 "Photo: Courtesy of Alligator Records")
I'm pretty sure I don't need to tell you why I selected Marcia Ball's Peace, Love & BBQ for this week's Auditory Riches, and I'm also fairly certain that I don't need to tell you just exactly how bad of an album it really is. But oh man, it's awful.
Apparently, Alligator Records decided that it'd be best to go the "way too much stuff" route in distributing advanced copies of the album, so instead of just the disc, we received a gigantic green folder stuffed with the record, two full-color photographs of Ball, a press release and a photocopied collection of various articles written about the disc. The album has actually received quite a bit of press and was described by one reviewer as "where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet." I laughed quite a bit at that one.
Aside from those vague labels, the CD sounds like forced country gimmickry. Do you remember that Cletus T. Judd fella who would create redneck parodies of popular country songs? Imagine that, but with the premise that the artist is serious about the content, no parodies attempted. It's hard to do, and even more so when the names of the songs include the title track and another tune called "Watermelon Time." With that in mind, let's look at the opening lyrics to that song:
"Hear your mama calling you/You can't run and hide/Get that truck a-loaded now/It's watermelon time/Go out on the highway/Put you up a sign/Cut that big one open/It's red to the rind."
Here's where the situation gets confusing. The press release is packed with quotes from critics praising the album, and the names are actually pretty good, everything from Billboard to The Boston Globe to The Washington Post. So what gives? Do these reviewers actually enjoy the record or are they all part of a joke that Marcia Ball isn't privy to? I'm going to go with the latter because there's just no way this album can or should appeal to anyone. When the opening track "Party Town" started, I literally thought I had turned on an episode of "Full House." I'll end this column by giving you some more lyrical gems from Marcia.
From "Peace, Love & BBQ:" "Little kids hangin' from the tree limbs swingin'/There's Big Daddy he's about to have a fit/Tryin' to get that charcoal lit."
From "My Heart and Soul:" "You take a drink and pass the bottle around/And then you wink and my heart hits the ground/I know you think you've got me under control/That I'm the bell and you're the one for whom it tolls/You mumble, mumble, mumble/ And you stutter and you stumble."
From "Married Life": "One ship on the ocean, one bird in the sky/ Out in the middle of the deep blue sea/Somehow they collide/That's married life, oh me oh my, yeah that's married life."
Wow.
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