I am unfamiliar with the oeuvre of this bold songwriterly cossack, but, during the fifty percent of the record when i can actually distinguish the vocals from the acoustic guitar and other miscellaneous sounds, he kinda sounds like a folknik Jad Fair with a snitch of Daniel Johnston on the side—two similarly-aligned studs of the era. During the times when it just sounds like vaguely audible mumbling underneath some kinda acoustic guitar freakout in my left ear and a guy beating on a beer bottle non-stop in my right ear, he reminds me of just how unlistenable those Eugene Chadbourne records were back then, and why did anyone buy them in the first place? Joe Jack appears to be attempting to make some kind of broadly political statement in “Get a Car!”, but i don’t really know what it is and i don’t think he does, either, so screw it. Counterintuitively, records like these are great for purposes of pizza delivery—you kinda lock yourself in the car with it and one of you eventually comes out alive. Oh, wait, Joe Jack doesn’t have a car yet. Well, he knows what i mean. BEST SONG: “Stranger Gold” BEST SONG TITLE: “Hey Lolly” FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: My first cassette player loaded cassettes in a manner generally considered to be upside down, and, to this day, i can’t tell which side is rewound unless i look at the cassette upside down.
–norb (HHBTM)