Tijuana Strip Club - Sparklers and Bottlerockets
By Tim Byrnes

Tijuana Strip Club - Sparklers and Bottlerockets
Label: Foggydog Records
Rating:

First off I have to report that this project, basically a studio creation by Gary Myrick (late of the Mirrors) and one Randy Cordero, a leading club figure in San Francisco due to his fronting the Neil Diamond tribute band Super Diamond under the name Surreal Neil, doesn't have an original bone in it's body. Now, if you are a fan of this band (which I can understand, it's just not my cup of meat) or a personal friend of Mr Cordero, please don't post comments questioning my sexuality (which is none of yr business) or calling me stupid or uninformed or just plain wrong. It's just an opinion I'm expressing here. I find it very doubtful that my little review is going to hurt this �band's' chances for success, but the fact remains that this CD doesn't have an original bone in it's body.

To wit: Every cut features a cut and paste mélange of alt.country. Folk and electronica (and by electronica I mean scattered, diffident bleeps and whooshes, hard stereo panning that simply bleep and whoosh and pan hard then just sit there, almost like they're saying �See how modern I am! I have bleeps and whooshes and hard pans!), every pseudo-cryptic lyric is exhaled in a world-weary Leonard Cohen impersonation, a rung up the stylistic ladder from Mr Diamond, perhaps, but an imitation none the less and every minute of this CD comes across as some kind of High School Science Fair Project determined to find out what �Songs From a Room' would sound like were it produced by David Lynch. Which, come to think of it, probably wouldn't be a bad CD, but to my mind, this ain't it.

Cordero, with his poet-in-a-rumpled-suit vocal persona, drips heavy irony vibes across track after track (15 in all, 14 too many) of cheesy 2 chord ersatz lounge vamps, calling to mind Tiki Room hipsters all quoting Kerouac and sipping on Zinfandel while bemoaning the cause of the poor. FALSE, FALSE, POSER FALSE! This record is all (appropriated) style with absolutely no substance whatsoever, unless pristine production in the service of bad Leonard Cohen impersonations constitutes substance. I expect that this CD will draw comparisons to people like Mark Eitzel, Tom Waits, maybe even Johnny Cash now that he's hip again (not that he wasn't always hip. I don't mind p***ing off TSC fans, but Johnny Cash fans, that's a different story!) as well as Leonard Cohen, but to my hearing, having a deep voice don't make you Lou Reed, if you know what I mean.

Sparklers and Bottlerockets is little more than half a serving of Leonard Cohen Lite, dressed up in darkness from selections from the Pastiche Line at the Death Rock section of your local Gap. Which, I expect, means that this CD will sell skidillions of copies to High School kids who write their bad poetry in red ink on black pages in journals they leave out for Mom and Dad to read and when Mom and Dad do, complain about having no privacy. A CD that shoots for sadly majestic and attains only sad

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