Don "Hollywood" Adams checks in.

Don "Hollywood" Adams with a couple quick reviews....

"ONE BAD DAY IN 93"

“Nobody really wants to hear a POP SONG/Full of chainsaws, broken hearts, and misery,” sings Angry Johnny at the top of his latest compilation of odds and ends, ONE BAD DAY IN ’93, wryly nailing down why his music seems to be considered so radio-unfriendly by unfriendly radio.

EVERY MORNING finds him counting down the days, like a prisoner who has more faith in the death penalty than any hope of the phone call from the governor that would be her return.

“So my darkest hour found me all alone praying for a light/But the higher power ain’t got no use for me tonight” is the kind of foregone conclusion that comes from BANGING MY HEART AGAINST THE WALL.

A melancholy road trip is fueled by the folly that ANOTHER THOUSAND MILES will make him forget her:  “Let the whiskey work its wonders/At the table I’ll slide under/I’m going down/but I’m going down in stye.”

“You are the shovel that digs my grave/but I can’t help it, I’m still your slave/You are the only one who can SAVE ME.”  This weary plea for help has vocals that seem tinged with the knowledge that it will go unanswered.

Melodic and mournful, THE ARMS OF A STRANGER would make a great Bee Gees song, circa 1971.  “Nothing makes sense/Since these ties you have severed/What’s a poor fool to do/Except love you forever?”

No one is given to overstatement like the broken-hearted, and the yearning here reaches cosmic levels:  “When there’s no one in the universe left alive to tell/My love for you will be the one thing left alive and well.”  EVEN THE DEVIL CANNOT KILL, but Leonard Cohen could, with this one.

Some timely comic relief comes with “I USED TO SEND HER FLOWERS/Special delivery/Now someone else is bringing her roses/and that bastard gets them for free.”
We are not laughing with this poor sucker, we are laughing at him, and especially at the punchline:  “Now who the hell is gonna deliver me?”

SAME DEAD END sounds like Chris Isaak taking a very wrong turn:  “There isn’t much left here to recognize/but in the end it’s all the same/Maybe an exit over the next rise/maybe just another breakdown lane.”  Unlike most rockers, cars are not a form of escape for Angry Johnny...  Wherever he goes, there he is.

YOU’RE GOING AWAY channels The Animals so well that you can almost hear the Vox Continental organ.  It would be great if the one and only Eric Burdon did this, but the double-tracked Angry Johnnies are a fair trade.

“Most people lost in the wild die of shame,” says Anthony Hopkins in THE EDGE.  Sometimes, so do the broken-hearted:  “I’m COLD/Frozen down to the bone//She’s gone and I’m left here alone/Write it on my tombstone.”

DEAD AND BURIED is another tuneful lament that would make the early Bee Gees proud:  “Pick some flowers in a field/Take them to my grave/Shed a tear and say a prayer/for one who was not saved.”

“I placed a call to Doctor Death, but they wouldn’t put me through/So what the Hell’s a chicken shit like me supposed to do?”  A welcome dose of gallows humor, KERVORKIAN BLUES finds another loser whistling to the graveyard.

PRODIGAL SON is a bile-soaked tirade, hopeless and bible-black: “I am a lonely little wretched puppet/that God and Satan like to toss around/Seems my whole life I’ve been hanging/I think it’s time to cut this puppet down.”

Fittingly, this CD-length trip through the Hell of the human heart ends with a love song for the damned:  “I’d die for you, I’d kill for you/But only if you asked me to/You’re the only one that I know who could ever understand/So darlin’, take my hand/LET’S GO THROUGH HELL AGAIN.

Consistent in tone, with folkish explorations of lost love that are well-suited for the intimacy of the acoustic, ONE BAD DAY IN ’93 makes for one fine night of listening sixteen years on.

Get it HERE, now!

"SEND MORE BEER"

It is fitting that SEND MORE BEER -- the first release featuring new studio material since Angry “went crazy” and broke up the band (and then went uncrazy and reformed it) -- starts with the sparse, housebound lament of SADDEST SOUND:  I guess that she got tired of waiting for my train/A train that was derailed long ago.”   This tale of lost love, and worse -- it seems as if she took his very will to live with her when she left -- unwinds to the lonely accompaniment of a music box.  “Thought when I was young/that I would be somebody/Spent my life believing my own lies/I hear ‘em laugh behind my back and I wonder what’s so funny/I wonder how I got so old and tired/Right before my very eyes.”  Dour and heartbreaking enough to have come from Lou Reed’s gloriously dismal BERLIN, this track would have been a good note to go out on, but as an opening it makes one just a little afraid of what’s to come...

