If you were to judge this album just by its cover, you might imagine the music inside to be weird and awesome. At least that's what I imagined. If you're like me, you'd be absolutely desitively right. Dr. John's
Babylon is something else.
Dr. John's
Babylon rocks without rocking, swings without swinging, smokes without smoking. Dr. John can't decide whether he should wail from the left channel or the right. Maybe this time he'll hit you right between the eyes. Dr. John is black and he's white, he comes in every color, he's a student, a teacher, and he's dying from stone hunger.
Dr. John thanks the kids who sang so sincerely and innocently on "The Patriotic Flag-Waver." Andrea, Beryl, Billy, Bunny, Butch, Dawn, Marzique, Terri, Troy, and Troy Lynn. They did such a good job. I wonder where they are now. Dr. John's
Babylon was released in 1969 and is jazz, is noise, is a restless, relentless, psychedelic freak-out of voodoo funk and soul. A choir of female voices spooking their way through the smoke and Dr. John sounding a little too much like Van Morrison (or is it the other way around?) and Hammond B3 organ and congas, too.
Babylon!
