"When you think about it for a second, The Global Blues makes sense.
This unrelievedly garrulous, convoluted, annoying and striking album is
the work of a singer/songwriter who never hit it quite as big as he, for
one, thought he should have. But Danny O'Keefe's resentment is probably
undeserved. His best-known songs, "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues"
and "Magdalena," each boasted a catchy little hook a
phrase, a few notes and a boatload of easy cynicism and sentimentality.
Along with his sharp, nasal voice (so grating it's fascinating), O'Keefe
had a stardom commensurate with his abilities: a couple of AM hits and
listeners were tired of him. Similar pop folkies made better music (Gilbert
O'Sullivan, for example), and some made worse (B.W. Stevenson, after "My
Maria").
What The Global Blues has going for it is O'Keefe's go-for-broke attitude.
While his former backup singers, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, have moved
on to higher banalities, Danny O'Keefe has depleted his reservoir of comforting
irony: all he's got left is bemusement. Thus the title tune, employing
a faded love affair as a metaphor for the dissipation of the universe,
is extremely pretentious but so modestly performed it gets you on the
singer's side immediately.
How long you'll want to stay there is another question. By side two, O'Keefe
is fashioning atonal odes to Atlas and yowling howlers like "Mother
Mary, save the babies." Before that, however, he's managed some seductive
pop melodies ("On the Wheel of Love," "Livin' in the Modern
Age") and scored one small triumph. "The Street" is a tersely
rendered vision of all the romantic notions of the Sixties, tied to wry
predictions for the future. There's a soaring, chillingly unsentimental
chorus that's just lovely. I guess we can't count Danny O'Keefe out yet."
(Ken Tucker, Rolling Stone)
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