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Good Old Boys

Randy Newman - Good Old Boys Audio CD

A fair review of the Randy Newman "Good Old Boys" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Randy Newman reviews here, or go back to the Randy Newman tabs.

Band: Randy Newman
Title: Good Old Boys
Rating:

Release Date: 2003-02-11
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Rednecks 2: Birmingham 3: Marie 4: Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man) 5: Guilty 6: Louisiana 1927 7: Every Man a King 8: Kingfish 9: Naked Man 10: Wedding in Cherokee County 11: Back on My Feet Again 12: Rollin' 13: Marie [*][Demo Version]

This Is a Return to His Worst...
Now, I LOVE Randy Newman but only since he came out of his earlier suck awful Primitive Blues Period with "Little Criminals", "Born Again", "Trouble in Paradise", and "Land of Dreams". I only got this Album because it was tossed in free with "Angels & Harps" and please read my review there, as I did not like that either. These albums all had at least one good song, musically, that one could sit down and play with. . . I play piano too. Cute clever lyrics aren't enough. Even school boys can joke around with words. So what? Music should be music.

Well, "Good Old Boys" ain't music. What was Randy thinking? Some Record Company Suit was probably ordered by his fat cat Boss to tell Randy that people only cared about those cute lyrics that were so easy to write. . . that the Music was only getting in the way anyway. And Randy believed it. The song "Luisiana" wasn't even really original that I could tell . . . just sounded like "Sail Away" with new lyrics crowded and shoved into place.

Oh, and on the 2nd Disc there was this talking voice introducing all the songs. A normal voice. An ordinary voice. A vanilla plain jane white bread voice. Well, it was Randy Newman. That Thick Oppressed Minority Bluesy Singing Voice, well, it was OBVIOUSLY just some White Bread Upper Class Slummer pulling all our legs, kidding all of us along, making idiots of us all. The one thing Randy Newman should have NEVER done was to TALK. . . not with that I AM REALLY VERY NORMAL BUT JUST SING LIKE I AM POOR AND OPPRESSED.

It all became very pathetic. I feel ashamed of my Randy Newman collection. I won't show it to anybody for now on. I will keep "Little Criminals", "Born Again", "Trouble in Paradise", and "Land of Dreams" because of the seven or eight really good musical songs in that collection, but all that new Primitive Stuff. . . well, I hope Randy can find a new audiance for it.
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"Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes..."
I don't know why Randy Newman popped into my head, but I was an impulsive kid. I'll never forget the first time I heard "Rednecks," the opening track of this album: I was a senior in high school, temporarily bored to death of my entire music collection and in desperate need of something new and unusual. So, one afternoon, on my way home from school, I stopped by a Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of Good Old Boys. My prior relationship with Newman had been distant: I'd learned to recognize his voice, and I was vaguely familiar with his smartly crafted, piano-driven pop sound. Maybe it was his ties to Disney, or maybe it was his somewhat goofy vocal style, but I approached his music expecting to hear an innocent, dopey tunesmith cranking out dated but endearing 70s pop lyrics. I popped the disc into my car's CD player, and the first thing I heard was a delicate, quivering piano line, over which Randy crooned "Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a T. V. show/ With some smart-a** New York Jew. " I knew that I had been in error.

In its compact three-minute-and-ten-second run, "Rednecks" subverted my expectations in a thousand ways, great and small. After that jarring opening line, it became obvious that Randy was singing in character. He was dressed up in whiteface, so to speak, portraying a southerner who embodied all of the worst qualities attributed to the region. As the music unfurled into a jaunty, smirking gallop, Randy went through stereotype after stereotype, declaring "we talk real funny down here/ we drink too much, we laugh too loud, we're too dumb to make it in no Northern town. " He spent half of the song in this manner, ending every stanza with "we're keeping the ni***rs down. " Growing up as I did in Austin, Texas, I'd developed a vague distrust of the region in which I lived. Austin, you see, is a fairly unique town, in that it hardly feels like the South. In any case, the song played well to my somewhat childish elitism. I can imagine that there was a wide grin on my face. Then came the second verse.

Extending the theme of racism, Randy started by saying "now your northern nigger's a negro/ you see he's got his dignity/ down here we're too ignorant to realize/ the North has set the nigger free. " I knew that something odd was about to happen. Sure enough, Randy proceeded to wipe the grin off of my face, ripping into the North's self-righteousness with the same sardonic glee displayed earlier, declaring that Northern blacks are "free to be put in a cage in Harlem, New York City. . . free to be put in a cage on the south side of Chicago, the West side. . . " and so on. Gone is the smirking, conspiratorial grin of the first verse- Randy got serious after the chorus, and he's not compromising anything. After a full verse indicting the North for its hypocrisy regarding manners of race, Newman cinches his message with what has to be one of history's greatest uses of parallel structure, concluding the final stanza with "they're gathering them up/ from miles around/ keeping the ni***rs down. " He launches into the chorus one more time, but that's merely a victory lap. The song ended, and my mind was reeling. I had no choice but to admit defeat.

