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MICHAEL BLAKE & TONY GILKYSON
I'm A Live (Hyrmfaxe)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
Poet Michael Blake and former X guitarist (does that sound like a twisted double negative?) Tony Gilkyson team up for the second time and create an album that grabs the attention, makes you laugh and sometimes gives you "whoa" moments.
If you've heard Jim Morrison's American Prayer, with the surviving Doors playing behind his recorded poetry, you have a semi-sorta idea what some of this feels like, except the music is far better in that it has guts and diversity, and while Morrison certainly had a sense of humor, Blake's is broader without the burden of an overdeveloped sense of self-importance. It would be apples and oranges if not for the marriage of the poetry and music, since Blake likes to be outrageous much of the time. He lays out his agenda when he says, in a matter of fact, sans music intro, "You really wanna know? I wanna commit artistic homicide."
If it's not quite homicide it's at least brutal truth in humorous form. In "Dung," Blake boils down the human capacity for destructive behavior with a simple observation that even "a captive gorilla has good sense; he throws his shit outside the fence." He sees deeper into the pit in "My Hope" as he observes the privileged class: "You who are divine, do not worry about your time - It's already gone, eaten by shiny cars, lacquered hair, diamond rings, cheap motel sex." Serious, yes, but Blake has some fun (with a few serious notes tossed in) on other tracks, like "Plenty Of Everything," on which he simply reels off all the material possessions he has, noting that "I must be doin' pretty good." (He also notes, albeit reluctantly, that his credit cards are maxed out.) In the lyrics section of the liners, this one simply says "Attention listeners: name 44 common consumer products and you've got it." Gotta love this guy.
The other half of the equation is Tony Gilkyson, who produced, played guitar and wrote the music for most of the album. This is a guy who, since leaving X, has played with a lot of people in a number of genres, and that served this project well. The music here covers a broad spectrum, from the folksy riverbank sound of "Mr. Blake" to the slippery blues of "Did It" to the hard rock of "Artistic Homicide," each stage dressed expertly for Blake's wordplay by a crack band of musicians including former X drummer D.J. Bonebrake and Jigsaw Seen keyboardist Danny McGough. There's so much to love about I'm A Live it's hard to boil it down to a simple review, but oddly enough, it's easier to boil it down to a single sentence, and that would be this: Michael Blake and Tony Gilkyson's CD, I'm A Live, is so entertaining, so populated with clever moments and so endearing, it's likely to become your leading cause of repeat-button clicks.
[Available on Michael Blake's website.]
© 2004 - DJ Johnson