Is there another album cover that regularly shows up on both best album cover lists and worst album cover lists? (I even have a t-shirt!) I imagine there probably is another candidate out there but I seriously doubt that album could hold a candle to this one musically. Plain and simple, this is a terrific album start to finish! The songs are smart, funny and infectious - listen a couple times through and tell me you don't find yourself singing along - I wish I could tell you my friends and I were hip enough to discover this one in it's day.... but it was 20 years later when I first heard it.
"The cover of this LP--Swamp Dogg riding a white rat, hands raised and fists clenched in triumph--lets you know that you're not in for any ol' R&B record, even before the needle hits the grooves. It's a satisfying continuation of the eclectic soul-singer-songwriter mix of his debut. Vocally, Swamp Dogg sounds like a cross between General Johnson (of Chairmen of the Board) and Van Morrison; as a songwriter, he's his own man. With the exception of Sly Stone, no other soul men of the period were investigating controversial topics with such infectious musicality and good humor. He takes on promiscuity with unbridled frankness in cuts like "Predicament #2," and bemoans the eternal delay of American justice for minorities in "Remember I Said Tomorrow," and twists Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" into a protest song (and also, bizarrely, covers the Bee Gees' "Got to Get a Message to You"). None of this endeared him to industry insiders, and Swamp Dogg was dropped by Elektra after the album's release." AMG
I suppose it shouldn't be all that surprising that the "industry" didn't have the sense of humor or the insight to see just how phenomenal this material was, but what a shame...had this gotten airplay in the 70's I would have been all over it like a cheap suit and I don't think I would have been alone. Still, despite being only sporadically in print, in 40 years as "cult" albums "Total Destruction..." has eventually gone gold and I have to think "Rat On!" can't be far away by now. As I sit listening this morning for the 3rd time in a couple days, I am struck by just how fresh this record sounds even today.
5 comments:
http://www.embedupload.com/?d=0VERZHMGMX
I digg the Dogg.
Thanx
I was hoping you would post this one, too. I love Total Destruction, but believe this one is a more solid album. Might want to try "Gag a Maggot" also. He recorded it in the same time period, and its very good (but not quite up to Rat and Total). Genius is an oft overused term - but, this guy is a freaking genius.
Thanks KC
This is some good soulful funky music here - His vocal range and timbre excludes him from the premier league of great soul singers - But hell ..we've listened to them all our life ! Appreciate the chance to give him a hearing....And track 5 sees him covering a Bee Gees song !
Cheers
More great Swamp Dogg. I've also got an album from 1976 called You Ain't Never Too Old To Boogie - recorded for Vee Jay and released in the UK on DJM. It's vinyl and I can't digitise just now, but sometime maybe.
His mate Wolfmoon (Tyrone Thomas) recoreded two Dogg songs - God Bless b/w My Kinda People. The latter was an answer song to his own These Are Not My People but it's been suggested that the insanely sentimental (and brilliant) God Bless was his softening of God Bless America For What. The Dogg going soft? I seem to remember it was also recorded by a very young son of Otis Redding in the seventies but I can't remember which one.
There's a good comp of his less well known productions available on Kent UK - Blame It On The Dogg - I'll try (luddite warning) to put a link up for it.
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