If I was stranded on that infamous desert island with a portable CD player and plenty of batteries, and I could only have one New Orleans CD, this would be my choice (if I were permitted two choices, I’d also plead for Professor Longhair’s New Orleans Piano CD), Desitively Bonnaroo is the best Dr. John album Mac Rebennack ever created and likewise, it’s the best Meters album in existence and the best Allen Toussaint album of all time.
Recorded in Gentilly in 1974, Desitively Bonnaroo is the ultimate manifestation of the Dr. John persona. I would even argue that after this release Mac Rebennack reverted to being Mac Rebennack and only continued to use the Dr. John name because record companies, booking agents and fans demanded it. I imagine that he was growing weary of the entire Dr. John shtick and the nightly costuming, as is evident in the horrifying photograph included in this reissue (Mac’s head wrapped in a white towel, a snake skin and a bandana, several hundred bay leaves and a pink ostrich feather stuck in his hair and the contents of his car’s “earl” pan dripping down his face). He appears to be ruminating over the fact that every evening for the rest of his life the public expects Mardi Gras on stage. He has decided that unless he heads in some new directions, he will suffer the Max Factor curse of KISS and Alice Cooper. So, before he ditches the hoodoo threads, he figures he’ll lay down the Last Testament: Desitively Bonnaroo is Dr. John’s Holy Bible, Holy Grail and Holy Smoke all puffed into a single package.
The album’s beauty lies in its simplicity. On some songs, all you hear is Zigaboo Modeliste’s snare drum, George Porter, Jr.’s bass and Mac Rebennack’s Mid-City mouthful of crushed clam shells, every once in a while punctuated by the whomp-chunka-chunka of Leo Nocentelli’s electric guitar. Five horn players are credited although they are mixed down with such ephemerality that they might as well be in another state. And Allen Toussaint (listed as producer/arranger) seems mainly on hand as the studio’s landlord. The best producers, perhaps, are the invisible ones.
“Mos’ Scocious” is the ultimate Dr. John song: an infectious Latin-esque piano vamp, Leo’s cockfight guitar scratches, the keening female vocalists, the drunken horns and most critically, Mac’s malapropisms. What does “mos’ scocious” or “audacious valacious” mean? If your brain doesn’t understand, your butt certainly will. “Mos’ scocious—l really wanna do you up so bad!”
“(Everybody Wanna Get Rich) Rite Away” is amusing, considering Mac’s workaholic nature, and Earl King’s “Let’s Make A Better World” is presented in its finest United Nations rendition, almost but not quite veering into the territory of that Coca-Cola commercial about teaching the world to sing.
If you desire philosophical insight into the True Nature of Mac Rebennack, listen to “Go Tell The People.” “Your way is dealing with the ladder,” Mac sings, “My way is getting down, down, down…your days are filled with money matters, my day is filled with sounds, sounds and mo’ sounds.” Case closed.