But fear not, because track two is one of the most hilariously danceable tracks Angry has ever concocted.  TWO HEADED BABY sounds like Jerry Reed as a carnival barker with a screw loose:  “Let’s do lots of drugs and have a two headed baby” sings the backwoods narrator of his twisted get-rich-quick scheme, but unlike the freak shows it imitates, the song actually delivers on the goods it promises.  The line “And if we get lucky/And it grows some teeth/A commercial for Doublemint gum” is worth the price of admission alone (and a few measly bucks for a CD.)

BETTER MAKE IT HOME TONIGHT is a modern twist on the traditional tale of the trucker headed home to see his baby.  This poor bastard has the peddle to the floor -- and his daddy’s shotgun in his lap -- because the little woman has promised to cheat on him if he doesn’t make it home by midnight.  He answers her threat that she will not sleep alone in their bed with the bloody promise that he will.  “Just a trigger pull past midnight and all my troubles will be through.”

BEAUTY MEETS BEAST is a whimsical Killville fable.  Once upon a time, a beauty to rival Christine Jorgensen -- “These days her name was Carrie/Folks used to call her Larry.” -- meets the Leader of the Pack, had he lived -- “The fifty-seven feet he skidded/left his face all scarred and pitted.”  The old saw that there’s someone for everyone is oddly comforting inside the notoriously bloodstained confines of Dewey’s Bar.

A loser finds that some things are better left alone when he reconnects with a lost love just long enough to hear “I wish I could say I miss you/BUT I DON’T. 

This bitter but somehow breezy pill is followed by GOING DOWN, a good strummer with the first appearance (six tracks in, even!) of Old Scratch:   “I handed him a beer and he said you know why I’m here/He lit himself a Lucky and he smiled.”  This typically Angry trip to Hell is enlivened by a welcome electric lead, a brutal description of heartbreak from the Dark One himself --  “Its worse than being skinned alive/Worse than being crucified/But what am I telling you for?/You already know.” -- and a great bullhorn finish which proves yet again that if the Angry One wanted to make a little money, he could always become a carnival barker...  or if he wanted to make a lot, a televangelist.

BUYING A ROPE, one of the best “lost” Angry tunes (unless you see the “lost” documentary DARK SIDE OF THE MOONSHINE, anyway) finally turns up.  This version has eerie backing vocals and haunting, yet disturbingly jaunty, whistling.  “I’m buying a rope tomorrow/She broke my heart today.”  Deadly efficient, this one is a must-have that should have seen release years ago.

I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT YOU SAID finds Angry’s voice twisting to nearly Neil Young octaves in this first-person narrative of a nut who REALLY doesn’t like it when his girlfriend looks at other guys.

Things get even creepier in the stalker anthem WATCHING YOU.  The guy in this song doesn’t sound like he gave even a glance to the restraining order.   “I’m finally holding you/Our first and final embrace/For years I have imagined/how your kisses would taste.”

PILE OF BONES is a guilt-ridden ghost story that plays like Poe at an open mike night:
“Rotten wind chime/clicking, clacking/in a hurricane/I beg you/Stay down in that hole.”

THE MAN I AM TODAY is another of Angry’s serial killer road trips, like the sick little grandson of the grandaddy that is DEATH IS DRIVING A PONTIAC.  “I gave up on giving and now I only take” echoes the psychosis of Peter Gabriel’s FAMILY SNAPSHOT.

AIN’T FORGIVEN finds Angry in his most guttural glory, like an old man on his last drop, and his last leg.  “I wish I could call you/To bid you farewell/But I’m boarding the next train/Gonna take me to Hell/If you’re looking to find me/I’ll be in the last car/With a bottle of whiskey, bellied up to the bar.”  The bluesy, doomed antihero here is so exhausted that he is ready to go back down to the crossroads and turn himself in.

NO MORE PAGES TURNING finds our vengeful author calling together his friendly enemies to read his auto-die-ography... not surprisingly, the last words they will ever hear.
“Hey bartender, don’t you worry, your character survives/I need someone to tell my story/When the policeman arrives/I’m counting on you buddy/Make sure you get it right/Or I’ll be back and you’ll be starring in the sequel.”

LOVE COMES ONCE IN A LIFETIME and then it’s gone, leaving another poor fool to “Stare down that barrel of despair/at that brass and lead Angel/as I pray to the Devil”.   But you don’t call Old Scratch, he calls you:  “The Devil will not come/because he’s having too much fun/He knows my soul ain’t worth selling/and I’m a joke he loves telling.”

FOREVER AND A DAY is a quick, regretful love song that serves as a cool down after the bloody workout of sui-and-homi-cide that leads up to it...  “After all these years/And after all these tears/You’d think that I’d have something more to say/But I said it all back then/No use in saying it again/No one is gonna hear it anyway.” 

SEND MORE BEER is a diverse and winning hybrid of new songs and older gems that Angry found behind the couch.  You might take the title literally and try to barter by sending a twelver of PBR out to Killville, but I recommend you buy this sucker and suck those brews down as you listen...

Get your own copy of "SEND MORE BEER" along with other Killville classics  HERE.