ANGRY JOHNNY

"WHERE'S YOUR JESUS NOW?"

1. Scratch Said 2. 8 Ball
3. Blood 4. Carved Your Name
5. How You Gonna Feel? 6. Fall From Grace
7. Gravel Yard 8. The Bottle And Me
9. Take Me Down 10. If I Had A Dollar
11. Drag Racing The Devil redux 12. Heaven Must Not Want Me
13. Lying Your Way To The Promised Land 14. Oh My Lord
15. Hey Hank 16. This Heart
17. This Time

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"I just CARVED YOUR NAME in my arm, feeling like an asshole right now," is one hilariously pathetic opening line.  By the end of this most efficient of Angry Johnny's many love-gone-wrong songs, the poor sucker decides that he "Should have carved a little deeper/a Grim Reaper in my arm."
THE BOTTLE AND ME is proof positive that alcohol is a depressant.  "The bottom of the heap/is the company I keep."  Angry finds a place to do some drinking and thinking in the GRAVEL YARD, realizing, "That castle in the air, it was never really there."  IF I HAD A DOLLAR is like a strong cup of coffee on the morning after, bitter and black.
  
HOW YOU GONNA FEEL? is another deadly litany, with some lively guitar work. TAKE ME DOWN might be called "House of the Setting Sun," with its welcome addition of Animals-style keyboards. 
THIS HEART is not Angry enough, but the double-tracked vocals are unique.  HEY HANK finds Johnny bending the legendary tunesmith's ear with the sincerest form of flattery.
THIS TIME is an interesting experiment that's got Angry coming and going.  New lyrics are combined with a reversed version of "I Wanna Tell You a Story."  The result is oddly compelling, like listening to a schizo trying to drown out the voices that haunt his head.  
"I bet they're fucking right now as we speak," Old Scratch taunts in FALL FROM GRACE, for all the booze and drugs, one of the more sobering of Angry's trademark encounters with the Dark One.
The barbs continue in SCRATCH SAID.  "Hey boy, I heard a real funny joke today/She never loved you, anyway."  
A game of 8 BALL down at the VFW ends in a bitter victory -- if you hustle the Devil, the only place you can brag about it is on your tombstone.
The DRAG RACING THE DEVIL REDUX lacks the high-octane roar of the original -- and the guitar licks that propelled that song along like the added thrust from a nitrous oxide kit.  There is a guest appearance by the Lord in an almighty Lincoln Continental, though.  Best of all is our hero's epiphany that maybe that great lost love was more trouble than she was worth.   "I told him he could keep her/I can buy my trouble cheaper/in a bottle down at Dewey's bar and grill."
The roll is called down yonder in LYING YOUR WAY TO THE PROMISED LAND and HEAVEN MUST NOT WANT ME.   "I drank the BLOOD of the lamb but it only made me choke," Angry sings, sampling the hair of the dogma that bit him.  The religious fervor reaches a crescendo with OH MY LORD, a bluesy, anguished cry for salvation.  "My soul is black and I ain't coming back." 
All: Amen.  

DON ADAMS