Since becoming a Woody Guthrie fan, some time ago, I have come to realize that he must have been one cool ass guy; a white guy in the 1940's traveling and squatting all over the place, making friends with tons of different races of people and singing songs of their plight and more or less just"sticking it to the man" in, so many ways. Stating all that it's probably pretty easy to see why I would say "ok" and try a tribute compilation to him; I mean, how bad could it really be? Well, it sucked balls.
'Til We Out Number 'Em Songs of Woody Guthrie is a 17 track compilation, (unless its the MP3 version then there are 19 tracks), tribute album with a lot of the modern hippie folksy types that produce really bad covers. Now granted I'm partial to liking this due to it being cover/tribute album for Woody Guthrie, so I should have really liked it but some of these artists sounded really freakin' awful. Maybe it's because in my head I'm hearing the original song, with its old recording quality and his vocals portraying an idea of equality in a time of inequality, and these cover made me skip the tracks on a lot of the songs. A couple of these artists even made me want to listen just to hear its horribleness, while a few weren't too horrible. (Along with all of this, I'm not a fan of any of these artists in the first place: Arlo Guthrie, Billy Bragg, definitely don't like Bruce Springsteen & Indigo Girls)
I had much higher hopes for this release, but I guess I should have been thinking more correctly and realized that if I didn't like most of these musicians in the first place, then I wouldn't like their cover/tribute songs. Even though it has something to do with Woody Guthtie, it just doesn't feel like Woody Guthrie. I suppose if you are interested you should check it out, but I will not listen to it again.
Official score- 1/5
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