Oh, Down In The Big Easy, Oh-The Best Of The Neville Brothers (2004) 

CD Review

By Zack James

The Best Of The Neville Brothers: The Millennium Collection, the Neville Brothers, 2004 

I think it was Seth Garth, the old time film reviewer who was friends with my oldest brother Alex in our growing up Acre neighborhood section of North Adamsville although I didn’t know him growing up at all and only got to know him here, said that in the early 1980s in despair over where rock and roll was heading, or had been, he had a “outlaw country music minute” when guys like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Townes Van Zandt were breaking out of the George Jones mold and making some interesting music and more interesting lyrics beyond making love to their hot rod NSCAR car cars, four by four trucks, guns of whatever caliber and field of fire and whiskey-bonded or not. Whatever happened to old Hank Williams’ two-timing heart-breaking running around women or hey good looking company with a two dollar buck, maybe unchaining the poor bastard’s heart or some bitch who did him wrong winning again. Then Seth moved on or back to his real loves blues, you know Muddy Waters, the Wolf, some old stuff you can now only find in old line record stores or on Amazon, and rock and roll although he said not back to classic since a good look at the lyrics were suitable only for teenage angst and alienation. I had the same such moment with Cajun, Zydeco and the music of the Louisiana bayou and swamps among other places, places like Lake Charles and Lafayette to name a couple.           

In the late 1980s frankly I was in despair first over the way that for a minute anyway hip-hop music, let me just call it that for reference had taken a dramatic turn to some unapproachable, unapproachable to me anyway “gangsta” trend and the other big turn was in techno music which for other reasons did not appeal to me. (Those other reasons having to do with that brother Alex and a couple of older brothers in between us leaving me their leavings of rock and roll from the 1960s and more importantly the blues of which a stem of Cajun, the black part and no so much the French Acadian exile part passes through.)

The specific event which triggered all of this at a time of musical ellipse was actually a film Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin’s hot over the top The Big Easy about cops and corruption in, well the Big Easy. It was the soundtrack which included a couple of numbers by Aaron Neville and the Neville Brothers well-known although not to me New Orleans fixtures and a number of other Jolie Blon Cajun-Zydeco numbers which did the trick. New and fresh, new and a different sound reflecting that black-creole-Acadian experience of the big jumbo which is New Orlean’s musical culture.   

That Cajun-Zydeco minute as with Seth Garth’s outlaw country minute did not last long and I too reverted back to the blues and rock and roll that “spoke” to me in my youth which strangely now seems to be the fate over every music lover-the music of youth drives a lot of what subsequent music you are attracted to or stay with. Still around my way, around that Acre neighborhood mentioned earlier maybe something of that Cajun-Creole swamp and bayou connected us with them-the outcasts, the ones who didn’t get the golden goose in the golden age of the American experience. Needless to say the driving high-pitched voice of Aaron and the backup harmonies are righteous. So if you want to have your very own Cajun-Zydeco Big Easy moment this is your first stop.