Raj
My Best Friend
Big Rock Records CD001



by William Michael Smith

Roger Len Smith's My Best Friend is one of those albums that refuses to be penned in by genre or style. Smith, who works with some of L.A.'s best songwriters as a bassist and guitarist, has recorded an album that can generally be classified as roots rock, but such a term sets a limitation that fails to describe the width and scope of this fine record, which contains a spectrum of musical sounds from quiet alt-country ballads to loud, hardcore funk.

Smith, who is best known as the bassist in Shawn Amos's critically acclaimed band Uncle Tom, plays bass and an assortment of guitars and surrounds himself with some of the West Coast's finest instrumental talent on My Best Friend. Collaborators include keyboardist Rami Jafee and guitarist Ben Peeler of Wallflowers, drummer Victor Bisetti of Los Lobos, guitarist Patrick Milligan of Uncle Tom, drummer Joey Peters of Grant Lee Buffalo, guitarist Ann Klein and vocalist Shannon McNally. The product of all this assembled talent is a subtle, smooth, spirit-lifting rock album that runs the gamut from quiet and thoughtful pieces to full-force, in-your-face blasters.

Like his cohort Shawn Amos, who duets with Smith on "(I Got So) Deep With You" and cowrote "Now You're The Enemy," Smith's album, while it may not qualify as a "concept album," works from a central theme and has an overall unity rather than simply seeming like a random collection of songs. That theme, according to Smith, is "the thrills and ills of love." With relationships at the core of most of the tracks, titles include the previously mentioned songs as well as "Everyone Needs A Good Back Rub Now and Then," "Shipwrecked," "Days In Darkness," "Blue About You," and a snide backhanded swipe at the music business called "What She Really Wants To Do Is Ride Horses." The titles serve as quite accurate indicators of the status of the relationships under examination.

Smith, who as an adjunct to his musical career has written free-lance pieces for "Rolling Stone" and other pop music publications, opens the album with a track dedicated to heroes. "Up in the Heavens Today" tells the story of a guy who gets to go to heaven for a single day, so he takes the opportunity to revisit his heroes. Smith notes that the song "is about hanging out with one's heroes up in heaven for a day and then getting out of there and back to earth before they keep you there! The lyrics refer to people such as John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Gandhi, MLK, Marvin Gaye and others and certainly could be interpreted in a variety of ways or with other people in mind."

Musically Smith has done a fantastic job of using available studio effects to create an ethereal feel on the track. Jaffee's keyboard work gives the impression of floating through cloudbanks.

Co-written by Smith and Shawn Amos, "Now You're the Enemy" is a quiet, radio-friendly roots rocker with a Wallflowers vibe. The track has a lazy groove that teases the head and the heart.

It's been three weeks and nearly seven days
Since you came down to get in my way
Went from being my best friend to the enemy
Her body knows that a heart takes time
In goin' to "yours" from "me" and "mine"
Went from being my best friend to the enemy

Smith's music explodes on "Sometimes It's Always A Struggle." Although Smith plays the guitars and bass on this track and is assisted only by Peters on drums and Peeler on guitar, this track has a big, complex rock sound that is definitely representative of the LA scene.

The alternation between searing funk, roots rockers and quieter, heartfelt ballads not only shows Smith's musical maturity and talent, it also makes for a very listenable album that easily avoids the indictment of "they all sound the same." "Taste Your Tears" is simply a great love song.

I know what you're goin' through or perhaps I can only guess
But I want to be there for you, help you do your best
To lift your soul and to hold you dear
And baby, I want to taste your tears

"(I Got So) Deep With You" sees Smith working in a large band mode and singing with Shawn Amos in a soul or funk-rock Sly and the Family Stone vein. Guitarists Ann Klein and Patrick Milligan get to play with their wah pedals and effects processors on this jammy track that finds them following The Temptations guitar stylings on classic tracks like "Ball of Confusion" while Jaffee fills the gaps with some funk-laden keys. Amos's overdubbed vocal track is all MoTown.

With Smith playing some jaunty harmonica over a bed of riendly, simple rootsy rock, "Days In the Darkness" has a reassuring, spiritually uplifting feel. It smoothly builds its rocky rhythm structure to a crashing final crescendo.

"Blue About You" is another me-to-you love song that Smith excels at. This is entirely a studio production with Smith playing all the guitars, bass and organ assisted only by Andrew Kamman on drums. Smith has layered his own two- and three-part harmony vocals and they are exceptional. He distills the perfect music for what this moody ballad requires.

Now this psycho relationship is killin' me
Yeah, but I want more and you want me
You've given me the slip, is it so hard
Is it so hard bein' adored?

With Peeler playing delicate dobro and lap steel figures, "Shipwrecked" has a John Lennon anguish-of-love touch. Milligan and Smith crank it up and thump it out on the mellow rocker "Your Best Ally." The track brings to mind the sensitive yet rocking work that typifies one of the many styles of Alejandro Escovedo. If there is a universal message song on My Best Friend, "Your Best Ally," with its appeals toward friendship, trust and brotherhood, is that song. Like Escovedo so often does, Smith gets well beneath the surface lyrically in probing the complexities of humankind and the conundrums of daily existence and our relationships with each other.

It's a hard world to trust
It can make your gold turn to dust
And you'd better watch your back
They're just waitin' for you to fall of your track
Howdo yo do, why don't you see me
Or what I'm tryin' to say?
If you would just look me in the eye
It would be so clear to you
That I could be your best ally

Anyone who has followed the work of Smith and Amos and Milligan and Los Lobos and the other musicians on this album knows that they have never been involved in projects that lack sincerity, intergrity, higher purpose, or deep meaning. Smith takes a left-handed swipe at the cynical nature of the music business in "What She Really Wants To Do Is Ride Horses."

She was a record company publicist
Workin' like a dog in the Valley
Tryin' to push records she didn't even like
Much less care about
She was paid to go to shows
And act like it was all cool
That's what the music biz people do

The young lady throws it all out the window along with her cell phone ("I think I heard it hit the ground") and leaves L.A. for a quieter, more meaningful life where she does what she really wants to do in life.

I don't think she misses it for one moment, no
She loves to feel the wind blow
She doesn't even know
Where her Porsche is
'Cause what she really wants to do
Is ride horses

Smith closes the set with "Upside Down." With its slow, ponderous rhythm and ethereal, otherworldly background colorations by Jaffee and Peeler, the track makes a perfect bookend to the opening track. The level of professionalism is evident in the amount of feeling the four musicians can evoke from such a simple and direct tune.

Roger Len Smith's (or Raj as he has styled himself on this release) music is honest and seems to have been devised and played completely without commercial considerations or meddling corporate sculpting. My Best Friend is Everyman's rock music. It's rocking, but it's also gentle and has a loftiness about it even though it doesn't pretend to save the world or to enunciate The Answer. Rather it goes quietly and effectively about the business of spreading a good feeling, quite a substantial and worthwhile feat in this era of profane, vulgar, decadent, cynically calculated corporate musical milk toast.

* Having trouble making friends or keeping them? Well, Roger Len Smith, nice guy extraordinaire, hail fellow well met, is there for you at www.rogerlensmith.com




Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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