SoCal-born, NoCal-based Chuck Prophet may be the best rock-oriented singer/songwriter/guitarist you've never heard of. His new CD, No Other Love, on the appropriately named New West Records, is an audacious blend of classic and cutting edge styles: hip-hop beats, samples and scratches mingle with Roy Orbison/Chris Isaak neo-rockabilly, nocturnal surf music, '60s psychedelic organ, mysterioso swamp rock, and hints of artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Sly Stone, Bobbie Gentry, and Beck. What's most amazing is that all of these sounds get along so well with one another inside of Prophet's self-produced mix.
Prophet's worn, slightly nasal baritone is sometimes up front in the mix, sometimes processed and distorted, sometimes dead earnest, sometimes heavily ironic on his vignettes of disconnected love, pain, resurrection and justice delayed, which seem to be geographically located in a mythic Southwest somewhere between Hollywood, Bakersfield, Sonoma and the moon.
Prophet is both funny and dead serious on the beat-heavy vamp "What Can You Tell Me": "They say the heart is a wheel, she made my heart a meal" is pretty telling.
Beautiful "After the Rain" tiptoes in on electronic strings and surf guitar, Prophet's unadorned voice is complemented poignantly by Stephanie Finch. The story is the antithesis of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl," where the green grass behind the stadium is wet and heavy and uninviting in the wake of precipitation.
"I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See" opens with a nod to Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe," and slinks on a sinister syncopated groove through Prophet's litany of failed romances:
- "Darby was my sister's friend,
a fashion paranoid,
She wore a winter coat all summer long
and made a lot of noise
About conservites and demigods
and how we should be scared
We dropped LSD at Disneyland
She left me standing there"
Just a great song, a sardonic update on "88 Lines About 44 Women."
Article comments
1 - brinah kessler
Hope you can help with this one.
Years back, in the 60's or 70's a CIA agent jumped from a window in NY to his death during what turned out to be an LSD experiment. The family investigated and recently (whithin the past year) there was a small article, in the back pages of (I think) the Phila Inquirer stating that the agents involved were John Ashcroft and maybe Rumsfeld.
Is there any way you can check on this?
I googled the subject and came to this site.
Thanks
2 - Bernard
Google rocks!!!!
- Want to know if God exists?
- Is JFK the reincarnation of christ?
- Does Satan know my address?
Google it all and ye shall knoweth all
continue....
3 - Eric Olsen
That was Art Linkletter's daughter and she wasn't an agent, just a hippie. Lesson: open windows, roofs and heavy hallucinogens don't mix.
Beyond that Chuck Prophet rules.
4 - Nick Jones
Au contraire, Eric. The scientist's name was Frank OLSON (who, coincidentally, had a son named Eric), who went out the window of a room on the thirteenth floor of New York's Statler Hotel in the early morning hours of November 28, 1953. For many years the story was that Olson had jumped after suffering a nervous breakdown; in 1975, it was revealed that Olson had been dosed with LSD, unawares, as part of an MK-ULTRA experiment nine days before his death; later still, his body was exhumed and evidence was found to indicate that he perhaps had been murdered, to prevent him from becoming a whistleblower.
Rumsfeld and Cheney were both involved with "damage control" on the Olson case for the Ford administration.
See also: Vankin and Whalen, The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time.
5 - Eric Olsen
Nick, I'm not sure which part of my statement you are au contraire-ing, but I was making a joke about it because Diane Linkletter's death was just a plain old suicide and nothing as exotic as jumping out the window on acid.
6 - Eric Olsen
And Chuck Prophet most certainly does rule.
7 - Nick Jones
I thought Linkletter did jump because she was on acid. Never mind; I was just giving Brinah the information she (he?) was looking for.
8 - Wagner Claumann
That was Art Linkletter's daughter and she wasn't an agent, just a hippie. Lesson: open windows, roofs and heavy hallucinogens don't mix.
Beyond that Chuck Prophet rules.
9 - Bernard
First name Art, last name Linkletter.
How cool is that?
Besides, after listening to it I must concur that Chuck Prophet indeed rules.
10 - Eric Olsen
Thanks Bernard, glad you check Chuck out. I always thought Art Linkletter had a super cool name.