| Uncle Monk - Uncle Monk |
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| Written by Gregory Nicoll | |
 Uncle MonkUncle Monk [Airday] Get It at Amazon  Although famed as the founding drummer of The Ramones, multi-talented Tommy Ramone (Erdelyi) played guitars back in the '60s and has served as a producer on some remarkable albums, including The Replacements' Tim. His latest venture branches even further from the overdriven sound of his namesake band. An obvious labor of love, Uncle Monk is a bluegrass album he recorded as a duo with Claudia Tienan (ex-Simplistics). From the jovial opener "Round the Bend" to the disc-closing "Wishing at the Moon," most of these 14 tunes consist of gently loping Appalachian-style music, propelled by Tienan's mid-tempo acoustic guitar and accented by Erdelyi's chirping banjo. Although Tienan takes the lead vocal on the Marianne Faithfull-ish "Emotional Needs," the CD is dominated by Erdelyi's own wizened, elfin pipes, which joyously intone lines such as, "Brand new day's rising/ Trouble's on the run," in the accurately titled "Happy Tune." Standout tracks include "Airday," an easygoing instrumental to which Erdelyi adds mandolin and fiddle, but the jewel in the crown is "Mr. Endicott," an understated tale of an employee's quiet revenge on his tyrannical boss. Back in the '70s, as a Ramone, Erdelyi had confected brilliant pop/punk songs about the smallest of things, from the "Hey! Ho!" exuberance of heading for a concert to a boy's simple desire to become a boy friend. That same the-devil's-in-the-details sensibility lives on in the minutiae of his vengeance against the despised Endicott: "I'm talkin' on the phone with my friends/ My lunch break, it never ends/ I'm takin' all the pencils and pens." |
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