ALLEN TOUSSAINT: MR. MARDI GRAS (1987)
1)
Mr. Mardi Gras; 2) Fat Tuesday; 3) I Know You Mardi Gras; 4) Come To The Mardi
Gras; 5) I Love A Carnival Ball; 6) The Mighty Mighty Chief; 7) Long Live The
King; 8) Lead Me To The Dance Floor.
If just a few more people knew about the
existence of the album, chances are it would be in a very good position to make
it to many of those «worst ever» record lists that people sometimes rifle
through out of boredom. Problem is, while it definitely does exist (unless my own ears deceive me or something), it is so
rare that it is not even found in all of Toussaint's discographies. All I know
is that it was released on «Cayenne Records», presumably Toussaint's own label
that never produced any other piece of product; never made it to CD format; but
is at least available as a digital download today, for completist idiots like
myself.
No idea about how it came to life, who played
on it, how the hell did Allen, after a decade of staying away from original
material, suddenly decide to make a «concept album» about the celebration of
Fat Tuesday, and, most importantly, why did he decide that the album had to be
done the trendy modern way. For all I know, this was a temporary ridiculous
aberration of the mind: Mr. Mardi Gras
does not just sound horrible, it also sounds absolutely nothing like any of the
records he made in the Seventies (even Motion
is miles ahead), and absolutely nothing like any of the records he would make
during his Nineties comeback.
Simply put, this is a bunch of Mardi
Gras-themed (as if this wasn't already obvious just by looking at the song
titles) pop tunes whose main point is to sound as proverbially Eighties as
possible. Electronic drums, cheap Casios, and synthesized poppin' bass are all
over the place, and when combined with the forced simple-stupid cheerful vibe,
the end result is smatteringly vulgar and crass. It's like, you know, every single cliché about New Orleanian
carnival music crammed together and then smeared with electronics that make
certain arcade machines from the same time sound positively luxurious in
comparison. Every now and then, some of Allen's own nice piano playing breaks
through, accidentally, but for the most part, the horns are the only
non-synthetic part of the scenery.
Perhaps in some alternate twisted universe,
where robots hold their own Mardi Gras parties, having adapted them through
machine learning, this record might have a higher chance of being recognized —
and, well, as a pure, unadulterated novelty it may be worth hearing; at the
very least, I should recognize that I have never ever heard anything like it.
But once the novelty has worn off, it simply remains as a scarecrow, reminding
us all that Fifties' survivors generally sucked even harder at adapting to
Eighties' technology than Sixties' veterans — fortunately, few of them even
tried. Thumbs
down without further consideration.
No comments:
Post a Comment