Guitars Unlimited - The Eddy Arnold Songbook

But Bottle, what if i don't want to pay full price for an actual guitar genius? Is there a knock-off, bargain bin, Beverly Hillbillies guitar album i can feel embarrassed buying? 

You know i got you covered. Our favorite British holding company turned American record label, Pick mf'n Wick, hired 3 studio scabs to do instrumental versions of songs by Eddy Arnold. Now, you know you're gonna get a lot of rhythmic fluidity without all that unpopular improvising in between, the backing tracks will sound atrocious, and you won't actually recognize or fondly remember any of these songs, but at least you'll get some terribly campy cover art to warn you in advance. 

It goes without saying that i unironically love this. You read that right, un- not post-. It sounds like 5th graders recorded it, and that's a compliment. I love it because it's not even trying to be good. Pickwick totally owned their style of imitation pancake syrup by just absolutely not giving a crap. They didn't try to look cool or trick you, they just served up cheap garbage under whatever sub-brand name they could assemble from random Scrabble tiles and were totally happy to not put anyone's actual name on it. Shockingly enough, however, we do know that Guitars Unlimited was comprised of Bob Bain, Jack Marshall, Howard Roberts, and some other less relevant characters. Fun fact, Jack Marshall wrote the theme for The Munsters. It's also a Swedish Jazz guitar duo if you're a name confusion bingo enthusiast. 

So this album. How to best describe it? Well, you know that "can you do it for less money" meme where the front of the horse is all photorealistic while the back looks like your broken wrist never healed properly? This is that horse's ass. My point, if i had one, was don't let that scare you away. You don't have to feel bad for laughing, none of these guys lost any sleep worrying that they might be failures. They succeeded in getting paid for putting in little to no effort at all. No, not millions of bucks, but yes enough to buy an overpriced hamburger and milkshake at Disneyland. I'm not gonna say it sounds better than any Rolling Stones album, but it doesn't sound any worse to my ears. For Pickwick it's not even close to the worst one in my collection. The guitars sound like rusty garden rakes, but the bass and piano are quite nice, if a tad honky in the tonk department. 

Halfway through side 2 you're gonna feel like it's all the same song with slightly different melodies, and you're not far wrong at all. Hang in there, you'll get a not that terrible rendition of My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, i mean "Don't Rob Another Man's Castle" to break the monotony. If you want to get technical, it's an old Scottish tune, Roud Folk Song Index No. 1422, possibly a Jacobite song about the exile of "Bonnie Prince Charlie." Here it's just another twangy guitar lead in 6/8. 

Everywhere that gives stars to things gives it less than 3, but i use my patented "how funny is your 'i smelled a dog fart face'," so this one gets a good solid chortle. I'm not sure how this, or getting straw up your skirt, is supposed to be romantic, but it's definitely worth listening to just to know that those are guitar tones that can exist if you dial all the knobs in just wrong, or possibly record inside a running microwave oven. It's unique. It's special. It's a now record by Design/Nouveau/Pickwick. Country lovin' never sounded so strange. Which reminds me, i gotta go pre-order me a copy of the new doubleVee album, Treat Her Strangely. Maybe not this strangely, but that's coincidence for you.

Part 4