| Issue
#65 Aug.
'04
All
Things To You is just that.
Husband
and wife team Deena Shoshkes and Jon
Fried
have delivered a CD that should attract and capture just about everyone
who listens to it.
It’s a romantic gift of music that serves as many purposes as
possible.
“Once
in my life I tried to find someone like you
Who’d bring my dreams and my fantasies to life
the way that you do
Just when I’d given up on finding love
There you came
Like a moth to a flame
Lighting up my heart
Such a beautiful spark.”
Those
lyrics, from the opener, “Right Here
Right Now,”
invite us into a loose concept album which takes the beautiful love
relationship that Deena
and Jon have for each other, that is
carried over into their love of the
art of music, songwriting, and performing and spills over into the love
relationship of a
person who really digs the art form of rock-n-roll music, and hands it
over as a true
gesture of the heart.
Formed
in 1983, The Cucumbers have released five
indie LPs in
twenty-one years. If anything, it shows an artistic stand point to the
evolution of time.
It has been five years since 1999’s Total
Vegetility, of which I
stated: “[The Cucumbers, who have] a penchant for playfully
sticking out their
collective tongues; Rock us with a delightful mixture of adult
suburbanite tales as told
through the bloodshot eyes of grown city teenagers who refuse to
connect with the
so-called demeanor, stability, and conformity that is labeled as
socially acceptable in
this day and age.”
Now,
with All Things To You, Jon
(guitar, vocals,
keyboards, banjo, percussion) and Deena
(guitar, vocals, percussion),
along with Kurt Wrobel (bass, background
vocals, whistling, percussion)
and Steve Villano (drums, percussion),
aren’t so much sticking out
their tongues as they are spreading their arms and wrapping them around
those of us who
still have love to give and receive in all forms (All Things),
regardless of the
constraints in today’s society. This is an LP for the ages,
all the ages.
While
it’s tough to cover “All Things” in 14
compositions, The
Cucumbers cut a wonderful swath through the past 20
years of contemporary rock
and all it’s forms/genre’s/sub-genre’s by
reaching back and shaking hands
with the previous 20-25 years before that.
Starting
off with the afore mentioned “Right
Here, Right Now,”
the CD continues with
“Whiskey,”
a romp that bounces to a definitive ‘80s sound while holding
down a Shake, Rattle,
and Roll era structure. Try not to sing along to this fun
Bangles/B-52’s/Go-Go’s
style party song: “Fueled by the whiskey / that
holds the secret power / to
unlock the cryptic message / yeah.”
Then,
with “Bad Attitude,”
The Cucumbers
give us a first hand look at what went wrong with rock at the time when
the major music
corporations cashed in on the bad attitudes of the artists, made the
quick buck, and left
the music industry in artistic ruin. It’s as complete a look
of the corporate greed,
sales, and destruction that sacrificed the soul of the art as
you’ll find fighting
atop one of the most amazing Garage Band muscle and power jams that
just blow the doors in
(Little Steven are you listening?). You want attitude?
Well,
how about sex? “You
Know It’s
All Right” delivers.
It’s a groov-a-licious Talking Heads jam
that sets a pace of intense sexual healing. The bass line has your
shoulders dipping from
side to side and your head nodding to a musical beat that relays the
body motion of a
mating dance. With lyrics that point to the dance and the sex, it
exposes itself for the
sheer beauty and pinnacle of its existence.
What
draws this CD close to the heart is how this musical valentine delivers
on such
levels as to take in the effect and exposure to the generations that
have matured on
rebellion and matured with love that comes from the artistic
representations of that
rebellion, in this case the full classic modern rock of ages. How else
could The
Cucumbers successfully take us from a garage jam, to a
funk jam, to a
contemporary country jam? Yes, “Bend
Me Like
A Willow,” is perhaps the
greatest song that Patsy Cline never got
a chance to record. Pass the tissues as Deena’s vocals coax
water to the eyes with
this beautiful tale of love and longing. “The
Bridge
Of Love”
and “The Warm Sound Of Your Voice”
are also old school
country crooners that highlight the band, with their super tight
performances, pitch
perfect vocal harmonies, and Deena’s vocal warmth. The latter
song utilizes a Ravi
Shankar/George Harrison sitar style instrumentation that is
breathtaking when matched with
Deena’s multi-octave delivery.
In-between
we get a healthy dose of “Happiness”
(oh, you’ll be smiling), “Fog,”
a song that could
definitely be sung around a campfire, whether it’s a camp in
the woods of Maine, or
on a Jamaican beach, “Look Out You,”
which revisits
hard core new wave ( a la The Shirts, Brooklyn ’78) with a
sick lead that uses space
guitar reverb to send this tune into comfortably numb territory, and
“Master
Of My Emotions,” which spews a B
movie horror theme musically. While
images of Frankenstein’s monster doing the Robot dances in
our imagination, The Cukes
deliver a Blondie style rap giving us sweet visions of the early 80s
electro-pop scene
which spawned bands like, well, like The Cucumbers.
And
what
has all this spawned into the 21st century, into
the right here,
right now? An artistic community that must survive on its own in order
to be able to
practice its art. “Musicians I Know”
is a big
Thank-you and Salute to all the musicians who work day jobs in an
effort to support their
art. The song wraps up with the band not only offering all those
musicians they know some
advice, but also making a request: “Don’t
quit your day job.” The
closer, “Daylight”
finishes the theme, relating a
night in the life of any artist who must support themselves both
monetarily and through
the love and passion of their art.
Yes,
it isn’t easy to be in love. Whether it’s with
another person, with an art form,
or with the deliverance or the acceptance of that art form,
it’s hard to be all
things to you. Yet, in “All Things To
You,” The
Cucumbers tell us “I wanna be / All
things to you / Even if impossible /
All things to you / That’s what I want.”
And we believe them. We believe
them because this CD delivers on that promise. A promise underlined by
the purity and
professionalism of the songwriting and music given to us with open
hearts and smiles, a
promise that reflects the love of The Cucumbers.
The
Cucumbers -
All Things To You
is available now for $10.98 +s/h*
 View
Shopping Cart / Checkout
Accepting Credit Cards and PayPal
*Shipping
&
Handling charges:
USA - $3.00
for the first 2 CDs
ordered,
Add $1.50 per each CD after.
Canada - $5.00 for the
first
CD ordered,
Add $2.00 per each CD after.
Everywhere else -$7.00
for the
first CD ordered,
Add $3.00 per each CD after.
|
