Dan Hicks - 1997 - Return To Hicksville (Best Of)

 

Dan Hicks - 1997 - Return To Hicksville (Best Of) @320

Just where to place the free-range music of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks -- are they country? jazz? rock? Western swing? comedy? -- has always been a nettlesome problem, confounding the public and hyphen-crazy critics alike. For Hicks and his all-acoustic band were certainly all of those genres and then some, a marvelous amalgam of American music with a large dollop of humor thrown in for good measure. Subtitled "The Blue Thumb Years, 1971-1973," this 16-track collection touches on all of the group's major stylistic bases and more, making this a greatest-hits album on a group who never really had a hit. Pulling half a dozen tracks from their debut album, Where's the Money? (the title track, "I Feel Like Singing," "Reelin' Down," "Dig a Little Deeper," "News from Up the Street," and "The Buzzard Was Their Friend"), seven tracks from Striking It Rich ("Canned Music," "Walkin' One and Only," "The Innocent Bystander," "I Scare Myself" [which later became a hit for techno rocker Thomas Dolby], the wry humor of "Presently in the Past," "You Gotta Believe," Maryann Price's sendup of "I'm an Old Cowhand [From the Rio Grande]"), and three from their swan-song album, Last Train to Hicksville the Home of Happy Feet ("My Old Timey Baby," "Sweetheart [Waitress in a Donut Shop]," and "Long Comma Viper"), this hits almost all the high spots with not a lick of filler anywhere to be found. The transfers to disc sound vivid and dimensional, and the liners by compilation producer and music historian Todd Everett are fun, provocative, and spot-on, getting into just what made this group so special. As all three of their albums are available on compact disc, this compilation makes an excellent first-purchase introduction to this band. (AllMusic)

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Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks 2000 - Beatin' the Heat

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks 2000 - Beatin' the Heat (Flac)

Most students of rock history will know Hicks for two reasons. One: he was drummer with the original West Coast psychedelic band, the Charlatans (no, not the dull Manchester miseries) and two: he wrote Thomas Dolby's hit ''I Scare Myself'' (of which there is a splendid new version on this album). What they may not tell you is that Hicks and his band have been responsible for some of the coolest, jazziest, swingingest,most unclassifiable music of all time.

Hicks' songs are always bursting with good humour and an irrepressible sense of fun. You'd expect nothing less from the man who once penned ''How Can I Miss You (If You Won't Go Away)?''. Sure enough, Beatin' The Heat boasts a wealth of amusing little toe-tappers such as ''Hell, Id Go!'' (a plea to be abducted by aliens), ''He Don't Care'' (an ode to a stoner with ''a different coloured headband for every day of the week'') and the closer, ''I've Got A Capo On My Brain''.

That's not to say that Hicks is a slouch in the music department either. Aided by celebrity pals such as Rickie Lee Jones (''I Scare Myself''), Tom Waits(whose composition "The Piano Has Been Drinking" is also included), Elvis Costello, Brian Setzer (on fine six-string form) and even Bette Midler (wonderfully restrained, for a change, on ''Strike It While It's Hot!''); this is good-time music made better by a band who swing every which way. Hicks' trademark backing vocal arrangements (courtesy Of Jessica Harper and Karla De Vito) add to the frolics and the production even contains a couple of samples and loops for a mild updating of the formula. In other words it was worth the wait. Welcome back Dan... (BBC)

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Dan Hicks - 2010 - Crazy For Christmas

Dan Hicks - 2010 - Crazy For Christmas @320

 

Ever since his time with San Francisco’s Charlatans in the late 1960s (he was the drummer in the short-lived but influential group), Dan Hicks has been turning out his fascinatingly wry, hip, and jazzy version of country swing, and while he’s had no mainstream commercial success (i.e. no big radio hits), he has a loyal and devoted following and now, some 40-plus years later, he’s released a delightful holiday album that perfectly spotlights his musical strengths. Crazy for Christmas has an easy, unhurried and charming pace to it, with Hicks’ assured, relaxed vocals giving this set of skewed originals, parodies, and traditional pieces (albeit run through the Hot Licks wringer) a joyously irreverent charm. The opener, “Christmas Mornin’,” sets the stage perfectly, detailing life at the North Pole with Christmas Eve approaching, a place where Rudolph the Reindeer is “finishing up a beer” and Santa has to break up the elves’ dice game to get things rolling in the right direction. Then there’s “I’ve Got Christmas by the Tail,” which sums up how everyone really wants to feel during one of the most socially demanding and busy times of the year. The traditional holiday fare that Hicks tackles here, like his swinging vocal version of “Carol of the Bells,” is wonderfully re-imagined, making this set both a fun and distinctive Christmas album, but also a warm reminder of just how consistent, steady, and poignantly funny Hicks can be; any season of the year. (AllMUsic)

 ANDY