Brown Eyed Handsome Fans

A new CD hopes to reclaim Chuck Berry for St. Louis

by Jordan Harper

The tribute album may be the trickiest art form in popular music. You must pick a worthy subject, someone whose songwriting is durable enough to be beaten around by lesser life forms. You must find the right bands -- and not merely good bands, but a variety of bands. Nothing is more boring than a tribute album made entirely by followers of the guest of honor's sound. And at the center of every tribute is a dark question: Aside from a quick novelty listen, why would you sit through a cover album, when the original's recordings are sitting right there? I can think of only one tribute album that stands out as a real work of art: Virus 100, the Dead Kennedys tribute featuring everyone from Mojo Nixon to the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy doing insane covers of the punk legends. But in most cases the real question is: Why bother?

Maybe, Kip Loui suggests, because someone needs a shot at redemption. Loui is the mastermind behind the new Chuck Berry tribute album, Brown Eyed Handsome Man. The idea for the album germinated while Loui was putting together an hour of Berry's music for a KDHX (88.1 FM) special.

Loui is well aware of the more prosaic pitfalls of producing a tribute album. "I desperately wanted something that doesn't suck and wasn't boring," he confides. "So many tribute CDs that I come across are well-intentioned but ultimately kind of dull. I didn't want people to regurgitate bar-band versions of the songs. I wanted them to dig into it."

Do they succeed? More or less. Generally speaking, it'd have been nice to see a few radical reinterpretations, by artists whose music is far away from Berry's influence: a crunk act like Ruka Puff, say, or someone lost in noise like Tone Rodent. The Cajun folks in Gumbohead should have been forced to pick any song other than the obvious "You Never Can Tell." But along with the boss Bass track, Waterloo's very quiet "No Particular Place to Go" and the Highway Matrons' raucous "Sweet Little Sixteen" are standouts. And some tracks -- like the Trip Daddys' "Johnny B. Goode," for instance -- certainly meet the rock requirement and aren't just regurgitations, but rather the kind of renditions you'd want to hear in a bar.