The rockin' Earl of Bendigo

The feel of the gravel under my feet is like mini pieces of hot metal searing my skin as I walk towards the deck. But between the ever present flies and the lowing cattle I can't focus on the pain for long. I reach up to wipe the sweat from my brow and know without looking that the red dust has smeared across my skin. But up ahead I see my destination and with a sigh of relief I slouch back in the broken armchair and pick up my guitar. Beside me Johnny C. starts humming a tune and together we pass another Tennessee summer night.

Or at least that's how it feels listening to Warren Earl sing.

In fact, if you came across his music on the radio you'd swear it was Johnny Cash himself singing, not a young ex-Bendigonian rockabillist. Not that you'd find him on the radio, Warren's currently confined to a myspace page and few local gigs with his new Brisbane band Warren Earl and the Atomic Rockers. But his music, while providing nothing new isn't unpleasent to listen to. It's just a bit...dusty. Sure, Warren claims he's mixed in a bit of surfer, country and rockabilly to make a new an unique sound. But seriously, are those styles really all that different? It's all got the same basic formula:

One gravelly voiced singer + (a slightly out of tune acoustic guitar + optional snare drum) x lyrics that contain the word rocking and baby = any generic rockabilly/country/surfer/pop song out there.

Actually, scratch that. It's not so much the lack of originality that bugs me about Warren, it's the complete and utter lack of imagination with regards to the lyrics. I'm pretty sure they were written by a 9 year old, or at least someone with the vocabulary of a 9 year old. In one 2 minute song, imaginative titled Man She's a Rocker, rocking is mentioned 27 times!

My favourite line of the song is, ''I said man she's a rocker, yer man she's a rocker, I said man she's a rocker, she knows how to rock n roll". Complete genius there, Elvis must be spinning in his grave for not thinking it up himself. Out of the 14 songs available online, 6 contain some variation on the work rock in the title alone, the rest like Be Bop Boogie mention THAT word before the first minute is passed.

Not that I'm counting or anything...

But seriously Warren, I know you've got a brain in there somewhere! You've just gotta put down the Carl Perkin's vinyl, pick up a dictionary and start making music which doesn't sound like something from SpongeBob SquarePants (I'm not kidding, check out Rocket Ship Blues and tell me that's not from Bikini Bottoms).