Search - Ralph Carney :: I Like You (a Lot)

Ralph Carney
I Like You (a Lot)
Genres: Pop, Rock

Track Listings (16) - Disc #1
1. Fun House
2. Chant of the Weed - Ralph Carney, Redman, Don
3. I Like You
4. Hawaiian Eye
5. Mile's Corner
6. Eye Protection
7. Far Out
8. Tube Socks
9. Death Don't Come Easy
10. Funky Fred from France
11. Dirge, Pt. 2
12. Fluids
13. Brain the Beach Man
14. Helga
15. Christopher Columbus - Ralph Carney, Berry, Chu
16. Circling Laguardia

CD Details

All Artists: Ralph Carney
Title: I Like You (a Lot)
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Birdman
Original Release Date: 9/7/1999
Release Date: 9/7/1999
Genres: Pop, Rock
Style:
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 607287002422

Synopsis

Amazon.com

Multi-instrumentalist Ralph Carney is best-known (if known at all) as a sideman. But not just any sideman. You see, the San Francisco-based Carney has backed some of the most adventurous musicians around: Tom Waits, the B-52s, Marc Ribot, to name a few (in addition to being a key member of the Oranj Symphonette). What's his solo work like? The better question is: what's it not like? Carney throws together an entire music store's worth of instruments onto these sonic experiments for the short-attention-spanned. It's a mix of jazz, art-rock, and down-home blues that sounds like nothing else. Recorded in Carney's home studio, I Like You (A Lot) features Carney backing the Tarnations' Paula Frazier on kazoo ("Hawaiian Eye"), showing off his sax skills on Don Redman's "Chant of the Weed," and even taking on electronica ("Funky Fred from France"). Full of skronk and humor, this is the goofy four-track album we all wish we had the chops to make. --Jason Verlinde

CD Reviews

Life in the Fun House

Cool Man | NYC | 07/25/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"... Ralph Carney's amazing I Like You (A Lot) is a perfect place to start. The opening track's lyrics-more like addled incantations-announce the CD's theme, direction, tone, and humor: "Life's really fun here in the Funhouse." You do not have to go anywhere for anything. The 17 tracks-all played masterfully by the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist jazz operator--known for his weird solo stylings, and his brilliant sideman additions to Tin Huey, Hal Wilner, B-52's, Waits, and other distinctive and distaff authentic voices of the American Experience, are buoyant, are silly, are finger-poppin' and swingin'. There is a remarkable version of Redmon's celebrated ode to pot, "Chant of the Weed" that is (barely) bested later by an even darker take on Chu Berry's "Christopher Columbus," noted enslaver, rapist, and murderer. As for the originals, well, they are originals. There are (integrated) homages to baritone genius Carney from Ellington and to Miles's "on The Corner" period, pastiches of high school marching bands, some sweet singing that resembles no one this side of a Gong-like delineation of pataphysics, and, of course, the banjo, a banjo for chrissakes!. No one is writing songs like this anymore: child-like versions of a person trapped in his recording studio with dozens of odd reeds, with bells and drums and whistles, and with a profound reverence for jazz and the spirit of attempting the new, the raw, the uncooked. This is my favorite album of the moment, ..."