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| Visionary Rock |
| band: Adam Ezra Group |
| Album: View From The Root |
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"Where there is no vision, the people perish."
~ Proverbs 29:18
"The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision."
~ Helen Keller
"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
~ Carl Jung
I met Adam Ezra as a barefoot boy with a guitar at Genghis Cohen of all things. His demeanor was haphazard and just plain having fun. I don't know if that barefoot thing is a metaphor. Fars I know he chucked his shoes. Memory plays tricks, but this much stuck with me: His songs were wicked smart, the guitar was oh so tasty, and I promptly forked over the cash for a couple of CDs. This guy had the touch of the poet and music to keep me guessing. Didn't even come to see him play, just arrived early.
I wrote about the Adam Ezra Group ("AEG") album "Crawl" some months later. Yikes but that band can play! He gets described in critic's code for sculpted pop compared to Dave Matthews, which is a writer's lazy way of saying his music breaks the mold and kicks ass in clean, crisp, smart, heart felt, pop you can dance to. I think he's more of a carnival barker for the truth armed with rhythms all his own chocked full of songs that describe the world of all things Ezra like a hyper lyric poet dancing through some deeper vision like U2, Tim Buckley and Bruce Cockburn dipped in Manfred Mann, John Sebastian, Wilco and Supertramp. That's my deliberately confusing comparison, and I'm sticking to it! Come on, that's got to be strange enough to force you to the website to hear this band. All comparisons are mostly lies.
Now, AEG has done great stuff heretofore, but you just know there's a sparkling gem coming out to blow away all doubt. I believe they've gone and done it! View from the Root has the sound, vision, and sparkle to break this band home to your very own living room. I don't know what they did different, but it's better, cleaner, and hasn't lost the spirit. For my money, this album has the invention and determined swagger of a classic pop monster worthy of excessive airplay, coliseum tours, dancing fanatic fan support. How long has it been since you danced from ear to ear? Give this barefoot boy a chance. Give up that delicious boredom you've been cultivating. Get that sparkle back in your jaundiced eye, turn off the damn TV and dance to the View from the Root.
THE SONGS
1. VISION is the mission statement of a band about to break on through to the other side. Adam's voice is husky over a drone like dawn of a new idea: "And I will learn that I can trust my vision 'til the end of time." Damn right! "Pick me up, break me in, get me through the bad times." That's my new theme for what a song is meant to do. If an album doesn't have the power to get somebody through a bad month, it's not worth a damn. "I'd be a harbinger of joy and passion, a panacea stretched out through the mind, painted with a brush on fire." An artist according to Antonin Artaud should be a man on fire signaling through the flames. Adam has the asbestos tucked against his soul singing like a house a fire. Yep, it's time again to kick in the doors of perception and see the world clear again. All you have to lose is boredom, fear and cynical denial. Come on, campers, let's have a little fun.
2. HOME AGAIN SOON takes a dip in the deep, slow well of the gospel of the "soul of the taste of sound." Comes a time an artist finds his voice, and beckons to the crowd to see what makes it all worthwhile. "When I'm lost in the darkness / When I'm cut at the knees... / Take a rest for a while... / Diamonds and fables all around / I'm taken over now / By the soul of the taste of a sound." I'm down for the vision of the sound that will let me sing along and see the sign. "There's a sign on the highway / Says I'll be home again soon." Adam might just "bring your heart home for a while." The music here is a crisp, warm, sharp, shock to blow away the blues. You don't need no money to join this church. Just open up. Come on home.
3. ANOTHER SUNSHINE feels the darkness and sees another sunshine. "Live to shine. Shine like sun." Time to break through the clouds, Sing a little sunshine. Sing along. "I want to fight hard against depression. I want to repress the urge to fall. I want to walk softly with discretion. I want to discretely kick the walls. And though if our souls are like the ocean shining back colors from the sun, maybe the sun will shine these answer, when these answers never come." Adam Ezra Band's vision is complex enough to fit the time. "It's another day and another sunshine." It's another day. Try this one once more with feeling.
