OK, this review is going to start with what will appear to be a COMPLETELY off-topic story, I am going somewhere with it, please bear with me for about a couple/three paragraphs. The apparent sidebar anecdote is totally germane to my review.
At the time (last few days of 2004/first few days of 2005) I was the manager at a Radio Shack store. RS is one of the worst places to work (according to
this survey #3 on the worst list), and this was one of my worst experiences. I & my team had just finished the year end inventory of the entire store, and I was told on December 30th that I had to recount the entire store AGAIN on January 1st. Yikes. Well, I hated to tell my team this and they hated to hear it, but there was nothing I could do. Except maybe quit. I probably should have, but I decided at the time that I wanted to keep my job.
So, late on New Year Day of '05 we scan every little last item in the store. Once the items are scanned, they are fed into a computer which spits out a reconcile report (the difference between what was counted and what the computer showed was onhand). The reconcile is 99% of the inventory. By the time the reconcile prints, it's now almost midnight. I put together the reports for my team members, and started looking for them. And looking for them. They had left, leaving me and another store manager to complete my inventory.
I have never been this pissed in my life. This would have been an all night job even with the team members who were now long gone. But it's just me and another guy now, this inventory would still be going when I opened the store the next morning. I am SPITTING MAD and just BELLOWING. MotherF
UCKER! So here I am just fuming and shrieking profanity for several hours, all the while I was playing an eclectic mix satellite radio station on the stereo system. Then, something amazing and miraculous happened which changed my life forever.
This music just grabbed me and stopped me dead in my tracks. WTF was this??? I'd never heard anything quite like it, it sounded like bluegrass meets side two of Led Zeppelin III with the strangest image-inducing lyrics and one of the sweetest female voices I'd ever heard. I forget all about how angry I was and check the song ID, "Ooh La La" by The Ditty Bops.
So, after what turned out to be a 36 hour shift at my store, I finally get home and do a Google search. I find the album, and see that it's available from Amazon dot com. I ordered the album on the strength of that one listen to that one song. Then I passed out.
Then.....the wait
For WHATEVER reason, this order from Amazon-dot-fvcking-com took almost a month to complete. (side note, I never really forgave them for this, I still only order through Amazon if I can't find something elsewhere) The only saving grace in this was that their entire album was posted to their website, along with several fan video recordings of live shows. The Ditty Bops eponymous debut album became the only album I ever almost totally burned out before I even got the CD.
Which might have been true for a lot of albums, but not this. This album totally dominated 2005 for Paul Smeenus. I saw them twice that year, and became a total drooling fanboy for life.
The Ditty Bops are Abby DeWald (guitar and vocals) and Amanda Barrett (vocals, mandolin and sunrdy assorted instruments)
....and in the original lineup they employed Greg Rutledge on piano & accordian & John Landon on lead guitar & violin (and a series of standup bassists in studio)
The opening track on this magnificent Mitchell Froom produced debut is "Walk or Ride".
This is an Abby composition (their songs are usually distinctly either Abby or Amanda in style). One of the things that endears me to this is that for most of my life I've been a non driver and in those years I mainly got around on my bicycle
... as such I just loved the lyric
"But I'm feeling quite confused by the people who refuse to see
A simple way of life don't make you the loser
They say we won't make it far if we don't drive there in a car,
We'll be there with time to spare and find our own way home"
The second track is also an Abby song, "Wishful Thinking"
This song has a whimsical, almost Hawaiian vibe to it. I love the chorus, and the final line
"If the sky should open it's eyes and cry from up above
Let's shed some tears of joy and fall in love"
This segues into the aforementioned Amanda-penned "Ooh La La"
The imagery of this is incredible, picturing a wild taboo love affair in an Ozark, hillbilly setting, with three beautiful children complicating the affair. Consider the lyric
"Mama buried Pop atop the roof where he slept
One Leg on each side of pointed shingles"
This is on my short list of favorite songs by anyone, in any genre, ever. Especially in the remarkable way I stumbled across it.
The next song is without question the most all-time popular song from this album, their gloriously happy rendition of the 1915 "Sister Kate" by AJ Peron and Clarence Williams, at that time considered to be quite the naughty tune:
I've video-recorded (with the ladies permission) this song twice, once in June of 2005 and again in their 2006 concert in Portland OR which I uploaded to YouTube. The "Sister Kate" performance was moved
here and replaces, the other follows this review
(much more and I do mean MUCH more on the 9/12/2006 show in my next review)
I gotta tell you, it just doesn't get any more fun than this.
Track 5 is "Breeze Black Night", one of my favorite Abby compositions, with it's wind-chime opening...
The next song is the Abby penned "Gentle Sheep", a wonderful social commentary. I love the
lyrics to this song. All of them. Were this vinyl (which I would pay a LOT for if it existed) this song would conclude side one.
Amanda's "Pale Yellow" would then open side two. Apparently, her first spoken word as a baby was, in fact, "beer", which contributes to the song title and is specifically mentioned in the lyrics. Amanda's voice is effing gorgeous in this sweet song.
"Four Left Feet" is the first of MANY of Abby's waltzes (virtually every album contains one, sometimes even two). She's really good at this. I like this song a lot even though I would pick this as this first album's down moment. Any time the weakest song on an album is still thoroughly enjoyable, you are definitely dealing with greatness.
"There's A Girl" is also a quarter-notch below the rest of this album IMO, and like "Four Left Feet" I still enjoy it a lot. I hear a lot of Everly Brothers influence in this.
Then comes the gorgeous "Unfortunate Few". The amateur live video recording of this was my favorite of those that were featured on their original website, but no longer seems to be on YouTube (their website has totally changed, for reasons that will be explained in future reviews, I intend to review the entire Bops catalog)
Then comes Amanda's "Short Stacks". This video by Amanda's BFF Michael Lucid tells a story, a cut & paste animation of little ghost girl visiting her grieving family. It literally made me bawl when I first saw this
Then the great finale to this great album. "Wake Up" is Amanda's social commentary about breaking free from the restrictive norms of workaday society and becoming your own expressive self
BUT....there is then a hidden track. I only know the name of this track because Abby told me after the first show I attended in Seattle when they opened for Tegan & Sara. It is not credited on the album. "In The Life You Wrote" is a quiet and I do mean QUIET reflection on someone who recently had passed, I don't know who unfortunately. I can find no reference to it at all on the internet, other than a listing of Google searches (my own?) and passing mention of a hidden track. Which is a pity, because it's brilliant and deserves attention.
Next review: Moon Over The Freeway (2006)