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Nick Alexander Reviews: | ||||||
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| Disclaimer: If you don't like Christian Parodies of Rock music, you won't like Nick Alexander. That being the case, why waste your time reading this stuff? It would be much better for you to go praise the Lord in a way that is acceptable to you rather than get all caught up in the emotions associated with this subject. | |||
| Eternal Life: The Party Album (Released 2001) Tracks: 1. Get Canonized A Saint (parody of "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz) 2. Don't Take that Crown (parody of "Don't Bring Me Down" by ELO) 3. Nahum, Zephaniah, Malachi (parody of "Jenny (867-5309) by Tommy Tutone) 4. These Beads (parody of "These Dreams" by Heart) 5. Evangelize (parody of "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor) 6. Monastery Trip (parody of "White Room" by Cream) 7. Melt Me (parody of "Pinch Me" by BNL) 8. Therese of Lisieux (parody of "Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant) 9. Teaching Them to Read (parody of "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors) 10. We Want to Stand United (parody of "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel) 11. Too Late Have I Loved You (original song by Nick Alexander) | |||
| If you've heard a mixture of ApologetiX and Bradford parodies, but you've never heard Nick Alexander before, don't buy this CD expecting more of the same. Nick's style is to parody everything - the lyrics, the performance, and the vocals. As long as you listen to this CD with the proper expectations, you're going to enjoy it; if you buy this CD expecting an ApologetiX clone, you'll be disappointed. On the other hand, if you're really into "campy" humor, you'll probably like Nick Alexander's work. "Eternal Life: The Party Album" is Nick's second CD and this work shows definite improvement over his first offering. The songs are more carefully chosen (to fit Nick's vocal style) and the performance is more polished. All in all, if you've heard and enjoyed Nick's first CD, you'll like this second one even better. One other warning I'll make about this CD. Nick is definitely Catholic. Some of the humor present on the CD won't have quite the same impact on non-Catholics. Get Canonized a SaintLyrics: Excellent Comments: This is one of those songs that really grows on you. The lyrics are great. The only complaint I have is that I have is that this song would have been even funnier if Nick's vocals had been even less polished on this one; something along the lines of "Old Gregorian Chant" would have made this song perfect. Still, this is one of the best all-around songs on the CD and provides a great dose of laughter. Don't Take That CrownLyrics: good Comments: Okay, this is a fun song. I'd have given Nick higher scores on the vocals and faithfulness if he'd sung the tune an octave lower. On the other hand, I'm famous for mentally transposing notes by an octave, so maybe I'm just hearing the song wrong. This is one of those songs where Nick should take a clue from ApologetiX and print scripture verses with his lyrics in the CD booklet; it would have been really interesting to see on which Bible versus he based these lyrics (I say this, not as criticism of the lyrics, but as an individual who likes to learn scriptural information from these songs). This song warns the listener not to make the same mistake as Lucifer; I'm not 100% sure I follow the reference to "Don't Take That Crown" though I'm sure Nick will let me know if it's more than mythology. I'll post his response here after I find out. Nahum, Zephaniah, MalachiLyrics: excellent Comments: Except for the ending (that I'll discuss in a moment), this is one of my favorite songs on the CD. The lyrics are great and the performance is not bad (from a absolute point of view). The only complaint I've got with this song is that Nick decided to spoof the recording process along with everything else and the song includes an (intended) collapse at the end. This trick works on some songs (e.g., Nick's "Monastery Trip" also on this CD); however, it's more of an annoyance on this song. Nevertheless, we're only talking about 10 seconds at the end of the tune. I won't let that ruin the fun found in the rest of the song. These BeadsLyrics: good Comments: This is one of those "definitely Catholic" songs; though it is clearly intended for non-Catholics. This song is a bit of apologetics for the rosary; explaining the meaning to those who have misconceptions about the concept. Actually, I found the lyrics quite educational and feel that Nick does a great service for the Catholic Church by writing parodies such as this one. Educational issues aside, this song does suffer a bit in the production department. The backing vocals seem really disjoint. The lead vocals are quite up to par with many of the others on this CD; Nick's voice needs to be a little more resonant on this tune (of course, slow songs are really hard to do right, and it doesn't help that Nick's doing a song originally performed by female vocalists). Perhaps the best part of this song is it's message: Hebrews 12:1 - let's quit making stupid comments about how individual denominations worship and concentrate on the big picture - saving souls. EvangelizeLyrics: fair to good Comments: This is one song where Nick appears to