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Hayseed DixieLet There Be Rockgrass Cooking Vinyl/Shock Hayseed Dixie (sound it out...) first appeared on the radar some years back with a bluegrass version of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, which to their credit preceded the current craze for inappropriate cover versions. Over a track or two this is entirely smirk-worthy, but over a full record it's akin to being hit over the head by one of those silly foam baseball bats every time you take a breath. The biggest problem with this collection is that there's no point to it. Comprised of live tracks, originals and a traditional song amongst the covers, 'Let There Be Rockgrass' has no sense of flow - or purpose. Hayseed Dixie plough through their versions of standards from the likes of Queen (Fat Bottomed Girls), The Darkness (I Believe In A Thing Called Love) and Bad Company (an excruciating Feel Like Making Love). Call me a stickler, but I thought the whole point of Ace Of Spades was the fact that it's such a relentlessly bludgeoning song. To strip it of that quality is to strip it of its entire reason for being. To then add fiddle and banjo is simply cruel. It all begs the question: what exactly are Hayseed Dixie trying to achieve? Predictable bluegrass versions of unexpected songs are hardly in demand. This in turn leads to the next conundrum: who is this release aimed at? There's a sizable market for this out there, there's no doubt of that. But - and here's the crux - the best way to hit that market is via commercial radio; the programmers of which in all likelihood don't even know 'Let There Be Rockgrass' exists. And they're very much unlikely to pick up street press featuring bands they've probably never heard of on the cover. While a wonderful example of the pitfalls of music marketing in the modern age - something record companies face every day - this is an awful record. There's a very clever bluegrass medley called Rodeohead out there: 17 Radiohead tracks in four and a half minutes. Google it and feel smug that you didn't waste an hour on the latest Hayseed Dixie album.  |
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