The reason I just spent three paragraphs on "Rednecks" has nothing to do with nostalgia. The song merits extended discussion because it very well may be the quintessential Randy Newman composition: It's duplicitous, mean-spirited, unforgiving, sarcastic, darkly funny, and brilliantly satirical, with a genuinely moralistic message lurking at its heart. Newman doesn't sing the song simply to attack the South or indict the North. The song is simply an assault on hypocrisy and bigotry in whatever forms they may take, and it delivers its message beautifully.

The rest of the album expands on the motifs of this first song, exploring the complexities f the modern and historical South with equal parts sympathy and cynicism. It's by turns funny, critical, affectionate, and surreal, with lush melodies and striking imagery and clich�s turned inside out. Nothing delivers as sudden or as vicious a bite as "Rednecks," but the record's power is still unmistakable. It's one of Randy's masterpieces.

Love it or hate it
The only single album I could listen to for the rest of my life. This is indeed my desert island CD. How it has been as overlooked as it has amazes me. I've bought copies and sent them to people I thought would share my opinion, only to be greeted with deafening silence in return. I begin to think there must be something wrong with me. It's brilliant, poetically and musically and culturally. And you know what, I take back what I said. It isn't me. There's something terribly wrong with anyone who doesn't love this album. .

My 15 Seconds of Fame
But that's just the first half of my back story. I've always loved this recording-- I had it on vinyl and then recorded it to cassette tape and listened to it in my car for years until cars went to CD players, then I bought the CD.

In October, Randy came to my hometown to play two concerts. My wife and I had tickets to the second show. We arrived early and ate dinner at a restaurant adjacent to the theatre. Soon after we arrived, a whitish-haired gentleman in jeans and a young woman sat down at the next table. "Psst!" I whispered to my wife, "That's Randy Newman!" I held off accosting him until he finished his dinner, but to get ready, I wrote a request on a napkin (this is standard Louisiana practice at piano bars). I introduced myself and made my request. I also reminisced about a show he did at the New Orleans Jazz Festival about 10 years ago. He remembered singing "Louisiana 1927" and "Rider in the Rain" in the rain that day. He gave me an autograph and said he'd try to play my request.

The show lasted about two hours and near the end, Randy introduced a request "from my friend, Dave Zimmerman". Wow! He proceeded to mention jokingly how the song would "break up the flow of the concert", but that he'd play it anyway. He then explained how the song was written about Albania, but that he had to change the setting to an southern US county for the American market. The song is "Wedding in Cherokee County" and it's on "Good Old Boys", Randy Newman's best album in an illustrious career as singer and composer.

The title comes from a line in the CD's opening and most controversial song "Rednecks", which features repeated use of the N word as he decries both Southern and Northern racism. "Louisiana 1927", the story of the Great Flood of that year, has become the unofficial second anthem of my state (after "You Are My Sunshine", which was written by a former governor) after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Newman includes Huey Long's campaign song, "Every Man a King", and his own version of Long's life in "Kingfish". "Birmingham" is a gritty tribute to that Alabama industrial town. "Marie" and "Guilty" are just too beautiful to convey in words. "Naked Man" and "Back on My Feet Again" are observant and funny. Every song is a gem. I highly recommend this album to everyone. Randy's movie music for Pixar (Toy Story, Monsters Inc, etc. ) is great and has gained him Oscar nominations, but his best work is still the wry "Good Old Boys" of 1974.

Randy Newman's Love-Hate Relationship with the South
All the songs on it are good, and the redneck concept works well. I have not heard all of Randy Newman's albums, but of his early works, "12 Songs," "Sail Away," and "Good Old Boys," I like "Good Old Boys" the most. From a musical standpoint, I also found it more satisfying than "12 Songs" or "Sail Away. " While those albums are stripped down musically, "Good Old Boys" uses guitar and synthesizers to greater effect. Although recorded in the mid-70s, "Good Old Boys" doesn't sound dated. With the recent catastrophe in New Orleans, Newman's song "Louisiana 1927," about the terrible flood of that year, is haunting and prophetic. At around 30 minutes or so, "Good Old Boys" doesn't overstay its welcome. In those 30 minutes, it says more than most bands do their whole career. It contains acidic social commentary ("Rednecks," which attacks Southern and Northern racism), colorful character sketches ("A Wedding in Cherokee County" and "Naked Man"), and bittersweet love songs ("Guilty" and "Marie"). Some of the subject matter might be foreign to people who don't know Louisiana history ("Kingfish" and "Every Man a King"), but the songwriting throughout is top-notch. "Good Old Boys" is a real treat, though Louisiana State University alumni might not like the lines: "College men from LSU/Went in dumb, come out dumb too/Hustling 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes/Get drunk every weekend at a barbecue. " Geaux Randy! .

You can see a complete list of all Randy Newman discography, or go back to the Randy Newman tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.