Search - Ray Stevens :: Lend Me Your Ears

Friends, romans, countrymen...

Jerry McDaniel | 09/20/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"in case anyone's lacking in Shakespeare history, Julius Ceasar uttered "Lend Me Your Ears"...although i'm not too sure he was talking to a rabbit, as shown on the cover of this wildly funny CD.1990 was the year that this album hit the store racks and it was his first for Curb Records, his on again/off again record label throughout that decade. The hint of Ray's biggest success that decade started off rather innocently with two music videos: one for "Sittin' Up With the Dead" and the other for "Help Me Make It Through The Night", his first two singles off his CD. A strange thing happened on the way to the concert you might say...more and more people were responding to his two music videos than the actual CD they were on. This album contains a slew of wacky songs that defy description. The humor is silly and nutty with no shred of reality to speak of...but who said everyone has to have meaningful humor?One song, "This Ain't Exactly What I Had In Mind", is a hilarious telling of the explorers Stanley and Livingston... and their mis-adventures in a jungle. It has all the elements of wackiness i look for in novelty songs."Cletus McHicks and his Band from the Sticks" is a rural version of Ray's funky and jazzy "Freddie Feelgood" from 1966... "Jack Daniels, You Lied to Me Again" is a song i'm surprised Ray would record given his resistance at recording honky-tonk and drinking songs. Shades of comedy dealing with the drinker elevate this from hard-core honky tonk of course but it's still a drinking song...another nutty piece of dementia is "Where Do My Socks Go?" in which Ray insists that his socks are being abducted while their in the dryer."