Jim’s Big Ego

Titanic (Gad Fly)
by Ryk McIntyre

Recorded live at Club Passim, this fine, fat CD will, hopefully, solidify the career of Jim and his band, Boston’s best and brightest talent to come out of the folk scene. It generously offers 19 tracks, six of them with his band, all of them top-shelf. Jim is notable for stitching great melodies to twilight-zone lyrics with such songs such as “She’s Dead,” “Someday Cafe (the dance mix),” and the hilarious and controversial “At the Funeral,” which is kinda the letter we imagine writing after we’ve killed ourselves just to get back at that “certain someone.” Always a high-point in a Jim gig as long as you can tune out the horrified gasps and sobs in the audience around you. Other high points are “Cut Off Your Head,” in which Jim gives us a primer of the five natures of Buddha, so, y’know, we aren’t confused or anything. I know it would’ve been helpful to me back when I actually encountered the Buddha on the road. Come to find out, “killing him” was a metaphor. A metaphor. Thanks.

They create a groove that allows Jim to lyrically slip and slide in, out, and around folk conventions. Who knows, this could be the disc to finally push Peter, Paul & Mary into that open grave that’s been yawning behind them all these years.

My personal favorite is a long-time unrecorded cut “Meanies,” which heretofore you could only hear live. A more complete statement than “Mean People Suck,” it’s more of a “They suck and remind me why we don’t kill them?”