I kept thinking about "Great White Wonder" while listening to John Houlihan's self-titled, self-released effort. It sounds like a collection of demos at first blush, with plenty of sloppy, off-the-cuff playing and almost-but-not-quite tone deaf vocals. When Houlihan himself notes on the CD jacket that he plays poorly he is being truthful, not exhibiting false modesty. And he plays almost everything on the CD, with the exception of a couple of guest turns here and there. There's no real production to speak of either; this bad boy was recorded on two and four track not being utilized to it's fullest potential in most cases. The vocals, not wonderful, are buried deep in the mix, like Houlihan and a microphone were being lowered into a sewer while he was singing.

And yet, and yet...take all of that, and Houlihan comes off like Curt Cobain recording with the early Velvet Underground, circa "White Light White Heat." The reason is that Houlihan brings some actual songs to the table here; he may be coming from the same woods as Roky Erickson or Wild Man Fischer, but he's definitely residing in a different neck of them. His guitar playing, coming from the school of warts and all, is like Dylan's harmonica playing: technically lousy, but it's perfect for what he's doing. Or to put it another way, it's kind of like Danny deVito and his wife, the waitress on "Cheers," ---I forget her name---having a child that blossomed into Julia Roberts with her mouth sewn shut. Or at least with a zipper on it. Perfection from disparate, unexpected sources.

So what is Houlihan doing? You've got 13 tracks here that clock in at a total of just under 33 minutes; you can drive down to the local Tim Horton's, get you an English Toffee Cappacino and vanilla dip donut, and drive back home and hear just about everything on here. "Cigarette" is the shortest track and clocks in at about 47 seconds (demonstrating that Guided by Voices aren't the only ones who can do this) while the longest ("Whale"), is 5 minutes, 31 seconds. Most of these bad boys are about 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 minutes long. "6 a.m." sounds as if Houlihan picked up his guitar and made it up as he went along. Interestingly enough, it sounds damn near perfect at 6:00 a.m. Sometimes Houlihan sounds like he finished the song, then thought of another verse, and added it on ("Half Speed Ahead," "Whale"). "Open Heart" and "Half Speed Ahead" sound like they came off a Neil Young demo bootleg, I swear to God. Yeah, that's what this is. "Jamming with Edward," but instead of Jagger and Richards we've got Neil Young, Lou Reed, and Curt Cobain with Jonathan Richman producing. Except this is better than "Jamming With Edward." "I'm Not Much," the opening track, has more clever ideas in it, at a minute 35 seconds, than the whole 1 hour plus of the last Third Eye Blind CD. "I'm Not Much"...John, you would be wrong. You're quite a bit, indeed.

This makes the second low/no-fi CD I've heard this month (the first is JJEM's "Music Stew") that is hundreds of times better than a good portion of what's being released with hype and hoopla and posters and cardboard cutouts. The playing isn't perfect, the vocals aren't pristine, but the music is as honest as it gets without infantile temper tantrums in the studio and you can listen to it over and over without getting tired of it. If I ever get my own label I'd sign guys like these. For right now, I'll just listen. Over and over and over.