You want obscure? I'll give you obscure. See that, kids?
That's a CDR. Never mind private press, this sucker was never pressed at all, just burned off someone's home PC. I don't even know for sure that my CD player can read it; I've got a pretty nice once and the better the player the less it tolerates homebrew. The drive I've got for my computer should be able handle it if necessary, but then there's the question of whether the disc is still being functional. No one knows for sure how long CDRs last and this one is old enough to've graduated college. Well, we'll see.
As for the music itself, the band name lays it on the line: it is, at least according to its creator--and the singular is correct, a dude named Allen L. Barnes played and produced everything but a single backing vocal--
--psychedelic funk with an Arizona twist, whatever that may entail. Western twang in the guitar leads? The somehow audible use of a saguaro needle as a guitar pick? The sonic aura of visibly packing heat to go grocery shopping? We shall see.
Despite being a CDR and having a cover that really shows you what home printers and home graphic designers were capable of in 2000, this is a well thought-out and put together package. It's got a complete lyric booklet, and that does seem to've been professionally done; it's on that glossy paper and the perfectly placed staples speak to machine precision. The lyrics aren't exactly P-Funk, on paper at least they seem merely serviceable. But you know, there's worse things than serviceable.
Let's get together, dance, groove, and get along? Hey, all right.
So I pretty much know what this'll sound like. The main question is, will it be good? I'm not surprised that a lot of people can't play funk. What I am surprised by is the amount of people who don't know they can't play funk. There's a lot that goes into the genre but it lives and dies on its rhythm section. Funk rhythm sections are somehow elastic, grooving, in the pocket, and wild and playful all at once. They sound like a cross between a huge snake and a pair of year-old cats chasing each other around the house. The rhythm sections of many a band that thinks they're playing funk sound like a 2x4 being dropped on concrete with metronomic precision, and it baffles me that the players genuinely can't tell the difference.
So what's it going to be? Find out on Wednesday.
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