Rambling Man

RAMBLIN‘ MAN – Zeno Tornado & The Boney Google Brothers (Voodoo Rhythm)
Somewhere around here, I still have the CD booklet for this album. Amidst the empty wine and beer bottles, the discs that’ve lost their boxes, the crime fiction paperbacks and motorbike magazines, that cd booklet is around here somewhere.

I’d really like to find it, this record is great! At the moment, I don’t even know the band name or album title, ‚cos that info is on the disc, which is locked inside the disc machine, and I’m enjoying listening to it far too much. Every 40 minutes, or whatever, it ends and I hit „play“ again. Then I think, „shit, should’ve checked the disc for the band name, ah, what the fuck, I’ll check it next time“.

Yet I don’t. I just keep digging it. It’s a bluegrass country and western record, fuck, you might even say it’s a „concept album“. I’ve never heard an album that is so brilliantly focussed on drinking. Oh sure, you get yr dumbarse hardcore punk records with their „drinking is so cool“ bullschtick, but this record really does capture that beautiful ambiguity.

I love to drink. I hate drunkenness. And all those hazy thoughts that drift in and out of that ill-defined space between those two poles, you find it all on this record. I’d love to quote some of the lyrics on this record, they’re truly fucking great. But the lyric sheet is… no, it aint under the plastic bag of cutlery – and why the fuck do I have a plastic bag of cutlery beneath my chipboard puta desk? – it ain’t nowhere to be found on the coffee table covered in CDs and press releases – wow, I got that CD to review? And that one too? Fuck, no wonder the Barman doesn’t reply to my emails.

Trust me on this one folks, if you dig great songs, great singing and playing, if you got an open mind, you’ll dig this record. It’s a true classic. Of course, if you’re one of those narrow minded fuckwits that just sits back and says „Ooohh, I don’t like fiddles and mandolins, they don’t rock“ then you better hope you never meet me. Yeah, there was a time when I didn’t get horns and string sections, but that was a long fucking time ago. It ain’t about electric guitars versus banjos, it’s all attitude and this record has attitude. It has a depth and intelligence I’ve rarely heard and it hits this hard drinking heart with a platinum bullet of truth and honesty. – Earl O’Neill