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Rating: In those moments in life when it seems to be raining non-stop, when it feels like it might never end, you need a few beers and many records like this. With Jack O. and his tear-jerkers, talking is, as always in these cases, futile. As soon as I drop the needle on the record, the smell of grilled sausage sticks to me and the sound of fuzz seems like The Leather; instead, it's just history repeating itself, ten years later.
We are in Memphis and we don't care. We're tangled up in static electricity discharges - "Flip Side Kid" and rides that not even Charlie Louvin could match - "'Til The Money Runs Out" - in short, in the warm, high-voltage embrace of Tennessee, among people of few words and immense collections of rather scratched records. The secrets: play, play, play and know how to do it well - like in "Dirty Nails" which is a blow from Compulsive Gamblers, or maybe being people who learned the filthy blues before learning to speak - and in "Golden Age" there's proof that you can laugh even through tears.
The Oblivians buzz doesn’t pass, and the sun starts to peek out; I turn the record over, pop open another Budweiser.
So I suddenly turn up the volume and with "Hong Kong Girl" I slick and shine my boots. It's time to dance a slow one like a Tom Waits rolled in the mud and "Chills and Fever" turns Os Mutantes inside out: like Besame Mucho sung and played by a group of wrestlers with a passion for spicy chili. When I get to "Black Boots" I'm completely healed, the sun is high and my shirt is ironed: in fact, it seems like Dylan has drunk too much and doesn’t want to leave the microphone at a Jay Retard concert: Mr. Oblivian not only makes you move, but he knows how to touch with a rough, distorted ballad where the singalong almost gives me a sore throat. Anyway, everything is ready.
Only when I drop down, as the last dirty strums of "I Want You" (which, by the way, is yet another heated blues, almost as if Guitar Wolf were backing band for Nick Cave) disperse, I realize the pleasure of sublimating reality is transient: I'm not in Memphis, it keeps raining, and I'll have to drink yet another beer, starting the needle over. Again.
Ephemeral miracles of the delta.
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