Honeydogs – Island Of Misfits
As a kid, I was something of a 45-rpm junkie. Sure, I spent hours listening to, dissecting, and cutting my critical baby teeth on classic albums — seamless works of art from Pet Sounds to Abbey Road to Dark Side Of The Moon — but 45s were another world altogether. Creating a great album has never been as simple as finding the best songs; the real trick is finding songs that work together, a process that often requires artists to drop favorite tracks.
Those orphans — odd jams; embarrassing covers; demos; and songs too strange, quirky, or incongruous to find a home on a long-player — became the domain of 7-inch B-sides. So where does the homeless song go in the digital age? For the Honeydogs, those tracks have ended up on Island Of Misfits, an “odds and sods” follow-up to 2001’s Here’s Luck.
As the title suggests, the album is an uneven mix, ranging from four-track demos and living-room jam sessions to fully produced studio outtakes — a bold damning of consistency in the name of fun. The opening “Red Dye #41” (an alternate take of the Here’s Luck track “Red Dye #40”) is an unpolished, throwdown soundtrack for a bar brawl, crashing with fuzzed-out guitars and blistering leads. “Piece Of Cake” shamelessly cops a Nick Lowe hook, blends in Dylan’s rambling lyrical style, and oddly does justice to both. “Rosie Flores Came To Town” features some of the best acoustic picking this side of bluegrass.
It’s “Royal Jelly”, though, that proves itself king of the outtakes. A ’70s-style cock-rocker (complete with wah-wah guitar), the song touts songwriter Adam Levy’s favorite chemical stimulant for all-night rocking — the health-food-store staple royal jelly. Substitute cocaine, and it’s vintage 1975.