CD Review

Stuff to Avoid:

Pat Humphries
Hands
(Appleseed)

Unless you're a diehard Pat Humphries fan (and there are lots of you, I know), avoid Hands (Appleseed); Humphries is blessed with a beautiful voice. And she hates discrimination - whether it's racial or sexual - or literary. There just aren't any well-written songs on this CD, even though there are several covers, including "Hands," by Phil Ochs. Now, nobody loves Phil Ochs more than I do, but like all good writers, he wrote a lot of really bad songs and this is one of them. Humphries has re-recorded her hit "Swimming to the Other Side" (I never could successfully picture this song's bizarre central image of unity and spiritual passage - a bunch of people swimming (are they doing the crawl? sidestroke? butterfly?) but she's also included another preachy song, "Bound for Freedom," which has the very same melody and is even pitched in the same key. She does have that voice, though. And she's very positive. One always wonders if songs like this are actually bad for the movement. -HB