretty sure he hadn't left it in the water. At this particular moment, he was standing next to me with the other main stick in his mouth, waiting for me to play Tug-A-Stick with him. I looked him in the eyes and asked, "Henry, where's your other stick? We can't find it! Where did you put your other stick?" Like the Best Dog In The World(TM) that he is, Henry (with stick in mouth) trotted down half a block to the break in the wall, climbed up to the grassy area, and continued trotting past a bike path and into some tall weeds further away. I shouted, "Brenda! (That's my wife's name, so it was appropriate) Follow him! I asked him to show you where the other stick is." She did follow him and arrived just in time to watch him drop the stick he was holding -- not in the vicinity of, not somewhat near, but directly on top of the stick I'd asked him about. (!!!!!)
See? Best dog in the world. This second Wilburys CD is also a dog.
Perhaps (but probably not) inspired by the sorrow of Orbison's passing, 6 of these 11 songs concern themselves with pain -- specifically the pain caused by no-good low-down women, running around, cheating, breaking hearts, getting messed up with pimps and thugs, and not realizing that Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne are in love with them. "You'd be happy as you could be, if you belonged to me," argues Mr. Dylan. "Sin number one was when you left me/Sin number two, you said goodbye," he continues, separating a single activity into two distinct sins. Add Mr. Petty and Mr. Lynne in unison, "Woman I've tried so hard just to do my best/They're gonna put me in the Poor House and you'll take all the rest!" Mr. Harrison butts in, "Did you stay up pacing the floor?/Got me worried - you ignore me more and more." Mr. Dylan takes back the floor, crying that "So many times the sun came up, but it came up without you." Mr. Petty and Mr. Lynne in unison complete the requiem with the sorrowful refrain, "You knocked my headlights out, so turn them on again/I can't see where I'm going, I can't tell where I've been." Yes, 1990 was indeed a sad year for the Traveling Wilburys, what with gangsta rap luring all their fans away.
Rather than simply imitating Vol. 1, the Wilburys herein tackle several new subgenres (macho hard rock, country & western, blues, doo-wop, psych-folk, boogie-woogie) while augmenting their Lynne-acoustic sound with mandolin, sitar, saxophone, piano and a surprising variety of electric guitar tones (the watery wah tone in "Poor House" is particularly bizarre!). Unlike the debut, few of the songs are uptempo, and even fewer sound particularly happy. The group vocals are still in abundance, but even some of these have been converted into ridiculous over-compressed ELO-style harmony tracks. Wow, what a difference! Cocksucker Video!
But when you get right down to it, there was really no reason to do a second Wilburys album. None of them needed the money, none of them had written any classic material (even the most likable songs lack the creative hooks of "Handle With Care" and "The End Of The Line"), none of them sound like they were having a particularly good time, and none of them were Roy Orbison. I do personally quite enjoy four tracks -- the pretty Petty popper "New Blue Moon," 'early Dylan'-style protest song "Devil's Been Busy," silly but wonderfully exuberant "Wilbury Stomp," and lopey-dope Dylan strummer "Inside Out" (aside from the bridge, a bizarrely blatant rip-off of The Byrds' cover of Dylan's own "Chimes of Freedom"!), but the grumpy theme of the album doesn't really inspire me to sit through the oysters to get to the pearls. The main appeal of the first album is its infectious good spirit, and this optimistic mood is enough to make even its least innovative tracks listenable. Who needs non-infectious melancholy?
And that's why I give Vol. 3 precisely one less point than Vol. 1.
Best,
Mark Prindle
President and CEO
Reviews That Never Match The Number Grades, Inc. (a subsidiary of All-Music Guide)
I seem to be the only person in the entire universe that thinks Vol. 3 is awesome and Vol. 1 is boring. Even though 3 has a bunch of pain songs - it is a barrel of monkeys fun wise. My rankings are Vol. 1 gets a 6 and 3 gets an 8 or 9.
I have a friend who is personally responsible for Orbison's death. He dreamed Orbison died and then woke up the next morning to find out that it was true. At that time, we both were going to the same college that Roy himself went to. My friend bumped off someone else but I can't remember who at the moment.
