This music is made crafted on multiple levels, it's subtleties rewarding the listener with ongoing discoveries with each listening.  It's a deliciously layered musical feast.
Maybe it's desert style, but I can't think of many other artists who make music with so much depth... 
maybe some beatles or pink floyd...Ted's sensitivities to social issues are profound and his lyrics true poetry. Yum.
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help wanted washes over me like waves, undulating, inviting, seductive. tar beach ... what an amazing song.  they all are.  delivered mellifluously & gently, this music puts me in a groovy tranquil place.  peace out.
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Many of us believed it may have been the death of cool when John Lennon was taken from us.  Those of us who hung on after that mournful day watched cool go stoically to meet its maker through so many assaults, including the music industry's soulless corporate meatgrinder. From the trivializing of the songwriter through aural special effects, bringing music to the shallow end of the pool (with Hollywood's movies), to the rise of Clear Channel's music fascism and the ever-endless hype of commercial musik, cool could not be found.
But somehow, a whisper of Lennon's soul has blown on the dusty desert wind into the town of Joshua Tree, and it has taken up quiet, cool root in Quinn's soul.  This CD is an excellent example of Quinn's far-reaching talent, extending out with subtlety, love and hope through all that obstructs - to find what really matters. Help Wanted connects and provokes, is deep and strong, yet vulnerable, it has soul, and it, like Ted Quinn, is quite cool.
A rare delight.
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Compact Discs, million's upon billions, stacked so high they'll pop a hole in the good Lord's roof! A major traffic jam of artists, bands, singer/songwriters, performers, and musicians has erupted. Which direction do we go, what car to do we hitch a ride from, which exit takes us to the promised land? "This is a time of leaving, brother/a time of no warning each other/this must be the death of cool."
	So sings Ted Quinn on his CD effort entitled Help Wanted. And why should you or I care? What is the point of laying down another 15 bucks of our hard earned jack just on the off chance that the answer as well as the musical question will come roaring out of the speakers when this finally makes it's way into your CD player? Popular music is so saturated, colorless, and limp that the element of "taking a chance on music" has been murdered. No, I'll one up that notion, not just murdered, but reduced to something even more deadly, those two tranquilized words ... "who cares!" Thus, all the danger and excitement is gone, the chance taking, the triumph and defeat, the possibility that the music and lyrics are so deeply offbeat in there profundity that they might actually change your life, or at least open your mind and ears up to it. This, brothers and sisters, must be the death of cool.
	And now for the resurrection. Ted Quinns, Help Wanted, is 13 songs of introspective, social, and political protest. Soft lullaby, acoustically infectious tunes that find a Dylan influence walking around inside them, chatting with John Lennon over happy hour cocktails, discussing the latest war and the ever enduring melody of forever as the Tibetan bells chime in the desert breeze. 
	One also finds more up tempo rockers that Quinn crones a barrage of poetic musings and strong well traveled philosophies that he seemingly pulls from that old worn trunk this vagabond earth wander, that now calls the Mojave desert home, has carried around with him for years. Like that cholla cactus that is always getting stuck in your socks, the songs begin to stick to your soul and, unlike the cactus, you refuse to get the pillars out of the tool box to pull them out!
	Tracks like Death of Cool, Tar Beach, Sky Cathedral, Dave's Song, and Orange Sunshine highlight a diverse well of ideas and emotion that can only be called "original" and deeply elevating. They have staying power. They risk themselves in sleeping and in waking.  They are worth that ever illusive "chance."
	The one track that really sticks it's thumb out on the highway of life is If U Do. This little gem will someday make Quinn a teenage heart throb if not a major player in the singer/sonwriter genre. The first moments of background noise and movement draw the listener close. The initial droning of the chord progression, that insues, brings on and evokes that mood of edgy, uncertain elements in love and potential loss. The music begins to embrace you. The song is delicate yet street tough. A lament and a bursting joy. His lover must leave and only then does he discover the depth of his feeling. The chorus, in it's undeniable "sing a long," catchiness, screams for her not to go, or at least, not to go far. This gem is not only worth the cab fare, it's worth the ride. 
	"With my limited ability on this guitar/I'm going to try to reach you where ever you are." And reach he does. This is worth the gamble and the coin.  Ted Quinn plays with fire and doesn't care if he gets burned. Come rediscover solid song writing, poetic verse, and a willingness to run for your life across the shaky rope bridge burning down, like a lit firecracker wick, behind you.
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