If there’s such a thing as a perfect album, “Gentlemen” by the Afghan Whigs is that album. From the intro sound of singer Greg Dulli and bassist John Curley driving over a windy bridge in their hometown of Cincinnati to the closing instrumental Brother Woodrow Closing Prayer, “Gentlemen” doesn’t falter even once. Even the cover art is perfect. A young boy sitting on the edge of a bed looking away from the young girl lying on a pillow staring at his back. All the heavy love themes on the album boiled down to one photo stating that in the end we’re all children when it comes to relationships. “Gentlemen” is my favorite album. The Afghan Whigs, my favorite band. They’re dark and soulful but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t know how to rock either. Dulli is the perfect front man. Guitarist Rick McCollum plays like no one else I’ve ever heard. And bassist Curley and original drummer Steve Earle set the perfect rhythm for every fucked up lyric in the bands cannon. Lyrics so fucked up in fact that on “Gentelmen” Dulli enlisted female singer Marcy Mays of Scrawl to sing his song My Curse for fear of how a man singing his words would be perceived. I remember reading an interview in Rolling Stone once years after the album came out where Dulli said he wouldn’t even play songs off “Gentlemen” like Be Sweet for fear of getting stuck back in an emotional rut and messing up his therapy. I always got the feeling when listening to the Whigs that they meant every word, every note, every mood. This is more than can be said about a lot of bands that cover similar territory. So when I saw that their excellent fansite Summer’s Kiss was putting out a Tribute album I jumped on Amazon and ordered it right quick.
The first thing I would like to say is that I’m dismayed by the cover. It’s a send up of the “Gentlemen” cover only with two naked women in the role of the boy and the girl. It’s just plain cheap and I think more than that it’s just insulting to fans of the band. Dulli’s love songs were pretty messed up at times, but they were honest and far from misogynistic. Quite the opposite. This man loved the opposite sex so much that it tortured his every thought and fucked his every move. Putting two naked lesbians on the cover of the tribute album just strengthens the notion that he was an unabashed poonhound. But I’ll put that aside for now and move on to the covers.
The first one up is a band from Sweden called Sounds Like Violence covering Sammy. It was a smart move putting this as the first track as it’s the strongest one on this tribute. This band really goes for it on their cover and you can tell that they picked a song that resonated with their own emotions. Frequent Dulli collaborators Joseph Arthur and Mark Lanegan both great singer songwriters in their own right provide the only other two tracks on this album worth a damn (Step Into the Light and Tonight respectfully). It was no surprise to me that either of these men would do the Whigs proud. From there on it’s pretty much downhill. The problem is not even that the rest of the bands on this album suck as artists or are shitty musicians (some of them maybe). The problem is that The Afghan Whigs are one of the true originals in Rock music and to replicate what they did and how they felt when they were doing it is impossible. No one can play guitar like Rick McCollum and no one I’ve ever seen manages to be half the performer Dulli was/is. You can pick songs of theirs you like but unless you’re in the same mindset the band was when they were recorded everything falls apart. A better way to pay tribute to the band might just be to listen to their albums all the time and make sure you continue to spread their music around after they’ve broken up. So if after reading all this you are interested but don’t own any of The Afghan Whigs music, I urge you to go out and buy some. There’s a lot of it out there. But start with “Gentlemen”. That’s my suggestion anyway.
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