John Cougar Mellencamp - Uh-Huh

Author's warning.* 

After selling 5,000,000 copies of his break through album American Fool in the US. John was back in '83 with Uh-Huh and proceeded to go triple platinum. However, here is Canada he was moved half a million copies of each album. He was pretty big deal here ... and he'd be a big deal for a while.

I was never really a big John Cougar Mellencamp fan, I'm still not, but I like him enough to buy his albums when I find them. Oh make no mistake he was decent and in small doses pretty awesome. There was something about a whole album of John's tunes that just felt overly long. I'd almost go so far as to describe a lot of it as unvarnished pretentious rock and roll. A better name for the album would be Nuh Uh.

John was earnest in his pursuit of grandeur. To be fair for all the clunkers he'd then come out with an absolute barn burner. I didn't know it at the time, but John was carving his own niche. Americana wasn't really a thing I was aware of but John was meshing old time rock and roll with his own brand of small town sensibilities with big city observations. First up was a personal makeover and a thinly veiled FU to those who wanted Mr. Cougar to simply shut up and sing. He was now John Cougar Mellencamp, and he let that settle for a couple of years and by the time he released The Lonesome Jubilee in '87 his transformation into John Mellencamp was complete.

However, back to the task at hand. Uh-Huh a nifty trick. It was still John Cougar but it was also John Mellencamp. The songs were balancing between rock and Americana and I'll also be the first to admit that I have more of an intellectual appreciation than any affinity for many of the songs.

The album's opener "Crumblin' Down" took decades for me to appreciate. All was forgiven with "Pink Houses" a song that cuts deep and is a bitter pill wrapped in a pretty sounding song. Frankly, if this was the only "hit" John Mellencamp ever had it would still put him in rare company. I loved this song back in the day, and I sill love it but it's also tinged with melancholy ... but it wasn't the only hit he ever had. The other big song here was "The Authority Song" which is a killer song and I'm pretty sure this was John's version of "I Fought the Law".  

I never owned this back in '83 although I heard the songs on the radio. Which gives me about as much credibility as a music writer as Pernell Roberts had selling pain relief pills because he played a doctor on TV. I have a keyboard so by default I'm left handed monkey trying to type out Shakespeare. Therefore my opinion is worth sharing.

Not sure where I was going with that but I'm sure it was important. I liked the songs on the radio, and even when I did get a copy a couple years after it came out it was just to add the songs I liked to the occasional mix tape.

Listening to this one now there have been a couple of nice surprises and a couple of weird clunkers. Under the nice surprise column there's "Warmer Place to Sleep" which was a wicked, but on the clunker side of the ledger "Jackie O" and the cha cha cha ending just felt out of place. Admittedly it's quirky but it's just my cup of tea. However, the revamped riffs from "Gloria" that fuel "Play Guitar" are fitted perfectly. 

I know earlier I took a few shots at John about being pretentious which is probably a little unfair. I always got the sense that John was pretty firm in his convictions and to those of us who just wanted to hear pretty pop songs having to wade through the artsy fartsy ruminations of a self declared observer of the American condition felt like homework.  

Well, I sat down with the record to do my homework and diligently played it through and listened closely. I repeated the process a few times just to make sure I wasn't cheating and then tried to herd the disconnected thoughts on the songs into something marginally coherent. As I near the end of this post the final song "Golden Gates" is playing and I'm more or less enthralled.

I had started out expecting to shit on this one as my memories of the album from forty plus years ago were more or less dismissive outside of a couple of the radio hits I liked, and were the reason I bought the record. I felt the rest of the album was heavy handed and felt out of step with the music I was listening to back then.

Well, Mister Mellencamp, sir,- you have managed to have the last laugh. Your album (aside from "Jackie O") feels remarkably timeless.

Does it really?

Uh-huh.

* This is one of those posts that should have been edited. Woulda coulda shoulda. I'm kind of lazy, and in the end this more or less felt like I was having a conversation with myself. It may not make sense but it felt like it at the time. 

Why put the warning at the bottom? How is that helpful?