It is a pure and simple fact: the views on Cacofonix, the bard from the Asterix comics, were somewhat mixed. He himself found his singing marvellous, all the others in the Celtic village, and later on in the rest of the world, thought he was gruesomely awful. They say history repeats itself. I’m afraid that Dave Randall Shorey A.K.A. Gashouse Dave belongs to the infamous club of voices that conjure up more resistance than music lovers and probably Dave himself would like to experience. I know colleagues who just snap off on his short winded tremolo. Personally I don’t mind, as it never gets as bad as Doctor Oakroot, have mercy on his voice. After Psyche Blues, which we reviewed on Bobtje Blues Pages, home of the blues, there was The Live Adventures Of G. Dave & The Hardtails and now this Blues Trip. Little has changed since the review. Blues Trip has been announced as a back to the roots record, calling up the atmosphere of the fifties loungy Hollywood bars, second rate writers with Underwood typewriters and Humphrey Bogart pictures. It’s an agreeable image. Dave’s impressive back catalogue as a sideman to a vast number of blues and rock bands, by the way not the least, allows him to discern a good blues song and a good blues sound. We think that the CD as a whole is more narrative than Psyche Blues, not unexpectedly for an ,,intellectual’’ writer as Mr. Shorey. It brings the lyrics to the fore and those range from the directness and storytelling of Blind Lemon Jefferson (opener See That My Grave Is Kept Clean), John Lee Hooker (Highway 13) and BB King (The Thrill Is Gone), all the way to his highbrow statements interlaced with slang words and crammed with namedropping and references to things that usually do not occur in blues or rock lyrics, like in Guitars, Guns And Gold, nevertheless a compelling tune. The frequent parlando (as in Man’s Man, wherein even Belgian super detective Hercule Poirot and his assistant Captain Hastings occur) makes it perhaps even harder to get into the phenomenon called Gashouse Dave, but the old time fans will probably not be disappointed by Dave’s funky ponderings on this properly titled Blues Trip.
