She said, “He’s crazy, I can’t take a second more of
\nthis, dammit.”<\/p>\n
— “That’s What She Said,” Chandler Travis<\/p>\n
It’s a sweltering May afternoon, the kind of day when it feels
\nlike even the trees must be sweating. Against all better judgment,
\nyou’re outdoors — under a tent, in fact, tucked down along the
\nedge of the Sacramento River on opening day of the annual jazz
\njubilee. A Dixieland jazz band is assembling on the modest stage in
\nfront of you just now, clean-cut, pin-striped gentlemen in
\nstyrofoam hats, just about ready to go on trumpet, sax, clarinet,
\ntrombone, bass and drums.<\/p>\n
You’re just beginning to forget the scraggly, wild-eyed fellow
\nyou saw lurking down by the railroad tracks where you parked your
\ncar, when suddenly, he appears out of nowhere, leaps up onto stage
\nwith a battered electric guitar slung around his scrawny neck, and
\nbellows, “Hit it!”<\/p>\n
From there the proceedings quickly take on all the trappings of
\na musical three-ring circus. The rhythm section plunges forward and
\nthe singer croons with all the insouciant sarcasm of an American
\nRay Davies, while the horn section careens forward with such
\ncomplete and precise musical abandon that you begin to think their
\nleader may be possessed by the ghost of Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n
This sonically-induced daydream is brought to you by the Travis
\nChandler Philharmonic, a band that, as one critic put it, “puts the
\n‘harm’ back in philharmonic.”<\/p>\n
“Alternative Dixieland” is about the closest anyone has come to
\ncapturing the flavor of the Philharmonic’s output. It’s a
\nbastardized micro-genre that kidnaps the busy but gentle horn
\narrangements Patty Hearst-like from this most traditional jazz form
\nand brainwashes them relentlessly to the purposes of Travis’s
\nhyperactive, quirky, character-driven rock songs. Take, for
\nexample, the simply brilliant “Crab Napkin,” which opens like a
\nlost Rolling Stones track, all tight r&b chording and raunchy
\nvocals, before adding a loopy, drunken Dixieland horn arrangement
\nat the chorus. From there it just keeps picking up steam, the
\nband’s rock and Dixieland components virtually battling one another
\nto a draw, with Travis egging them on the entire delirious way.
\nTunes like the bounding “Stay Like That” and the sassy, raucous
\n“Nature Boy” explore the same outer reaches of musical
\nvaudeville.<\/p>\n
Nestled in between these forays are a couple of oddly compelling
\nlounge ballads (“What’ll It Be” and “Say When”) that serve
\neffectively as intermissions but not much else, bleeding away some
\nof the manic energy that sustains the rest of the disc. It just
\nisn’t the same without the horn section, Travvy.<\/p>\n
Of course it’s hard to quibble with someone with the chutzpah to
\nrecord a tune like the savagely satirical “Chandler Travis, King Of
\nThe World.” “I wonder where Chandler is tonight,” sings Chandler to
\nan audibly rowdy nightclub crowd, “Probably in his private jet in
\nFrance \/ Or maybe backstage right now \/ Having sex with one of
\nthese waitresses \/ Chandler Travis, Chandler Travis \/ So humble and
\ngood.” Indeed\u2026<\/p>\n
Taken as a whole,
\nLet’s Have a Pancake<\/i> (the first among this album’s many,
\nmany non sequiters) is by turns witty, crude, wacky and
\nsentimental, and never anything less than highly entertaining — if
\nyou approach it with the proper mind-set. If your tastes don’t
\nrange much beyond wholesome sitcoms, “important” movies, Volvo
\nstation wagons and Celine Dion ballads, you’d be better off picking
\nup that new Michael Bolton tribute album. If, however, you have the
\ncapacity to enjoy bizarre and frequently inspired musical lunacy,
\nthis album will likely become a regular in your CD changer.<\/p>\n
Go ahead, have a pancake. Frank would approve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":25575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6428],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-36781","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-chandler-travis-philharmonic","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36781"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36781"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}