sing seriously; subject aside, this song could have used the high-pitched screechy vocals that he used on R-E-P-E-N-T on his first CD. At the very least, he should have sung this one an octave higher (though, keep in mind that I'm tone deaf and can rarely tell the difference between two notes an octave apart, so YMMV). The lyrics don't do anything special for me. I can't blame the disco heritage of this song for whatever negative feelings I have; I actually like the Gloria Gaynor original. This is just one of those songs that I personally don't get into. Monastery TripLyrics: excellent Comments: I'd be hard pressed to choose between "Canonized a Saint" and "Monastery Trip" as my favorite track on this CD. This one probably has the better performance of the two and the lyrics are just as good as "Canonized" though "Canonized" is probably a touch more humorous (though this song is absolutely hilarious). As I noted earlier, Nick parodies the recording process in this song. There is a point in the song where some bells are ringing (and ringing and ringing and ...); the first time I heard this song I remember thinking to myself "Okay, this is getting really annoying." Immediately thereafter, Nick says "please stop playing with that." It was perfect! Anxiety immediately turned to laughter. As I said earlier, sometimes this trick works really well and Nick did a good job of it on this track. Melt MeLyrics: fair to good Comments: The lyrics sound like they could tell a really great story. Unfortunately, this song seems (to me) to suffer from parody-itis. That is, attempting to fit the message into the confines of the original song it's parodying (God knows that I've had this problem on a large number of parodies I've attempted; I guess you could say that I've become an expert at this sort of problem). It would probably help me to appreciate the song more if I knew the original tune, so I shouldn't be too harsh here. I guess my problem is that there are some really beautiful lyrics in this song but the message falls flat at various points. It would be really interesting to see Nick do an original tune based on this message where he doesn't have the confines of an existing melody to work within. Therese of LisieuxLyrics: good Comments: You won't confuse Nick Alexander for Eddy Grant on this tune, but this is one of Nick's better attempts at sounding like the original. This is another one of the "Catholic education" songs on this CD with a bit of a history lesson. Nick has a knack for doing these songs fairly well. I'd recommend more of them if he gets around to doing a third CD. This song was a great production.As for the humor, I guess I've been listening to too many parodies lately and I've come down with "reviewer's disease." (That comes from trying to take the review process too seriously.) Most people probably don't listen to the lyrics as closely as I do, and therefore find songs like "tithe after tithe" a lot more humorous than I do. Let me relate a story: I was playing Nick's CD a week or so before updating this review page and my wife walked in. She said "Gee, that's really awful." Then the chorus started playing. She started busting up. She was singing the chorus for quite some time after that. Now I can complain about Nick's vocals and lyrics all I want, but it's very clear his work has impact Teaching Them to ReadLyrics: excellent Comments: What can I say? I really like "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors. About the only thing bad I can say about this tune is that I listened to Mark Bradford's "Turning Christianese" first. Mark's tune is a better "parody" but "Turning Christianese" achieves its humor via silliness whereas Nick's rendition achieves its humor while telling a serious story (i.e., more in the ApologetiX style). The vocals on this track are pretty good, among Nick's best. You won't confuse the vocals with those of the Vapors (as you could with Mark Bradford's offering), but they are good on this one. One other bonus favoring Nick's track over Mark's is that "Teaching Them to Read" is more faithful to the original song whereas Mark Bradford's rendition rearranges the versus and choruses in the tune reducing the quality of the parody IMHO [-RLH]. Overall, this is one of Nick's better songs, lyrically and performance-wise. We Want to Stand UnitedLyrics: good Comments: One of Nick's missions in life is to see the Church reunited. Good luck Nick! Seriously, though, the lyrics in this song provide a good history of the split of the church and the problems that has presented over the years. I actually like the lyrics to this song, but I don't particularly like the song. Nick's vocals are a bit weak on this tune, but that's not the real problem. Personally, I don't think the original song will make a good parody. I felt pretty much the same about Mark Bradford's attempt ("We're Gonna Read the Bible"). I dunno, guess the original didn't do too much for me, so it's hard to expect a parody to affect me much, either. Too Late Have I Loved YouComments: One thing neat that Nick Alexander does is that he has a habit of putting one original song on each of his parody CDs so we can hear how he really sounds when he's not parodying singers. Guess this is his way of shutting up those who complain that parody lyricists are incapable of doing original work. Be sure to wait for the hidden track on this tune! | ||