The Tiger

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The next time you are tired of what is playing in your CD player, and you think, "Hey. I am really in the mood to hear an old man singing about all he wants is food and women in more vulgar terms. Where can I hear a masterpiece such as this?" Well friend, Dan Reeder is the answer.

If you have never had these thoughts and you find yourself at a locale where Dan Reeder's CD is for purchase, do not let the cover art fool you. With its bright colors and pop art-like drawings completed by the musician, it whispers to the part of your brain that is in charge of good taste; "Psst. Buy me. I am contemporary, and I am artsy, and you will like me, I promise." So your naïve, trusting good taste makes you purchase it, and you open the case. That is when the warning lights start flashing.

Behind the CD, there are no bright colors or pop art -- in its place there is an elderly gentleman with an acoustic guitar. The other lobes in your brain recognize panic, and your good tasteness to console you by saying: "It's OK. Think of Paul Simon! Think of Bob Dylan! This elderly gentleman could be the greatest undiscovered talent to ever hold a guitar!" So your good taste lets you give the CD a shot ... and is brutally assaulted.

It's not his style that's the problem. He has potential and he apparently has some sort of notoriety in California as a painter, and he even made his own instruments. So he apparently just wants to sadistically torture your good taste. The first song on the album, "Three Chords," begins proclaiming that he "sounds just like Van Morrisson in his better days, and if you could stop me, you would have already, because jealousy is obviously killing you." The problems with this statement go without saying; this statement repeated twice composes the entire song.

After this pretentious and undeserved self-praise, he moves on to "No One Will Laugh," where he states no less than eight times, that, "You can make a mess of the simplest song and no one will laugh at you." He only interrupts saying this to say that "if they do, they can blow me too, because no one should laugh at you." Again, the problems go without saying. The next track, "The Tulips on the Table," laments about something boring that isn't worth noting because it is really just building up to the shock of the fourth song, "Food and Pussy."

Songs five, six, and seven: more repetitive lamenting -- it's not worth noting the titles, because your good taste has learned to interpret this excessive whining solely as a warning for some immature display of the utter lack of talent that is to come. This brings us to song eight: "My Little Bitty Pee Pee." Which simply repeats, ad nauseum, "my little bitty pee pee." It's perfectly OK to be immature past the age of 40, but please, no "pee pee" jokes. A songwriter has to try especially hard to write a song so mind-numbingly awful.

During tracks 9-16, it seems that it was his creative muse's bedtime because there isn't anything particularly immature or vulgar. There is nothing noteworthy either. In track 17, "The Brain Is Not the Mind," he apparently feels guilty for such a barrage of garbage, and attempts to redeem himself with vague, deep philosophy. So he repeats, "The brain is not the mind and the mind is not the brain" a few unnecessary times. His attempt goes unnoticed. However, on track 18, "Clean Elvis," he actually has a chance of being a real songwriter. His harmonies are clean, his voice is clear and he even manages to sing, "When I say Vietnam it sounds just like Coca-Cola," with a little bit of conviction, showing nostalgia for the past and disenchantment with the present generation -- things a man his age should be singing about, not his itty bitty pee pee. Then he throws in a couple of "I will always love yous" and an "I can't help falling in love with you" or two, and all conviction is lost. Was he trying to make it a power ballad? That simply does not work. It seems as though he is aware that his CD is terrible, and he wants to apologize with one decent song. So, he rolls love and war and anything meaningful he can think of into a chorus, and everything is supposed to be OK. Well, it isn't.

Dan Reeder is the epitome of disappointment. Someone that clearly has the artistic abilities to make his own instruments and establish notoriety as a painter should be able to produce something other than this catastrophe. It's like someone gave him a million dollars, and instead of doing something halfway worthwhile with it, he built a papier-mâché castle out of it. He is not Bob Dylan, he is not Paul Simon, he is simply a bane to your musical good sense. Avoid this CD, regardless of how promising the cover may appear.

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