I need to get something off my chest. I was not a Funky Green Dogs fan. As with a lot of the Twisted artists, I found them too derivative. Towards the end, they got too churchy, which was also a turn off. Fortunately, in their Murk (Tommy Boy) incarnation, Oscar Gaetan and Ralph Falcon, are all about the underground sound and the things that happen when the lights are dimmed. Undeniably whetting our appetites for her forthcoming full-length album, Kristine W gives as good as she gets on “Some Lovin’,” sounding like she is in fighting form to reclaim the dance floor. The blasé vocals of Greg “Stryke” Chin featured on both “Time” and “Let Me Go,” give the songs an early disco meets electroclash vibe that is intriguing. Gaetan and Falcon’s old Funky Green Dogs vocalist Tamara Wallace provides the vocals for “Believe” and “True,” which avoid the old gospel clutter and go right for the jugular. Vocalist Jennifer Carbonell sounds like she is ready to take her place next to Kristine W and Tamara W with her “soul torn and tattered” on “Doesn’t Really Matter.” Longtime purveyors of the exotic beat, Gaetan and Falcon perpetuate their legend on “Baba-Sulei” and “Afro-Cuba.”
Unfold the CD booklet for the Bond Remixed (Decca) disc and you will see the four scantily clad she-wolves of Bond pressed up against each other, touching suggestively (manicured fingertip to fingertip or with one thumb slipped into the waistband of another’s laced up leopard print pants) in a band photo. Why didn’t the Beatles ever think of taking a band photo like this one? Probably because the Beatles would never let a remixer get their grubby hands on any of their songs. Suffice to say that the Bond girls have no qualms about taking a Vivaldi piece, for instance, and pumping it full of electronic beats, so what harm could a remixer do? Don’t ask. Not surprisingly, the least annoying track is the Hectic mix of “Bond On Bond,” which adapts the James Bond theme into a throbbing dance soundtrack. The bottom line is that I can’t help but think about the Hooked On Classics albums of the past every time I listen to this album and that makes it hard for me to take Bond, virtuoso musicians or not, seriously.