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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Evedentia rodentia, September 22, 2002
This is a good one - Jorma's long awaited 1979 follow up to Quah. This might be the most unique album that Jorma has recorded. A true solo recording (Jorma plays everything and wrote most of the cuts) Jorma came out at a strange juncture in the Jorma/Tuna/Airplane timeline.To put this album (yup this was an album way back when) in it's proper historical prospective: The year was 1979 - Tuna had broken up at beginning of 1978. If you were a Tuna fan (like I was back then) this truly .... No more Jorma and Jack, and at the time I could not understand it. I thought that maybe I had just embellished the past with a failing memory but a cursory listen or two to the tapes from those shows bears me out as to how good Tuna was sounding on their final round of touring in the 70's. Tuna had a bunch of shows lined up in early '78 when the break up was announced. I was really looking forward to them because the ones they done the previous autumn (1977) were, as I said, just great. Jorma ended up doing the gigs as a solo. Now he had opened up many of the Tuna shows the previous year on acoustic, but these were long solo shows. I found these performances also to be revelatory. By this time, I had most of the Tuna LP's and Jorma was playing things like "I the Kingdom" solo, and doing it quite impeccably. Back then he was playing Ovations and in the context of what was happening in '78 - you weren't going to hear anything remotely like this anywhere else. A good era - sorry if you missed it. I went off to college in the summer of 78 - far from Tuna's stomping ground of the greater NY metro area. When I returned for a visit there was some strange stuff going on in Jorma land. Jorma had been playing as a duo with Bob Steeler at some of his shows. He had a new look - short hair (gasp - 70's horror) and was going for something new but it was hard to get a lock on what the hell was going on. Then around mid-79 Jorma started added a bassist named Denny Degorio to round out his electric trio sets. The audience reaction was along the lines of a Lloyd Benson-ish: "We knew Jack Casady, we watched Jack Casady play with Jorma at damn near every show, and you are no Jack Casady." A strange time - so anyway right after all of that weirdness - this album comes out. It featured most of the songs that Jorma was doing at the time (solo) and I loved it. It opens with two really killer cuts: Straight Ahead and the original verion of Roads and Roads &. The blues numbers on here are great too(Vampire Women, Too Long etc.) It sounds to me now like Jorma was trying to add a power pop sort of sensbility to his music, but he wasn't throwing the baby out with the bath water. The production on here is really, really sparse and gives a kind of an eerie effect - a very different sounding record than Quah. Whereas Quah had strings and a "wooden" timbre to it, this disc sounds like Jorma and producer David Kahne (Bangles) were really trying hard to create some new sounds with acoustic music. For the most part they succeed, and after listening to this recording again after a ten year plus hiatus I must say that it is very underated. I like the last piece - Da-Ga-Da-Ga. It's composed by a scandanvian Lord Buckley-esqe figure named M.A. Numinen. The other originals are good, although these days Jorma does not perform many songs from this. If you like Jorma, I would highly recommend this. If you've never heard of him, get Quah first and then this. I'm giving this four because Quah and Blue Country Heart are fives.
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by Jorma Kaukonen 
