I wish that instead of reviewing Doo Rag’s 1996 album, What We Do, I could just play it for a group of people and count the number of hips that start shaking as a result. In an ideal world, I’d just publish what would undoubtedly be a pretty high margin, type out “I told you so,” and be along my merry way.
Unfortunately, that sort of thing is frowned upon in the overly-verbose world of music criticism. So instead, I’ll outline my argument for why an album by a glorified junkyard band from 1996 -- mostly relegated to novelty status in a select few’s record collections -- is worth re-examining in 2009, when artists everywhere are sacrificing fancy digital recording techniques to recreate the tape-hiss drenched, feedback-filled sound du jour.
Whereas most of today’s lo-fi bands simply eschew production value, Doo Rag’s duo of frontman Bob Log III and percussionist Thermos Malling threw out conventional instruments entirely to make one hell of a sludge-covered, Delta-blues-punk, little-to-no-fi album that few people have actually ever heard. Handmade dobros, $2 thrift store guitars, microphones encased in hairdryers and amplified through vacuums, and a drum kit made of trash cans, metal film reels, grocery carts and Miller High Life boxes filled out their equipment. A splash of Hasil Adkins gets thrown into the mix and you’ve got the musical stylings of Doo Rag, in a nutshell.
That said, it’s easy to see how What We Do has been written off as gimmicky by histories tastemakers. Sure, songs with titles like “Naughty Little Wiggle” don’t offer up much in the way of poetry, and the musical content isn’t exactly exploring much new territory, either. But to entirely discount the album -- or the band -- is missing the point of making stripped-down music in the first place: giving a middle finger to innovation and getting back to basics.
The question then becomes not how innovative a band like Doo Rag were, but how well they did what they did. And the 20 songs on What We Do serve up an honest-to-goodness dance party on heavyweight vinyl that almost anyone can appreciate, even 13 years after the fact. Whether it’s the John Lee Hooker-esque blues shuffle of “Tire Knocker” or the Cramps-inspired mania of “Trudge,” it’s clear that Doo Rag’s main focus is getting folks to get dirty. Even in the rare moments when the album does slow its pace (“Freeloader” and album closer “Hans Kramer’s Super Disco”), it’s not for the sake of squeezing in a ballad, but for providing the inevitable hazy, slurring, still-drunk-the-morning-after comedowns to the rest of the album’s booze- and meth-fueled rager. The tracks might not always leave the listener feeling good, but neither do a lot of the best parties.
In that spirit, What We Do may not be a hidden classic or anywhere near approaching essential. But it was never aiming to be, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, no matter how much you love a good mathy jam or 200-piece experimental guitar orchestra, listening to rock music was never intended to be an overly-cerebral exercise -- and therein lies the beauty of What We Do. It’s broken-down blues run through a blender. No complex time signatures, no fancy harmonic acrobatics. Just loud shouts, percussive stomps, and blues riffs played quick and dirty. It all comes together to make one hell of a find for any music nerd willing to turn off his hyper-critical brain long enough to give it a go.
1. Nickel
2. Nickel (Club Version)
3. Bam
4. Freeloader
5. Trudge
6. Doin' It To It
7. Mop Down
8 Rickety
9. Kick Walken
10. Jalopy
11. Tire Knocker
12. Naughty Little Wiggle
13. Crooked
14. Don't Need But A Little
15. Kick Down
16. 2 1/2 Ft. Soul
17. Rectifier
18. Race Truck
19. Some
20. Hans Kramer's Super Disco