Clearwater Revival question: will the group be able to survive the catastrophe? And who will really care?
Bassist Stu Cook's three selections are bad enough to qualify as offensive. Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm. Cook, on the other hand, offers us his humorless tunes and painful voice as if they are able to stand on their own, self-sufficient as interesting music. Coasting on the name of the group, he is now able to force onto a sure-selling album music that wouldn't qualify him for a good local high school band. That a musician of Fogerty's stature is backing him up is depressing; that we are forced to listen to Cook instead of Fogerty, insulting.
Drummer Doug Clifford fares substantially better. He has been influenced by Fogerty himself, and at his best we can recognize something approaching Creedence's style. His "What Are You Gonna Do" is a listenable enough song, and one is left wondering how good it might have been if someone with a really good voice and a distinctive approach sang it–someone like Fogerty himself.
Usually, when a group is a mixture of talent and mediocrity–as Creedence has generally been recognized to be–the talent tries to elevate the mediocrity. And, happily, at their best, that has been Creedence's history. On Mardi Gras we find the process reversed and the artist brought down to the level of the hacks that surround him. Fogerty's four songs are regrettably almost completely marginal to the body of fine work he has created in the past.
"Sweet Hitch Hiker" is marred by the stiffness so characteristic of later Creedence, from Willy and the Poor Boys onward. The cover version of "Hello Mary Lou" is one of the silliest he has attempted; his try at copying James Burton's superb guitar ride on the Ricky Nelson original was a hopeless botch. As for his two new songs, "Looking for A Reason" is a nice, light bit of fluff and "Someday Never Comes" is the album's one reasonably satisfying song, a good tune marred by a boring, unimaginative arrangement.
The album's desired level of submediocrity extends not just to the songs and vocals but the arranging, performance and sound as well. The mix is part of the new democratic spirit; much of it sounds like it was done by a computer to insure that no one instrument would be louder than any
