Joe D'Urso and Stone Caravan: Rock and Roll Station

BY DAN FEDER

It's probably the most representative problem, however, and one through which all of Rock and Roll Station's other flaws can be approached. The concept, supposedly, is that the listener is flipping through stations over a two-day period and just happens to hit 12 different Joe D'Urso and Stone Caravan songs right as they're being introduced by DJs. Between each song is a little clip of some radio fuzz, the sound of other stations, and then a DJ doing a lead-in to the song. Unfortunately, the songs in between bear absolutely no relationship to one another, so as "a concept record of sorts," Rock and Roll Station ends up being pretty half-assed.

Listening to the album, you also get the sense that if you lived in this particular town, where Joe D'Urso and Stone Caravan songs are played every few hours on many different radio stations, you'd probably want to think about moving. To be fair, blame for the album should only be given where it's deserved. Stone Caravan is great. It's a solid backup band, rocking out when it should, staying out of the way on the ballads, and providing some much-needed support for its frontman.

D'Urso, though, is another story. Lyrically, he fits in pretty well with the idea of the concept album, as his lyrics match the sort of mindless drivel most DJs are prone to spewing when they need to fill airtime, with the sort of a rhyme-for-the-sake-of-rhyming attitude that produces little gems like this one from "Rock in the Sun": "Didn't want the time to fly, phone calls late at night never want to die/You say you've found your niche, finding it can be such a bitch." D'Urso also has an emotive problem with his singing that makes his take on Neil Young's "Powderfinger," a song about suicide, sound more like "Born in the U.S.A.," which is completely inappropriate.

Joe D'Urso and Stone Caravan is a bar band, pure and simple, and it might help if D'Urso just accepted that bar bands don't make concept records or name check Counting Crows, like in "Rock and Roll Call." With Rock and Roll Station, it sounds like Stone Caravan needs to find itself a new frontman. (SCR/Schoolhouse) 

Back to A&E...