There are a lot of words on that cover, but not the
two that immediately spring to my mind when I look at it - 'Cash' and 'In'. This
is 1968 and not only had the Hollywood version of 'Bonnie and Clyde' been
released to acclaim the previous year (which explains the two cover stars trying
to look as much like Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as budget, lighting and
camera angles would allow), while Georgie Fame had released the number one
single 'The Ballad Of Bonnie and Clyde' that same year, a song that both appears
on this record and gives it its title as well as justifying that small print
that says "The story in song of that wild pair".
Well that song does anyway; the rest of
the tracks on here have nothing to do with the pair save the fact they were
popular round about the same time as the duo were at large. None of these songs actually appear on the official 'Bonnie And Clyde'
soundtrack either, and I guess the ones that have been chosen to make up this
record are meant to be evocative of a "vivid, colourful period of
modern American history" where "a young couple ran amok in an orgy of
cold blooded killing of innocent folk". As a selling point, this does not
strike me as being in terribly good taste; what reception would a compilation of
early 70's UK hits get if it were marketed as a remembrance of the IRA bombing
campaign I wonder? After all, that was another "orgy of cold blooded killing
of innocent folk". I suppose 'The Troubles' have never been given a
glamorous Hollywood makeover (perhaps with Johnny Depp as the president of Sinn
Fein) that would give the backdrop to make such an album viable and for that we
should be thankful for small mercies.
But whatever, this isn't being offered up as a
moral imperative - it's a budget record I found in a charity shop and so the
acid test for it is simply to ask 'is it any good?'. And I think the best answer
I can give to that is 'it's good enough'. By which I mean it's as good as
Bonnie. Bugsy and the Heavy Mob (AKA a bunch of disinterested sounding, jobbing
musicians and session singers) need to be in order to deliver what's promised.
There's nothing uncontroversial in its arrangements or delivery, but it's a
lifeless album with not much in the way of enthusiasm to help draw you into the
world it's trying to recreate.
The backing music is the predictable stabs of brass
and bluster that never manage to swing and the vocals adopt the nasally twang of
someone trying to impersonate the sound of a Twenties radio broadcast in a way
that manages to be both endearing and irritating at the same time; to be honest,
it all just sounds fake, false and forced. If you
absolutely have to have a version of 'Broadway Melody', 'I Don't Know
Why' or the like but don't want to pay through the nose for them, then this will
do the job. For my own part I'd have had a lot more time for it if it had been
marketed as a straightforward, old time radio compilation rather than leeching
off the goodwill and acclaim generated by others. The fact that it's presented
as the latter rather than the former still leaves me with a sour taste in my
mouth, even after all these years.
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