Search - Robert & His Cheap Suit Serenaders Crumb :: Robert Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders

"Hot Tunes - Ballads, Blues, Waltzes, Old Standards"

RhinocerosFive | Los Angeles | 07/10/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Robert Crumb, Allan Dodge and Robert Armstrong, inspired by collections of 1920s jazz 78s, decided at the height of post-hippie electric madness to form an anachronistic acoustic band. Banjo, mandolins, saw, accordian, and assorted violins and brass make a sound not quite ragtime, not really bluegrass, just as loosely related to Hawaiian and klezmer but transcendent: sweet, sentimental, sometimes spooky.



The punch line is that unlike many of their rock contemporaries, these aren't dilettantes, but real musicians. On this album, aided by Richard Oxtot and Paul Woltz, the Serenaders recreate a time and place that may never have existed except in their fevered imaginations. Standards, lost gems, and a few original compositions, all rendered with an indefinably odd sensibility, still delight and confound thirty-five years later. (I saw this band play a wedding in the late '70s, and a happier bunch of dancing celebrants I haven't seen since.)"