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Bad Rice is a true original of Americana pop, sometimes vaguely bluesy, sometimes sounding like mutated ragtime, not sounding exactly like anybody, although the contemporaneous work of Randy Newman is the best touchstone for those who need to compare. Like Newman on 12 Songs, Nagle’s piano dominates on many of the tracks, and he brings in Ry Cooder for some bloody-fingered blues action. Nagle has a brilliant writer’s eye for the details of strange people’s lives and times, like the family disrupted by sonny accidentally stepping on mom’s parakeet or poor sucker Frank who lets Eddie watch his corner store and lives to regret it. The string coda on that one, with Nagle keening “cry, cry, cry,” will induce waves of sympathy for small business owners in trouble that you might not know you had in you. And “Party in L.A.” is , of course, about a worried dad who fathered a son with a hard-core commie only to have her abscond with the kid to the west coast on May 1 because she is “needed by the [Communist] Party in L.A.” It’s that kind of album. – Brian Doherty, Lost in the Grooves
Forthcoming in the very near future is a deluxe Bad Rice anthology that reappraises this classic album in the manner it deserves, with a plethora of additional goodies. Stay tuned.
Bad Rice is a true original of Americana pop, sometimes vaguely bluesy, sometimes sounding like mutated ragtime, not sounding exactly like anybody, although the contemporaneous work of Randy Newman is the best touchstone for those who need to compare. Like Newman on 12 Songs, Nagle’s piano dominates on many of the tracks, and he brings in Ry Cooder for some bloody-fingered blues action. Nagle has a brilliant writer’s eye for the details of strange people’s lives and times, like the family disrupted by sonny accidentally stepping on mom’s parakeet or poor sucker Frank who lets Eddie watch his corner store and lives to regret it. The string coda on that one, with Nagle keening “cry, cry, cry,” will induce waves of sympathy for small business owners in trouble that you might not know you had in you. And “Party in L.A.” is , of course, about a worried dad who fathered a son with a hard-core commie only to have her abscond with the kid to the west coast on May 1 because she is “needed by the [Communist] Party in L.A.” It’s that kind of album. – Brian Doherty, Lost in the Grooves
Forthcoming in the very near future is a deluxe Bad Rice anthology that reappraises this classic album in the manner it deserves, with a plethora of additional goodies. Stay tuned.