Black Oak Arkansas may well be—and I say this with affection, and as a fan—the most stunningly inept band in the history of rock. The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau once rhetorically asked why Black Oak—despite relentless touring and a big name tour manager—still couldn’t “sell out the Academy of Music on a Saturday night.” His answer: “They are actively untalented, incapable of even an interesting cop.”
Me, I think Christgau’s right about Black Oak’s incompetence, but wrong about everything else. I find Black Oak Arkansas tremendously interesting, exciting even, thanks in large part to the uncanny vocal acrobatics of the perpetually shirtless James “Jim Dandy” Mangrum. I find it hard to describe Mangrum’s voice except by comparing it to the pitching of Dock Ellis on that immortal June night in 1970 when he threw a no-hitter while on acid. Ellis’ pitches may have been all over the place—he walked eight batters, and probably narrowly missed hitting and killing a few more—but nobody could touch them, because Ellis was possessed.
And so it goes for Mangrum. He can’t carry a tune in his purse, and is likely to go from a macho growl to high-pitched keening to flat out making rabid possum noises in the amount of time it took me to write this sentence. And it’s not like he’s trying. For the horrible truth is that Big Jim has no control of the sounds coming out of his mouth whatsoever. All he can do is let rip and hope nobody gets hurt. It’s scary but in a wonderful way, that is if you possess a sense of humor and are wearing a state-of-the-art batting helmet.
The band’s 1972 sophomore LP Keep the Faith includes all of the hallmarks of the Black Oak Arkansas sound—a three-guitar attack that is far too psychedelic to fit neatly into the “Southern Rock” genre, a barely competent backbeat, and the snake oil ululations of Mangrum, who pitches his vocals just about everywhere but over the plate. And despite what Christgau says, Black Oak Arkansas has some more than decent songs on offer, even if the boys in the band don’t exactly do a stellar job of performing them.
The title track is a funked-up slice of rarified country rock boogie complete with a great sing and clap along ending, and is a good enough tune that Stephen Malkmus—a fellow enthusiast, I’m sure!—saw fit to cover it. “Fever in My Mind” is a psychedelic romp on which the lead guitarist goes batshit and Jim Dandy goes right over the top. Why, his grunts and “Oh no!s” on this one alone are worth the price of the album. Meanwhile, “Revolutionary All American Bands” boasts a pretty country rock melody complete with Dickey Betts-school guitar and sounds just swell coming out of the hi-fi; it kinda reminds me of the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See,” and that’s definitely a compliment.
“The Big One’s Still Coming” is about “havin’ an earthquake in our waterbed” and provides definitive proof that Black Oak Arkansas can beat Spinal Tap in the dumb department without even knowing they’re doing it. “Wowww! Look out!” cries Jim Dandy, before going into the best Sasquatch orgasm ever put to record. There have been sillier songs about sex, but few of them are this much pure stoopid fun. “Don’t Confuse What You Don’t Know” is a psychedelic song with bong-loads of cool guitar and a driving beat, while “Feet on Earth, Head in Sky” is, I’m sorry to report, Southern Rock at its more lackluster.
And things go largely downhill from there; “Short Life Line” is a flat-out clunker, as is “We Live On Day to Day,” another Southern Rocker that drags itself along by its front hooves for five minutes without getting very far. Which leaves the oddly compulsive “White Headed Woman,” which provides an apt demonstration of what can happen if you give a bunch of rural Arkansas boys too much LSD. From its spoken introduction (complete with crackling fire) to its psychofunk close, this one is all over the place, and can aptly be called insane. It may not be a good song, but once you’ve heard it you’ll be hearing it for the rest of your life.
Keep the Faith is by no means a great record, but I find myself listening to it more than records that I damn well know are better. Which either says something about Keep the Faith or about me. To which I can only say Jim Dandy to the rescue. He’s an uncontrollable act of nature of the sort that devastates innocent trailer parks, and the only singer about whom it can rightfully be said that he’s always big fun to listen to, but you’d damn well better be ready to duck.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
