1. Gris-Gris Gumbo Yay Ya*
2. Danse Kalinda Da Boom
3. Mama Roux*
4. Danse Fambeaux
5. Croker Courtbullion
6. Jump Sturdy
7. I Walk on Guilded Splinters*
A
So the List has taken a turn into some weird shit. Imagine Tom Waits recording a concept album about the plot of Angel Heart. Now imagine that this album is almost as good as that hypothetical album would be. Doctor John managed to cook-up a truly unique and arresting sound. This music slinks out of the stereo with a knife between its teeth. Voodoo chants mix with Brazilian pop, New Orleans funk and passages that sound remarkably like John Barry's theme for The Knack, and How to Get It. It's really quite indescribable. Probably the easiest thing to focus on is the mood, which is dark and druggy and creepy as hell, only to suddenly open up into moments of genuine beauty. It's all very strange and very hypnotic, an attempt to capture everything great and strange and overlooked about the music and culture of New Orleans in a handful of songs. As someone who holds a rather romantic notion of the Big Easy I enjoyed it immensely. This is much more "spooky voodoo shit" than it is A Confederacy of Dunces.
I was actually surprised to find that I'd heard this music before, though. A very old, very strange man made me put the first track on once and started talking about how he and his friends used to take acid to it. Then he kind of wandered off into a ramble about how Indian civilisation is hundreds of thousands of years old and completely cyclical but Europeans won't admit it. So that gives you some idea of the kind of audience this music attracted when first released. Obviously it was a massive hit.
Anyway, if you ever have access to a bunch of mushrooms on Halloween and decide to hold an orgy, I'd strongly recommend this as the soundtrack.
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