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BLACK OAK ARKANSAS

The Band with the City with the Loudest Shoulders in the South!

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Aside from being one the most forgotten-est Weirdo-Bands in rock history,(... even their long time drummer- (and 80's-metal- ringer) Tommy Aldridge has removed them from his resume)...

...This band, at one time actually owned their own Arkansas town! (.....which would appear to be no mean feat- especially in light of todays' "Whitewater" land scandal.)

However, Real estate, for these Uber-Crackers,was merely a means to a creative end. Having their own "city" allowed them to do the one thing that they did best, which was basically..........

..being Black Oak Arkansas.

When listening to BOA it is not difficult to imagine them livin', lovin' and learnin' within the confines of their own gated-community- you can almost hear the rest of the world (and the rest of worlds' music) going by , as they ramble completely unchecked thru one of their many behind-the-barn, boogie-thons. (Calling this band "insular"- would be like calling Kurt Cobain "unwell".)

The fact is they were living inside a 20 foot fence, which completely surrounded their Black Oak, AK. compound . Old film footage about the band / town reveals a rather spartan setting- The homes look like nothing more than barracks, and the landscaping is surprisingly military- --surprising, because I had always pictured Black Oak as much more"Jonestowny" (wine n' ludes, not strychnine)

This is due to my estimation of Black Oak (the group) as" the Last Greatest Party Rock band ever. ----a belief which leads me to imagine that someone did one hell of clean-up job the day the film crew dropped by. ....Really ...,what would be the point of building a fence that fucking big-if you're not planning to do anything behind it?--- And if we are to use their records as 'the minutes from the last meeting' - it sounds as if they were doin'a lot!

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Lead singer Jim"Dandy" Mangrum always sounds like he's saving you from something-although it is never made clear exactly what that "something" is.(----possibly "a life without B.O.A.") in addition to which, Mr. Mangrum sported an sense of bravado that bordered on "spirituality"- (and the only other rock-caucasians so-annoited ,were Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis.... )

JD is also the oft overlooked inventor of the "Spandex Clad Rock Star" - an archetype which remained clingingly popular until.... um... mid-grunge-- (and, in case you didn't know, Jim Dandy also invented David Lee Roth)

For first time listeners, Dandys' voice,initially, has a cartoonish quality- which, after repeated listenings, mutates into....extremeley cartoonish ,which, to the uninitiated, mutates into vastly annoying. But it is precisely this quality which makes him the front-mans' frontman.

Once he opens his yap, you barely notice that there are guitars playing along ( -and this is really saying something ; considering that there were three of them.)

This aural illusion was not a result of volume- but of timbre ....Back in the days when everybody wanted a fuzz box, Jim Dandy was no different- he just figgered out that he already had one built in. (A lotta rock critics accused JD of intentionally contracting the Cap'n Beefheart strain of tonselitis- but listening back I can honestly say that it sounds as if Don Van Vliet caught a bigger cold from Howlin Wolf, than Dandy ever did from Don...)

In fact, Jim Dandys' most graven influence comes from the vocal stylings made popular by southern evangelicals- which I will quickly described as; Always talk as if you are yelling.....and always yell, as if you are singing.

....But JD was strictly washed in his own blood...as documented on BOA's "Keep the Faith"- the cover photo featuring bound editions of the "Bible", "Bhagavad Gita" "Siddhartha" and a hefty-lookin volume subtitled "The Teachings of Black Oak Arkansas" --- chapter and verse of which is conveniently reprinted inside.(and numbered for easy reference....just watch me...)

"Revolutionary American Boys" (I:II) informs us that "We're just what you need , Good solid wood." and later on "We're your crowd pleasers / we're your body heaters / we're your human crutch / oh we like you very much / but we're just to look at ...not to touch".

"Short Life Line" ( II:III) Jim dares us to "Watch ,while we harness energy from the multitudes,/Then ride it bareback on our high energy tunes." ......One begins to get the impression that these guys thought of themselves more as the "southern-fried MC5", rather than the Allmans' next door neigh-bro's- - - and having seen these guys live, I can vouch for the "Dee-Troitness" in Jim Dandys' "who-in-the-hell-are-you?" stare. ---- and much like the MC5 ; Black Oak tended to write a whole lot of Rock Music about making a whole lot of Rock Music.

(Unforunately-we never did get to watch them harness the energy of any true multitudes ,...
...Too bad, too... 'cause I have little doubt that today Black Oak, Arkansas (the town) would be a socialist,clothes-optional, "Dollywood "-with drugs ......after all, Like Dolly Parton, Jim Dandy also had a pair of up-front endowments , only his were a pair of comedy-sized testicles ....which used to land him on the cover of proto-gay magazines like "After Dark".)

If you've never heard BOA before ,or, if you are one who assumes that "Jim Dandy to The Rescue" (a cover of the Laverne Baker chestnut) is a fair representation of the group- I would suggest their 1972 live monsterpiece "Raunch and Roll" as a good (re)introduction..... Like I said before.... BOA was the last greatest party band ever --and their brand of evangelical-lude-boogie is so up-to- something--- that you kin almost smell-it. (...and for anyone who is actually buying this article......a few rules of thumb for buying a listenable BOA record are : Pre-1974, on the ATCO label, and with Ricky Reynolds on 12 string guitar.)

Jim Dandy is credited on "Raunch and Roll" with "Vocals and scratchboard" (washboard) and you need only wait for the second track ,an instrumental from their first record called"When Electricity Came to Arkansas" to hear JD take a solo on the thing.---and not only is the washboard solo unaccompanied, ....but it dern well starts the song .

Naw, the fun's not over yet, 'cause in the very same tune- right in the middle of the freek-down / break-out part-(and directly following the "speaking in tongues" bit) is a rare example of "live-forward-backward-masking" Wherein Dandy repeats the the word ;"NATAS"....."NATAS"...presumably with the ad-lib notion that some idjit will be moved to play this backwards.(..........and as far as I can tell ,when played backwards it sounds like he's saying "SAW-Tahn" ....whatever the hell that means..)

The spoken (yelled) intros are another high point on this live collection - reaching a zenith with "Hot Rod"...."...it's Friday nite....n' you done worked a hard week and yer ready to go out shinin!...." - In this twenty second intro Jim Dandy manages to froth up more "south" than "Gone With The Wind" does in three hours.

Listening to "Raunch and Roll" - you get the feeling that Black Oak Arkansas were'nt just telling it on any mountain, they were telling it on their mountain - and to hear Jim Dandy, as Popeye the preacherman, stoked on mexican spinach, spreading his gospel of Nude Communism and Fertile Womanhood to a captive audience- ---sounds almost like science fiction today.

And after a few revolutions on your turntable-(hah!) you get the feeling that it probably sounded like science fiction back then too...

ADDENDUM!!!!! BLACK OAK ARE ON TOUR NOW !-WITH THEIR ORIGINAL LINE-UP (well i'm not sure about the drummer---but then,Tommy Aldridge wasnt their first drummer anyhow...)
And , I guarantee you that they are WELL worth seeing!

(even the "hard to thrill" Dan Clark -who ,by the way , won't give me Mike Watts' E-mail address, was blown away!- --My best guess was " Mwatt@ upfromPedro.com..............but no Cigar....)