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Rod McKuen, Wontcha Please Go Home?

winkingtiger | Oakland, CA | 08/09/2003

(1 out of 5 stars)

"The master of 'not getting it', Rod McKuen, tackles yet another decade with this stab at 'Lounge'. Anyone unfortunate enough to have read his poems knows that Rod doesn't 'get' poetry. Anybody unlucky enough to hear Mr. McKuen's lame entries in the 'twist' craze of the early 60's ('Celebrity Twist' and 'Oliver Twist' ugh!), knows that Rod doesn't 'get' dance music either. Now here he is... back again, producing this so-called 'lounge' compilation in a lame attempt to jump on the mid-90's lounge bandwagon craze. No less than three songs on this compilation just so happen to be written by Rod McKuen, and he produced the disc too! Once again, he just doesn't 'get' it. Everything on here (with 3 exceptions) is complete and utter muzak! Strings are knee-deep on virtually every cut, and none of them 'swing' in any sense. The Ezio Pinza tune is so awful, I dare anyone to listen to it all the way through! And Rod's tunes are of course...lousy. The 3 exceptions I mentioned earlier are 'Lisbon Antigua' (available on the far superior 'Ultra-Lounge' series, please, get any of them rather than this!), 'Bo Mambo' by Yma Sumac (inferior to any of her cuts on Ultra-Lounge), and the Dave Brubeck-esque 'Like Blue' by Andre Previn & his Trio. Andre Previn? Yes, IMHO, this album is way off-base in calling itself 'lounge'. Great graphics though, but they're hardly a reason to buy it.In conclusion, I'd just like to say that sometimes when artists get something wrong, it can be very entertaining and funny (see Ultra-Lounge's 'On The Rocks' series), just not in this case. I can't wait till McKuen does an electronica compilation...."