CD Odyssey Disc 913: Jaymz B and the Royal Jelly Orchestra

Welcome back to the CD Odyssey. Let’s get a little silly, shall we?

Disc 913 is….Cocktail: shakin’ and stirred

Artist: Jaymz B and the Royal Jelly Orchestra

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover? It appears to be the lounge version of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. The Atomic Martini, I suppose.

How I Came To Know It: My friend Chris introduced me to this back in the heyday of lounge revival. I don’t know where Chris found it. I only know that once he did he knew he had to share it.

How It Stacks Up:  Jaymz B and the Royal Jelly Orchestra made eight albums from 1995 through 2006, but I only have this one.

Ratings: 2 stars

The mid- to late-nineties saw an explosion in lounge music, and whenever you get that kind of explosion there is bound to be some weird stuff around the edges of the resulting crater. This record is one of those.

I’m not sure what possessed Jaymz B and the Royal Jelly Orchestra to record an entire album of bizarre lounge versions of Canadian rock classics. I guess when you have a band name like they do, recording off-the-wall music is just what you do.

This album has all your favourites, and if they aren’t your favourites chances are they are someone else’s. Every one of them has been lounge-ified in the most ridiculous manner possible. If you just imagined how ridiculous they must sound, add at least two more steps up your ridiculous meter.

Some would say it would be hard to make “Safety Dance” weirder than it already is, but Jaymz B and his orchestra know better. Not content with lounge music and a saucy horn section, they throw in a sitar for good measure. Does it work? Ehhh…kind of. Let’s just say it works at first.

And that is the charm of this whole album; it’s fun the first few times you hear it. It is one of those records you put on while your friend is over and then smile like a total dork at them until they realize what song they are listening to. Then you say something like “I know, right!” and play a few more, not stopping until it is clear from their pained faces that you’ve played at least one too many.

This record features songs by Loverboy, The Who, Prism, Bryan Adams and the Crash Test Dummies, to name just a few. If you’re wondering what song they choose for each just think of the first song by that band that comes to mind. That’s probably it.

One of my favourites is Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know” if for no other reason that it sounds like something from Sesame Street until the sing-songy vocal asks if your new girlfriend goes down on you in a theatre. Not the sort of thing Oscar the Grouch asks Big Bird. At least not on camera.

I also enjoyed Rush’ “Closer to the Heart” which has a crazy dragnet intro before the singer of the moment (the songs feature different vocalists) begins lounging it up, taking the philosophical musings of Neil Peart and belting them out for maximum camp. When you think the song can’t get any weirder, they add in the trill of an old school bicycle bell. Why? Why not!

While all the songs have their own…er…charm, not all appealed to me. The band tries to do “Takin’ Care of Business” with a Tom Waits style vibe, but it just came off as a cheap knock off. Do your own crazy thing, Royal Jelly Orchestra, don’t do Tom’s.

And on and on it goes, with each singer trying to outdo the last with the level of schmaltz they can inject into these classics. It is all done in good fun, but after the first few listens the joke has been had and you’re left with a comedy routine where you already know all the jokes.

That said, these songs are fun and Jaymz B works hard to make each one very different from the last. Ordinarily I’d complain with the sheer volume of ridiculous sounds and instruments thrown into each track but that’s sort of the point. It isn’t about great music, it’s about pushing the envelope.

These are great songs to throw into a playlist you make for someone else because it’s guaranteed to make them have a laugh. Even after the laugh, the bones of most of the tracks are good enough to make them listenable. But if you try to listen to the whole album a couple of times through (like I just did) you’ll find the experience wears thin pretty quickly.

On this CD Odyssey I’m on some albums are great, some are bad and some are just too strange to part with. “Cocktail: shakin’ and stirred” is one of the latter. It is weird as hell, and only occasionally good, but damn it, I’m keeping it.

Best tracks: American Woman, You Oughta Know, Closer to the Heart