Customer Reviews

Wrong Side of Memphis

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this, Johnny Dowd's first effort, the mark of a true artist can be seen. Combining haunting images with minimalistic guitar and and drums, this album suceeds in territory both strange and eery.

Johnny Dowd's voice creeps out like a snake in the gravel: part Tom Waits, part Jim White, and wavery like a wet dixie cup in the wind. The songs, filled with murder, betrayal and loneliness, are expertly crafted and show a life overflowing with experience. Stand out tracks like "Average Guy" (in which Dowd explores a psyche that's anything BUT average) and "Welcome Jesus" have a fairly stripped down sound that really showcases Johnny Dowd's vocal stylings while providing a stark contrast to the strange subject matter of his lyrics.

Fans of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith should relish in the oddity that is Johnny Dowd.

Maybe all aspiring musicians should wait they're fifty or so to actually release albums. It would give them time to gain a little extra wisdom and to hone their craft, and of course it would render that nasty bit where you lose focus and become irrelevant as you become middle-aged a moot point.

It's certainly difficult to imagine what Dark Side of Memphis would have sounded like had Dowd recorded it twenty-five years ago. Age and experience are indelibly etched into this music, and for that it is all the more exciting. This is very, very barebones stuff--Dowd's gravelly singing, a little gee-tar, a few keyboards, and occasional unobtrusive backing vocals from the incomparable Kim Sherwood-Caso, and that's about all--but it works out brilliantly. Not every song here is a classic--'Ballad of Frank and Jesse James' never really goes anywhere, and 'John Deere Yeller,' though amusing in its own way, is really just a little too hard to swallow. But the ones that are good--which is most of them--are very good indeed. The menacing growl of 'Papa Oh Papa' is perhaps the great Nick Cave song that never was; 'Wages of Sin' is the archetypal blues 'lead a bad life, going to hell now' song done as well as it's ever been; and the uneasy closer, 'Welcome Jesus,' seems all too apropos for 2003. "Welcome, Jesus, to this dismal swamp," Dowd drawls. "Were you hoping for something a little better?"

Perhaps wisely, Dowd would expand his musical horizons dramatically for subsequent albums, but his debut remains an impressive testament. It doesn't really sound like Tom Waits, but I have no doubt that Waits fans will dig it anyway. And in any case, you can at least profit from the hip cachet that comes from listening to independent music. You can't lose. Pick it up for sure.

This is johnny`s debut album and it`s bluesbased murderballads with some really nasty lines. The opener "murder" is the frontdoor to his sick ,but lovely world of death , rapes and crime. His last album is even better , but i recomend this album.This is music for the days that you really hate the ladies.

This guy sounds like someone who's about to crack up at any time.The music's slow blues/roots/rock; I've never heard anything like it to tell you the truth. The subjects of his songs are not pretty; murder, hangings, love gone wrong, graveyards and all the other fun stuff in life. A unique guy; and that's probably a good thing because you dont want too many Johnny Dowd's running around out there!

This is one of the most haunting recordings ever made. Dowd's lyrics and gravelly delivery are uncomfortably convincing. The ancient feel to the recordings makes it sound like an undiscovered masterpiece of Americana that should have been in the Harry Smith Anthology 50 years ago. Heartfelt ballads, Residents-like noises and a lot of black humor make it almost avant-garde. Get this disc!

This deliciously semi-fi, spookily-sung, starkly-accompanied disc is a true, wondrous, top-to-bottom gem. Equal parts Captain Beefheart, Frankie Teardrop, Muddy Waters and Luke the Drifter, its midnight crawl across the underbelly of the American Nightmare is populated with a delightfully seedy cast of characters, each stuffed to the gills with little but ill intent. Yep, these fifteen songs will, like all the best "art" around, stick with you long after the CD's shut off, and'll no doubt pop up to haunt you for months and years to come ...most likely at around 3:30 some morning, I should imagine. Each of you out there reading these words now should get your own copy of this understated little masterpiece IMMEDIATELY. Promise?

Dowd fooled a lot of poseurs with this album. Don't be one of them. This is unmitigated trash - unlistenable singing, EZ Big Note playing, and mostly lousy lyrics. The occasional brilliant line is mixed in with a bunch of third rate moon-june-spoon stuff, so that not a single piece rises above the trash heap that is this CD.

Comparisons with Waits and Beefheart are disingenuous. This is puerile, steaming excrement.

Avoid it.