 Jesse Camp What a piece of crap. This is the worst CD ever made. Okay, now I'm going to put it on and listen to it. Few discs in recent memory have made me actually angry at their very existence, but this one pushes all my buttons. Just the fact that Jesse Camp was provided with the opportunity to make a CD at all is frustrating enough, much less the fact that he seems to be on a misguided crusade to "bring back rock" or whatever. Of course, he'd have been (more) stupid to try to make an album that was anything but moron rock, but that doesn't make it any more listenable. The music is actually competent, full-throttle New York hard rock, elevated above bar-band status by the presence of Rick Nielsen on some tracks, but like a Leif Garrett album, Jesse's album seems to pull every possible sleight-of-hand trick to obscure the fact that Jesse can't sing and has nothing to recommend him as a frontman. It's a lot of glammy bluster and mush-mouth speak-sing, with fast tempos to hide the lack of catchy melody, mixed with the typical Bob Clearmountain sheen that, if you were not paying close attention, might convince you that this is a fun little record. It's not. It's pretty desperate and pathetic, an instantaneous bargain bin piece of crap that Hollywood Records probably intended as a tax write-off from the get-go. A few of the tracks are less dopey than others (if I had to pick a favorite, it would be "Summertime Squatters," though that would entail redefining the word "favorite" to mean "the track in which I feel the least grief for art and humanity." Actually, if you can train yourself to ignore Jesse's voice, which is something like Perry Farrell doing Lou Reed (badly), you might derive some satisfaction from the album, though if so, you probably have a much wider tolerance for T. Rex and/or Skid Row than I do. I did not listen to the whole album – that would have been literal torture not to mention a serious waste of time. The whole affair might have been tolerable if Jesse's "wild street-kid" shtick were remotely believable – even on MTV it was clear that the voice was fake, and it doesn't translate well to an album, that's for sure. Confusingly, someone actually snared Stevie Nicks into doing background vocals on a track ("Saviour"), another track that can be tolerable if you can stop hearing Jesse's voice in the mix (which is not all that hard, as they bury him beneath the real singers through most of the album). All in all, a thorough piece of shit. Anyone who buys it deserves it.
Review by J.C. Cramp |
