Published on Sep 26, 2000
She said, “He’s crazy, I can’t take a second more of
this, dammit.”
— “That’s What She Said,” Chandler Travis
It’s a sweltering May afternoon, the kind of day when it feels
like even the trees must be sweating. Against all better judgment,
you’re outdoors — under a tent, in fact, tucked down along the
edge of the Sacramento River on opening day of the annual jazz
jubilee. A Dixieland jazz band is assembling on the modest stage in
front of you just now, clean-cut, pin-striped gentlemen in
styrofoam hats, just about ready to go on trumpet, sax, clarinet,
trombone, bass and drums.
You’re just beginning to forget the scraggly, wild-eyed fellow
you saw lurking down by the railroad tracks where you parked your
car, when suddenly, he appears out of nowhere, leaps up onto stage
with a battered electric guitar slung around his scrawny neck, and
bellows, “Hit it!”
From there the proceedings quickly take on all the trappings of
a musical three-ring circus. The rhythm section plunges forward and
the singer croons with all the insouciant sarcasm of an American
Ray Davies, while the horn section careens forward with such
complete and precise musical abandon that you begin to think their
leader may be possessed by the ghost of Frank Zappa.
This sonically-induced daydream is brought to you by the Travis
Chandler Philharmonic, a band that, as one critic put it, “puts the
‘harm’ back in philharmonic.”
“Alternative Dixieland” is about the closest anyone has come to
capturing the flavor of the Philharmonic’s output. It’s a
bastardized micro-genre that kidnaps the busy but gentle horn
arrangements Patty Hearst-like from this most traditional jazz form
and brainwashes them relentlessly to the purposes of Travis’s
hyperactive, quirky, character-driven rock songs. Take, for
example, the simply brilliant “Crab Napkin,” which opens like a
lost Rolling Stones track, all tight r&b chording and raunchy
vocals, before adding a loopy, drunken Dixieland horn arrangement
at the chorus. From there it just keeps picking up steam, the
band’s rock and Dixieland components virtually battling one another
to a draw, with Travis egging them on the entire delirious way.
Tunes like the bounding “Stay Like That” and the sassy, raucous
“Nature Boy” explore the same outer reaches of musical
vaudeville.
Nestled in between these forays are a couple of oddly compelling
lounge ballads (“What’ll It Be” and “Say When”) that serve
effectively as intermissions but not much else, bleeding away some
of the manic energy that sustains the rest of the disc. It just
isn’t the same without the horn section, Travvy.
Of course it’s hard to quibble with someone with the chutzpah to
record a tune like the savagely satirical “Chandler Travis, King Of
The World.” “I wonder where Chandler is tonight,” sings Chandler to
an audibly rowdy nightclub crowd, “Probably in his private jet in
France / Or maybe backstage right now / Having sex with one of
these waitresses / Chandler Travis, Chandler Travis / So humble and
good.” Indeed…
Taken as a whole,
Let’s Have a Pancake (the first among this album’s many,
many non sequiters) is by turns witty, crude, wacky and
sentimental, and never anything less than highly entertaining — if
you approach it with the proper mind-set. If your tastes don’t
range much beyond wholesome sitcoms, “important” movies, Volvo
station wagons and Celine Dion ballads, you’d be better off picking
up that new Michael Bolton tribute album. If, however, you have the
capacity to enjoy bizarre and frequently inspired musical lunacy,
this album will likely become a regular in your CD changer.
Go ahead, have a pancake. Frank would approve.