Big Mistakes

[Stephen Swann]

Ted O. Jackson writes:
>
> > I won't debate the merits of Club Ninja being one big mistake as it ranks
> > DEAD LAST on my BOC list.  However, I've always said that it's not a bad
> > album, it's just a bad BOC album.  You see, my standards are so much higher
> > for BOC than for other groups...
> >
> You said that correctly.  'Ninja would be a great album from any
> other band.

Really?  I have racks of albums by other bands that look stellar by
comparison.  Just because BOC was a great band for most of its history
doesn't make their fingernail clippings into high art.  Club Ninja has
one truly great song on it - "Perfect Water" - which was still spoiled
by some really doltish lyrics ("Do you know Jacques Cousteau?  Well I
heard on the radio...").  More worthy of Weird Al Yankovik than a
Pearlman-produced BOC album.  Aside from that, you have "Dancing in
the Ruins", which I find uncomfortably descriptive of the state of
their career, and "White Flags", which is about as BOCish as a cover
of "Rock Me Amadeus".

All the rest of the songs sound silly and overwrought.  Too many
sqeaky synths, a real dearth of intelligent lyrics, and a horrible,
"tv jingle" quality to the songwriting are the most obvious, but not
the only, offenses.  I not only don't like "as a BOC album", I just
don't like it at all.

Steve