Superior CD! Great tunes, clever lyrics, beautiful harmonies and instrumentals
author: J Fitzgerald
A superior CD! Great tunes, clever lyrics, beautiful harmonies and instrumentals. An amazing variety of songs. Excellent, creative arrangements. I keep singing "What Would Jesus Drive?" and I love "Empty Rooms". Quite an achievement, especially for a first CD!!
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among the most vibrant sounding records The Duke has enjoyed in ages
author: Duke De Mondo
Excerpts from: The Duke Listens To Your No Good Buddies
Posted by Duke De Mondo on August 12, 2004
It's hard to find a reason not to like Guts And Gravel, the debut release from New England trio Dan Daniels And Your No Good Buddies. ...it is nothing if not a fantastically, infectiously good-natured slab of humour, compassion and, best of all, a bunch a damn fine tunes.
Three middle-aged fellas making music for no other reason than the enjoyment stemming from such, and the fact that they realised that shit, man, this stuff is kinda good...
The record is a melding of commercial country, rockabilly stylings, flamenco flourishes, all with the mood of (a) most enjoyable party .....
The third track rests on the theological poser; "What would Jesus drive, if he were alive?" Dan Daniels and Co. don't have any particular answer, but assert that it's probably not "no big SUV".
Outlaw clichés are also given a going over and emerge surprisingly fresh, like in the title track, what tells of a wife grabbing the nearest pistol and blasting her husband out of jail, ....
Do It While We Can takes a particularly idiosyncratic stance with regards the ol' hellfire-and-damnation country gospel, noting that since there won't be no "Drinkin'" nor "Dancin" nor "Smokin" nor even "Fornication" when the Lord comes a-calling, best to do as much as possible right now.
Mary Jane rolls in on a kind of Caribbean vibe, and goes on to become a rather lovely treatise on the old "unrequitement" and what not.
Guts And Gravel is among the most vibrant sounding records The Duke has enjoyed in ages. How come these "baby-boomers" sound so energised and in love with their music, when folks half their age sound like the kinda miserable, self-obsessed sons a bitches that always wanted to thrust terrible poetry into your face at high school?
How come a song by the name of (I Been Eatin') Onions has a fella grinning from ear to ear, has a fella believing that yes, onions are the most worthy of topics for any song written anywhere by anyone to be dealing with?
Final track Rock N' Roll opens with a Jerry Lee Lewis bout of the ol' piano thrashing, and brings to a close a record what don't have even the slightest hint of a cruddy number among it.
I'm gonna be keeping both eyes on these fellas; I'm looking forward to the next record.
Good work, Dan Daniels And Your No Good Buddies.
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