This is different. Rube Waddell is three guys from San Francisco who play some rather unconventional music with a rough edge. The band is named after a real man who had his hands in some rather unconventional pasttimes. So...the name fits the band. The only other artist that comes to mind listening to this is Captain Beefheart...although this isn't as far out as the ol' Captain's music was. There's an odd hillbilly/country sound to some of these tunes...yet this is far from sounding like traditional country music. These fellows play a mindblowing slew of instruments (including tabla, penny whistle, kzaoo, ukulele, banjo, washboard, jaw harp). Interestingly, the band plays on the streets regularly around San Francisco. Sure makes a lot more sense than trying to land some highly prized slot at some "hip" (fart) rock club. These guys are doing it right on their own terms...and creating some mighty heady, offbeat music in the process. This one comes in a nifty steel tin box, courtesy of those increasingly inventive folks at Vaccination... (Rating: 4)
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If you've listened to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music in a Nyquil cloud you know what I am talking about when we say the Rubes are transcendent. But maybe 'transient' would be a better depiction. The guess is that these guys honed their licks on a street corner or two, and their approach to recording holds true to the vision. There appears here a conscious effort to avoid the overdub, to play and mike within the ambient room as it is … so that the Rube Wadell sound reminds somehow of the electric field recordings of Robert Johnson in a San Antonio hotel room for Okeh, or the Memphis Jug Band in a Memphis hotel for Victor.
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If there really is such a thing as swamp boogie, an affliction half between music and parasitic infestation, Rube Wadell be the vector. No, there's no Rube Wadell in the band, though history tells us of one actual Wadell, some times back -- look it up. Instead we have Mahatma Boom Boom, Reverend Wupass and Captain Feedback, lurching and slinking through a morass of fuzz, tinbox drums, and general slide-guitar ill ease. "Westward Rider" is an adolescent chant beat out on junkyard trash, while the rowdy "Joe Hill's Will/The Ballad of Joe Hill" has harmonica wails on a rolling bed of kazoos and ukulele. Speaking of which, "Roy Smeck," tribute to the ukulele master, also features penny whistle, a talking drum and a pseudo-Hawaiian refrain. Let's not forget "San Pablo Rap," where "Well you show up at the lake cus yo mama says you're lazy, playin Klezmer in the hood says you're gonna drive her crazy" is delivered as a Beastie Boys bust with a pirate refrain.

This is some weird stuff. Even by my highly jaded standards, it's weird. It's also pretty catchy, with a kind of gap-toothed charm. Dragging "nobody likes me everybody hates me I'm gonna eat some worms" out of recess and into the studio yields something worthy of the Residents. And it makes me glad that even in this profit-driven music market, somebody is still willing to put it on the line for three commie freak geniuses like this.
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After many failures, I finally hunted down this CD in a SF consignment record store (the last copy) going on a good tip from a friend. I'm a big fan of prewar blues/country, Tom Waits, ethnic experimental music, and a lot of other junk and Stinkbait seemed to satisfy all these urges and plant the seeds for a few new ones. Served in a very memorable tin can case and with a very gritty over-driven production sound, the album has a real home-made feel about it that sets it a part from anything else I, or vistors who overhear it while at the apartment, have heard. There's a lot of heavy footstomping tunes with catchy hooks and humorous lyrics, but these guys also throw in some slower moments of nice melodies and then some out and out wierdness to break it up. One more thing...you won't ever think of Beethoven's Ode to Joy the same way again. I was glad to see they finally got their stuff up on the internet.
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