Music Library: Dr. Alimantado, Dr. Dog, Dr. Dre, Dr. John

Dr. Alimantado - The Best Dressed Chicken In Town (1978). Killer, killer reggae album.

Dr. Dog - Fate (2008). One of the worst-named bands in all of rockdom really, really, really likes The Beatles.

Dr. Dre - The Chronic (1992). Har-de-har-har, I was working on a joke about how obscure this is, but I haven't the heart to foist it upon an unsuspecting world.

Dr. John - Gris-Gris (1968), "Loop Garoo" (1970), Dr. John's Gumbo (1972), Goin' Back To New Orleans (1992), The Very Best of Dr. John (1995). The first album is one of the most psychedelic albums of 1968, no lie. Dr. John (Creaux was the surname he was using at the time) turned his back on his rockabilly persona (under his real name Mac Rebennack) with a vengeance, embracing the sound of voodoo New Orleans, and his first four albums (Gris-Gris was the first one of four similar albums, and I should pick up the next three) sound almost Brazilian - which makes sense, as a lot of traditional Brazilian music was built on the sounds of Condomble, the Brazilian version of voodoo. "Loop Garoo" is from the third Dr. John album, Remedies, and, interestingly enough, sounds a lot like a Tom Waits track, enough to fool the casual listener at first blush. Dr. John's Gumbo is where Dr. John switched gears and began making good-time music instead, starting with perennial crowd favorite "Iko Iko." Goin' Back To New Orleans is a later album with a number of standards and traditional Mardi Gras songs among the good-time music. The Very Best features a number of tracks from the 70s on either side of the voodoo/good-time line.