Mushroom - Mad Dogs and San Franciscans
(Black Beauty)
Gary Floyd's opening sermon/cover of Joe Cocker's "Learning To Live Together" (actually, "Space Captain," as we learn on the final track) comes across like a Baptist minister leading his congregation through a rousing chorus of "Oh, yeah's" and "Hallelujah's" and sets the tone for Mushroom's fourth album and first to feature vocals. (The title, of course, is a thinly veiled pun on Cocker's backing band/entourage, Mad Dogs and Englishmen.)
Once again, head 'shroom Patrick O'Hearn leads the revolving-door membership through a collection of avant skronk, free jazz, post rock noodlings a la Tortoise augmented by some jaw-droppingly weird effects on titles such as "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, but It Will Be Auctioned on Ebay" and "Even The Beatles Had Beards" (not coincidentally, the only originals on this album of covers). Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" is as musically soulful as the original, despite Floyd's annoying, helium-voiced lisp. Leon Russell's "Delta Lady" (also covered by Cocker, whose definitive version never leaves the mind's ear while listening to Floyd's competent but ultimately unnecessary interpretation). "Keep on Running" verges dangerously close to Otis at Monterey (a good thing), but eventually reminds too much of Roland Gift and his Fine Young Cannibals.
Next, a rudimentary run through Randy California and Spirit's "I Got A Line On You" further encapsulates my problem with the release. The unfortunate choice of covers results in game attempts at erasing earlier, definitive versions from our mind that are doomed to failure from the get-go. Whether it be the author's own recording (as in the case of Mayfield and Spirit) or earlier interpretations that have passed into the realm of legend (Cocker's "Delta Lady" and Steppenwolf's version of Hoyt Axton's "The Pusher"), there really is no reason for these new recordings to exist. (And two songs about "pushers" is, pardon the pun, pushing it. Pick one, if you must tackle any. I'd give a slight nod to Mayfield's tune.) As a result, nearly a third of the album comes across like vanity recordings of some of the band members' favorite songs: laudable, perhaps, in a live setting, but not for an official studio recording. Maybe this was intended as a teaser for record labels considering upcoming tribute albums to any of these artists to hear what the 'shrooms can do to the material. But even there, tribute albums only work if you reinterpret the lesser-known tracks, not some of the artists' signature songs!
Only their aforementioned originals (and the more obscure covers, such as Pete Townshend's "Water") add anything distinctive to their canon. On previous releases, Mushroom (always known for their famous collaborations—former partners have included members of Soft Machine, Gong, Faust, and Tortoise) have managed to incorporate the style of their partners while maintaining their own unique identity. However commendable the effort to add a little soul to their sound by inviting Floyd to sing with them, the experiment fails on two accounts: the unfortunate selection of covers and the fact that Floyd is not a very emotional singer, thus turning Mushroom into another run of the mill, post rock, jazz band. The resulting album is surprisingly antiseptic and unemotional. Hopefully, only a momentary downturn in an otherwise exciting career.
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