Ain't That Weird?

• Artist: Brother Dave Gardner
• Rating:
• Release Date: 1961
• Type: Live
• Genre: Spoken Word

Review

On Ain't That Weird? "Brother" Dave Gardner takes his act on the road, appropriately enough to the Will Rogers Memorial Auditorium in Fort Worth, TX. As keen-eared enthusiasts will note, Gardner has somewhat restructured his performance style. Dispensing with the vaudeville song and joke man persona, Gardner now focuses his unique stream-of-consciousness dialogue into some socially advanced topics for the early '60s, including drugs, ecology, vegetarianism, and Beatniks. As Gardner proudly affirmed on a previous long-player, "the onlyest (sic) difference 'tween me and those other preachers, dear hearts, is that I'm preachin' for it." To that end, the antidotes and yarns fly in the face of political correctness as well as the conventions of the time. Using his admittedly underprivileged and relatively uneducated beginnings as a milieu, Brother Dave Gardner is able to adorn serious issues within the context of humor in such an innocuous way that issues such as "raw vegetarianism" (aka veganism) or the concept of higher learning -- which involves, according to Gardener, the ability to "get high and learn" -- seem almost ludicrous enough to be sensible. Additional fodder for Gardner's antics include some highly entertaining and non-PC views on hunting as well as the necessity for population control. Politically, observations on Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, the Cuban Missile crisis, as well as the status of governing bodies in the state of Alabama tend to antiquate the remainder of the album. Of course in hindsight, it is startling just how accurate many of Gardner's predictions actually were. Ain't That Weird features a few stories that became legendary within Brother Dave Gardner's canon of work; these include "Promoter's Story" and the story of "Two Cows," as well as the tale of "The Preacher and the Drunk." Since the original record album was not banded and there are no names given to any of his fables, the exact titles may vary. Regardless, this is a touchstone release as it hones in on Gardner's strengths as a storyteller as well as a self-proclaimed "free thinkin' and swingin' cat." ~ Lindsay Planer, Rovi

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