Search - Flat Duo Jets :: Safari

The last real rock-n-roll band in the cosmonautic tradition

Anita Fix | Alcazar in the Land of Enchantment | 06/08/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"John Michael Dexter Romweber & Crow form a duo jet-set unequalled in the annals of musical history and the conglomerate extrordinaire "Safari" holds some of the keys to that palace of wisdom. Recorded in pioneer fashion is an extensive bulk of their earliest recordings, many set down on a front porch or the living room den of various North Carolina Motherly abodes, assorted small nightclubs ala an anonymous tuesday midnite circa late 198?, even one track interrupting Dex on a Chapel Hill college restroom toilet! All are essentially aLive, set down on a four or two-track, and reveal no lies: these boys are unafraid to do the real thing, living their lives as their heroes lived, though a far cry from mimicking the various idols of the cultus rock-n-roll-a, it is their songwriting abilities and originalities, even when performing the myriad traditional religious hymns that set the Flat Duo Jets high upon the pantheonic altar...for Dexter is a living legend, a guitar-God of the church of the American saviour, numbered amongst the many saints held so reverently there by Rock-n-Roll congregations...everytime I've seen Crow & Dex, coast to coast, his monstrous chords on that black crucible of a sears Silvertone is terrifying to witness; such invocative sermons of legitimte guitar voodoo is usually reserved for high initiates of underground sanctum sanctorum, not your average nightclub or college bar! Crow always sets two masonic pillars before his skeletal drum-kit to restrain himself from falling off the veritable cliffs he trance-like inhabits while undergoing varied contortions from keeping and extending time like the inventor of interstellar time-travel he is. Safari is a tour of the jungle, replete with all its serpentish fascinations and equatorial extreme heat, guaranteed to make you sweat gallons while witness to strange rites rarely seen by white boy's eyes in this day and age of musical skepticism and sarcastic debasement. Yet another miracle has been performed by these two genius priests, and though safari isn't their absolute best record as a whole entity, that freak of fact itself testifies to the unlimited powers this duo combination possesses. All &all, bye & bye, Safari is a veritable education for the miminal masses that are still interested and in some cases dedicated to musical ideals the Flat Duo Jets define by their very existence alone. Safari is one of the proofs of their success. Theirs, and all musicians dreams are here fulfilled, on Safari, and that dream's undeniable: to record, forever immortal and for all the future to hear and bear testament, to the beauty music makes all humankind feel inside...to briefly capture and set free again such a rare, jettish bird as this...is truly the stuff of legends."