The Seedy Arkhestra - Puzzle
Fishbone changed my musical life in 1991. I was on Senior Trip in LA. We had gone to Balboa Beach and I picked up two albums in a hole in the wall music shop on the boardwalk; Sailing the Seas of Cheese by Primus, and The Reality of my Surroundings by Fishbone. The former got a few listens, the latter was on constant rotation for weeks and regularly returns to the deck to this day.
One of the magical parts of Fishbone was singer and multi-instrumentalist Charles Dowd, who was the sensitive soulster in a troupe of fusion/punk/thrash/phunck-junkee militants. He left after their Give a Monkey a Brain and he'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe, and I thought he dropped off the face of the earth. Instead, he released Puzzle under the Seedy Arkhestra moniker in 1997...and then dropped off the face of the earth.
After years of looking, I found that sole Seedy release, and it is a sweet release indeed. Dowd did not have the benefit of the stellar production team he had during his Fishbone days (everyone from David Khane to Terry Date were known to sit behind the boards) and there is some sense of "what if...?" in that regard, but this disc captures the roots of the guy largely responsible for tracks like Everyday Sunshine. It is his knack for songcraft and thematic shift-on-a-dimeyness (I am hereby deeming that a word) that works here.
Where can you get the classic Motown soul of Shing-a-Ling and later have a roots reggae informed Despite the Tears, co-written and with guitars and backing vocals by the late Jeff Buckley. And Jeff is not the only guest here worth noting, as appearances by vets and upstarts alike pepper the joint; Don Byron, Josh Roseman (JR Unit, Groove Collective) , N'Dea Davenport (Brand New Heavies), Amp Fiddler, and David Ryan Harris (John Mayer, Follow For Now) all make the rounds. There are jazzy passages, dub and roots, Motown and Stax, quirked out pop, and a feel that calls up Brooklyn and Trenchtown at a house party.
The only vestige of the cacophonic punk-funk sound of Fishbone is evident on the closer, Flog Your Dead Horse, which appears to be a parting epitaph for his former bandmates, and includes an absolutely caustic solo by Buckley (one of the few recorded instances of his guitar prowess at full bore). The rock-steady that permeates the album is what happens when you move up a step from No Doubt's forays into the genre (although Gwen is better looking than Chuck by any measure), and the tunes are what you step to when one gets tired of "singer songwriter" types that lack any self-deprecation or the faux soul of today's bump-grind-and-grab the cash R&B automatons.
This really deserved more attention than it received.
For Fishbone completists and seekers of goodness overall.
One of the magical parts of Fishbone was singer and multi-instrumentalist Charles Dowd, who was the sensitive soulster in a troupe of fusion/punk/thrash/phunck-junkee militants. He left after their Give a Monkey a Brain and he'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe, and I thought he dropped off the face of the earth. Instead, he released Puzzle under the Seedy Arkhestra moniker in 1997...and then dropped off the face of the earth.
After years of looking, I found that sole Seedy release, and it is a sweet release indeed. Dowd did not have the benefit of the stellar production team he had during his Fishbone days (everyone from David Khane to Terry Date were known to sit behind the boards) and there is some sense of "what if...?" in that regard, but this disc captures the roots of the guy largely responsible for tracks like Everyday Sunshine. It is his knack for songcraft and thematic shift-on-a-dimeyness (I am hereby deeming that a word) that works here.
Where can you get the classic Motown soul of Shing-a-Ling and later have a roots reggae informed Despite the Tears, co-written and with guitars and backing vocals by the late Jeff Buckley. And Jeff is not the only guest here worth noting, as appearances by vets and upstarts alike pepper the joint; Don Byron, Josh Roseman (JR Unit, Groove Collective) , N'Dea Davenport (Brand New Heavies), Amp Fiddler, and David Ryan Harris (John Mayer, Follow For Now) all make the rounds. There are jazzy passages, dub and roots, Motown and Stax, quirked out pop, and a feel that calls up Brooklyn and Trenchtown at a house party.
The only vestige of the cacophonic punk-funk sound of Fishbone is evident on the closer, Flog Your Dead Horse, which appears to be a parting epitaph for his former bandmates, and includes an absolutely caustic solo by Buckley (one of the few recorded instances of his guitar prowess at full bore). The rock-steady that permeates the album is what happens when you move up a step from No Doubt's forays into the genre (although Gwen is better looking than Chuck by any measure), and the tunes are what you step to when one gets tired of "singer songwriter" types that lack any self-deprecation or the faux soul of today's bump-grind-and-grab the cash R&B automatons.
This really deserved more attention than it received.
For Fishbone completists and seekers of goodness overall.
posted by theloniusfunk at 10:01 PM
2 Comments:
where did you find it? been looking for a long time with no luck.
You can get it as an MP3 download on Amazon. It's worth every penny. The best song is the 2d to last one.
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