4. BASEMENT SONG was written from a basement where Adam lives. I'm writing from Billy's Bunker in a basement in Cincinnati. The world is in a basement, truth be told, hiding from the consequences of neglect and short sighted profit taking nonsense. Adam sings we'll be "searching out new planets after f@king up our own." There a sense of outrage in this apocalyptic fantasy. Basements keep you cool when the sun burns down, or the rain falls hard again to wash us all away. This is a song Bruce Cockburn might have co-written with Phil Ochs if they took a notion. It's fast talking hope on the run. This is fast talking news that fit to sing, taking out the verbal shotgun to a world gone wrong to find the light at the top of the stairs. Oh yeah, it rocks. The guitar bangs out the darkness leaving a glimmer of light.
5. FLYIN is a love song, of course. "Rock in the cradle of the stars tonight." There's a transcendental moment in every act of love, if you do it right. Tomorrow we'll wake up and go to work, but tonight is eternity among the stars That's eternity in a grain of sand. Damned if the song isn't weightless in it's way. The percussion, backing vocals and Breakfast in America keyboards reach escape velocity in record time. Timeless. Flying.
6. HALF A HERO takes the hero's path far enough to quake at the pressure that "will take me down." Half a hero? No matter. Try again. Try harder. Fail better. Fact is, a hero is just the man at the wrong time unable to run. The desire to change the world, right a few wrongs, and fight a little crime can reduce a hero to humility. The driving beat this song rides is courage enough to try again, I imagine. Best to know your limitations. Then exceed them. And stuff like that."Unhappy the land that needs heroes." ~ Bertold Brecht
7. KATIE walks away and looks away. Adam waits patiently singing this song. "If you are in town and the weather is cold, you can stay in my bed. I don't mind. I don't mind." Come on Katie! "Turn your eyes around." Adam watches your face like TV in his mind. Is there a more potent image time being what they are. Sweet song.
8. HAVE WE MET asks the age old questions, "Have we met? Can you taste my poison mind?" Don't try this line. "Do you carry my soul like a thing you control?" Okay, that's quite an off-putting question. "What's your name?" Okay, Adam needs to work on the ice breakers. Obviously, there is something more at stake. There are those moments when a chance meeting seems to hit a chord. Thoughts run rampant. Memory is a distorted mirror to the soul.
9. YOU PAINT ME longs to paint the world a little differently. ""We all have fantasies of living life in peace. We paint, we paint in colors bright." To paint "in shades so bright our leaders need to change their attitude" is the goal. We paint ourselves. "Dancing in the fire of my changing point of view, you paint me and I'll paint you." This is an interesting twist on the search for identity. "You paint me and I'll paint you." B.K.S. Iyengar, yoga master, puts it differently: "The ego shape is democratic." The picture you paint of me is part of me. Be careful who you listen to, and cautious in your description. All that paint sticks like glue.
10. SOUL'S FOR is a blues based confidence stomp. "My soul's for everyone who wants it. That's the way I like it." This is a groove to change the world one mind at a time. "I can change the world: (repeat time and time again). What's the solution for world peace and a better world? You're soaking in it right now. "My soul's for soaking in time." Try not to sing along. Double dare ya'.
11. NAIVE LITTLE ME is the love song of the one that got away and "left me here on my own." She's turned others into stone, but Adam seems human enough. "The indifference I heard in your tone" is enough to give the appropriate signal. Most men move on, song writers get to relive the good times well out of reach. This won't be his last love song. Ladies take a number!
12. KILL LIKE THIS tells the story of the tour after hours and looking for to play. "It's a game that's all, and we came to play." How's it work? "Stand tall tell all you can you can always walk away." Seen that. There's a hunter gatherer quality to the after hours club seen can be a meat grinder. It's got "well dressed cats on the take." There are some dangerous times for a man who "left town for a life on the road." I think Adam has an acute eye for the scene, but this may be more of a cautionary tale than a plan of action. Music is played in bars. You get to see your fill. Don't feed the animals! The Hammond spins that Leslie down to bluesy, boosey road hard hard road.
13. RE VISION is the vision slight return. This time out a little like Bruce Hornsby without words. This is traveling music with a dash of hope. See ya' next year! The CD is available in the lobby. You were a great audience. We love you! Hope we passed the audition.
(Don't be surprised if this music finds it's way to your TV. Sounds like somebody's theme.)
THE ADAM EZRA GROUP
Josh Gold ~ keys
Robin Vincent Soper ~ bass
Jeff "Turtle" Goulart ~ percussion
Adam Ezra Olshansky ~ vocals, guitar, harmonica
Tom Arey ~ Drums
(The lyrics are on their way. Adam Ezra Band posts them on their website, which his now in progress. If I get the go ahead, I'll post them here.)
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