DIRTY WALT & THE COLUMBUS SANITATION
To Put It Bluntly (Triple X)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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Fishbone's Dirty Walt Kibby's booty-thumpin' solo album comes hot on the heels of his main band's impressive Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx. Quite an outburst of old-school after a rather long silence. To Put It Bluntly is aptly titled, as Walt really isn't interested in pulling punches. He begins with snapping jabs to the faces of the executive branch via "Who Do You Believe," naturally using the presidents as visuals everyone can relate to, but it's the administrations and their economic and "war on drugs" policies he's after.

Walt's own stance on the latter is no mystery, since the cover shot features the smiling vocalist/horn player clutching a jug marked triple X and sitting at a table covered with about half pound of biiiig ol' buds. Outside of the shots at the government and a possible call for a return to individuality in "Do You Have A Mind Of Your Own," Dirty Walt's songs mostly seem to be about getting blasted. I don't want my kids to have this, but when they go to bed, this CD comes out and I'm in old school heaven. Funk grooves poppin' and diggin', maybe not as deep as I like (Tower Of Power or War, for example), but nasty enough. My anglo aversion to the overuse of the "N" word and gun imagery is only challenged momentarily, in "Don't Call That Man A Pussy," but hot damn, there's one more message in this album after all and it's right here: put your gun down and lose the illusion that it makes you tough. Walt's taking a young man to task for robbing an old man and trash talking him, and he lets the kid know who the real pussy is.

So you're wondering if this is a must-have companion album to Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx? Nope. There's no relationship between the two except several Fishbone members are on both. The music here is all Walt. But if I'm looking for that increasingly rare high quality old-school funk release, get on it.

© 2001 - DJ Johnson