Will this CD Odyssey ever end? Not
if I keep buying music, I suppose, and this weekend I bought five more albums.
They were (in no particular order):
Kishi Bashi’s “Sonderlust”, Angel Olsen’s “My Woman”, the Drive-By Truckers’ “Decoration
Day”, Daniel Romano’s “Mosey” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On.” The two
early winners out of that collection were Kishi Bashi and Drive-By Truckers,
but that’s all I’ll say for now – I’ll say more when I roll ‘em.
Disc 920 is….Flirtin’ With Disaster
Artist: Molly
Hatchet
Year of Release: 1979
What’s up with the Cover? Frank frickin’ Frazetta, that’s
what. The fantasy world’s undisputed art godfather did a bunch of album covers
for Molly Hatchet and this is one of the best. This cover has everything the 12
year old boy in me could ever want: skeletons, snakes and a badass Viking warrior
with an axe dripping blood. Even the ubiquitous Molly Hatchet banner looks
cool.
How I Came To Know It: I grew up with this record (my
brother had a few Molly Hatchet records). He liked Molly Hatchet well enough,
but I strongly suspect he was influenced to buy this album for the cover art –
and who could blame him? I got the CD version as part of a set containing Molly
Hatchet’s first five albums about a year ago.
How It Stacks Up: I have five Molly Hatchet albums. “Flirtin’
With Disaster” was the band’s biggest seller, but for me it only ranks third.
Ratings: 3 stars
Sometimes
an artist can find their sound a bit too perfectly, and that’s the case with
Molly Hatchet’s second album, “Flirtin’ With Disaster”.
On their
debut record, the band showed their boogie woogie and blues-rock roots with something
that fell somewhere between Little Feat and Allman Brothers. On the album that
would follow (1980’s “Beatin’ the Odds”) they are a bit harder, as they begin
to sidle up to early eighties metal.
But in
1979 Molly Hatchet was content to just lay down a straightforward riff and
groove away. No complicated guitar solos. No fantastical topics (well a bit of
western outlaw track with “Gunsmoke”
but that’s about it). This is just southern rock, blasted out with gusto and
damn any frills that might distract you from the core of the song.
With
that disclaimer in mind, the songs on “Flirtin’ With Disaster” are solid and
played with energy, and probably exactly what you’d want to hear in some rough-as-hell
small town bar where the band is protected by a chicken-wire cage, a la the
Blues Brothers.
When
they hit the sweet spot within the sweet spot, as they do on side one tracks
two and three with “It’s All Over Now”
and “One Man’s Pleasure” it is a
toe-tapping good time. When they go on a bit too long (as they do on the six
minute “Boogie No More”) the
limitations of the songs become apparent.
On the
title track it feels like they are trying to write a hit, but the effort seems
to suck out the grit established on the album’s more organic deep cuts. In
fairness, the live version of the same song later on the record (my CD has four
bonus tracks including live material) works a lot better.
In fact, when they
play live it made me wish I’d seen them in some dive bar during their prime. I
think it would have been one hell of a show, replete with fistfights, cheap bourbon
and broken glass. Actually, probably just as well that I missed it; I only like
a third of those things. I’m looking at you, Jim Beam. But I digress…
The
album is a bit of a reverse bell curve, with two of the first three songs being
strong and two of the last three (“Gunsmoke”
and “Long Time”) bringing the level
up again after a lot of uninspiring filler through the middle of the lineup. Despite
this, the opening track “Whiskey Man”
and the closer “Let The Good Times Roll”
are mirror images of the same boring song, chugging along in a workmanlike but
uninspiring way.
I can’t
fault Molly Hatchet for doing what they do, and their fans were happy with it
for sure. “Flirtin’ With Disaster” was their biggest selling album ever, going
triple platinum and achieving the lofty heights of #19 on the charts.
But if I
am being honest, I like them when they are either just a bit more raw, or a bit
more heavy. The album that precedes this one marries the sixties into the
seventies with electric boogie woogie, and the one that follows has an edge of
metal that makes them a bit of a trendsetter. “Flirtin’ With Disaster” is still
Molly Hatchet in their prime, and has its moments, but if it had taken more
risks I would have liked it even better.
Best
tracks: It’s All
Over Now, One Man’s Pleasure, Gunsmoke, Long Time
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