Mick Rhodes Band Reviews and News

Shaka-who?

Mick Rhodes' latest CD Rocks! - By Warren Zunino

     I was prepared not to like it. The newest in the Mick Rhodes Band collection, "Shakapopoulis" hit my mailbox at the same time as my normal Spring Garbage Collection. Oddly enough, this is the time of year when the biggest crop of unsolicited CD's hits my desk. These are mostly the work of ‘unsigned artists’ and the vast majority, well… suck major hose. I try to give them away to the children of co-workers but those who have already received these little treasures quickly shuffle their kids aside with harsh warnings to stay away from that corner of the office (yes, they keep me in the corner).

     I can’t blame my frolicsome fellow writers for being reluctant to accept these things. Most of these CD cases contain music that you can actually smell through the shrink wrap. To get me to actually risk opening one and listen to it requires either some really impressive cover art or a pleasant memory of the artist’s previous work. In this case, it was the latter. Not to detract from the circa 1968 stoner hippy simp adorning outside of the Shakapopoulis album, but he doesn’t do the music justice.

     I fed the disk in and waited for my CD player to find the first track, which turned out to be called 'Magic’ and damned if it wasn’t. 'Magic' swept me off my feet with the first bar. Fanciful notes danced out of my headset that at times sounded like a soprano sax and other times like some off-worldly leprechauns playing tiny flutes. It was great.

     Then, an amazing thing happened – another great tune came up! This one is called ‘Face Down in Babylon’ and I was just starting to tell you all about it when ‘Nobody Listening’ came up. Damn, I love this song but I would give a lot to get it out of my head. It auto-plays in there whenever there is a quiet moment. I think they call that an ‘Ear Worm’, but at least I got a good one and not some dog food commercial.

     Anyway, the point was, if I find one good song on an unsigned artist’s CD, it’s a red-letter day in Zunino’s Corner, but this is a gold-letter day! There are so many good tunes on this disk, I don’t have room to tell you about them all, but I will tell you this – BUY IT! Or get a friend to buy it and plan on spending a lot of time at his house! Bring some chips and beer, you cheap SOB!