Thursday, January 29, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

CDVS

In the entire history of rock 'n' roll (including Little Richard and Marilyn Manson), there may be nothing more mystifying than the widespread appeal of The Allman Brothers' "Blue Sky"--a song that, along with Journey's "Lights" and Springsteen's "Born in the USA," ranks among the most overrated rock efforts ever put to record. First, the lyrics are hopelessly generic: "You're my blue sky/ You're my sunny day/ Lord you know it makes me high/ When you turn your love my way." Take out "high" and make it "sigh," and Clay Aiken has his next chart topper. Or spin it with an R. Kelly-style "fly," and Ruben Studdard's riding it to Grammyland.

Second--and this is a natural derivative of the first--the song is completely misinformed about the realities of love. Blue sky? Sunny day? Please. As if any true fan of rock music experiences love as anything but obsession and betrayal. And besides that, the guitar lead is so nauseatingly peppy that only a hippie or a fool (oftentimes, one and the same) could take it as anything but sentimental dreck.

"Blue Sky" is especially disappointing when measured against the rest of Eat a Peach--which, beyond a series of gratuitous guitar solos, is actually a pretty smokin' album. Particularly standing out are the spit-and-sawdust renditions of Sonny Boy Williamson's "One Way Out" and Muddy Waters' "Trouble No More"--both proof of the belly fire beneath the Allmans' biscuits-and-jam band veneer.

In fact, if only Eat a Peach could be stripped down to 10 minutes of barrelhouse-rocking goodness, it might really be extraordinary. Or, more accurately, it would be the Black Keys' new 4-song EP, The Moan. Pieced together from 7-inch B-sides and alternate takes from 2003's Thickfreakness, The Moan is a dirt-under-the-fingernails testament to the Black Keys' reign over old-school rock 'n' blues. Sunk in the sludge amid Otis Redding, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Melvins, the Black Keys fold chunky guitar licks and rawboned rhythm thunder into a grizzled swamp chug, slurping down a pair of originals, a Stooges cover ("No Fun") and Richard Berry's "Have Love Will Travel." In the process, the Akron, Ohio, duo teaches us two valuable lessons: (1) A song doesn't have to be long to be totally nails and (2) lame-ass pastoral imagery is best left to lame-ass pop stars.--Newt Briggs