Stop me if you've heard this one before: a musician decides, in his mid-30s, to learn guitar, gets tutored by someone who doesn't know how to play himself (unbeknown to the aspiring axe-man), gathers some similarly novice players from his music class together and presses up an album, forgets about it, eventually drops it into a local San Francisco store, forgets to leave any contact details, forgets about it again…. and almost thirty years ago becomes a cult figure, lauded by David Byrne (whose Luaka Bop label has issued this collection) and the shady Dean Blunt.
'My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt' provides a cursory overview of precisely why the titular Doug Hream Blunt might have made such an impression, aside from the enduring fact that there's the basic appeal of an outsider artist overlooked by almost everyone. The collection brings together tracks from that fabled first album plus other unreleased songs, ranging from the nagging, insistent 'Fly Guy' and the clumsy sexiness of 'Gentle Persuasion' to the calypso blues of 'Caribbean Queen'.
Throughout, there's a garagey rawness, a tinny quality that somehow adds to the mystique of the recordings rather than suggesting they're little above demos. It's possible, at times, to hear the early art experimentation of Byrne's Talking Heads alongside more pronounced funk and soul gestures, while the lyrics have a lucid, slightly random quality. Frankly, it's downright potty, but that's precisely what makes it so charming.
7/10
Words: Mat Smith
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