The first time I heard Jack Logan was in one of those music stores where you can listen to any CD you want before you buy it, and I couldn't make up my mind what I felt like hearing. I picked up a disc on the shelf in front of me; it was the only one of its kind and it was called Bulk, with a picture of this fat, hybrid pig-kid on the cover, by some guy named Jack Logan. I asked a slim Paul Westerberg-looking slacker working at the store if he knew anything about Jack Logan, whether he was any good or not. He looked at me with the look you get on your face when you're traveling in Guatemala and you meet somebody who happens to be the brother of your best friend from college­­he was wide-eyed and incredulous. "JACK LOGAN IS GREAT," he said, barely able to contain his pleasure that he found somebody who might actually listen to the store's only Jack Logan album. I sat down and listened to a few tracks, and promptly bought the two-disc set. It had 42 songs on it. Some are classics, like "Graves are Fun to Dig", "Heart Attack on the Prarie", and "Aloha-Ha". I remember feeling like I had discovered something. A year and a half later I got his new album, "Mood Elevator"­­it was free because Medium Cool records sent it to me because we're "The Media." I'll take it. To begin to understand Jack Logan you need to imagine that he is somebody that you can actually get to know. Immediately abandon the subject-object nature of entertainers and their audience. Look at his pictures in the liner notes; find out a little about his story; check out his website (www.tt.net/mcool/logan.html) Follow me in this image for a minute. He's the kind of guy that you drink a Bud longneck (or twelve) with, and the drunker he gets, the more philosophical, the wiser, he becomes. He's an all-around nice person. "Mood Elevator" is Logan's second release, and is challenging to describe--his style meanders from raucous Springsteen-like ballads to hauntingly personal songs and fast-paced jams. Jack Logan doesn't just exude rock and roll, his music seems to span its history. "Neon Tombstone" recalls the gritty, driving guitar of early punk..."No Offense" is Hendrixy, like an imprecise borrow of "Castles Made of Sand"...but they're all Jack Logan. A cross-section of the stories he describes range from confusion at how to get out of his friend's car in "Suicide Doors", to the frustration of setting about to change his life only to find the same situations and cast of characters hanging around in "New Town." "Another Life" finds Logan recovering from a broken heart, having exposed himself to the acidburn of love and coming out alive on the other end. Despite remembering the pain, he sings that "I'm alright/I found myself another life...I'm just fine." Understanding the deceiving cycles of love, the song "Estranged" brings him back down to Earth: "The very sound of her voice/is like a blow to my head/I don't want her alive/but I don't want her dead/What's got me talking that way?" The rest of his music shares this same awareness. Much of the Jack Logan lore that trickles down revolves around his tendency to get drunk. I think that's when he writes most of his music--I mean, let's face it, his band is called Liquor Cabinet. One of his songs, "Unscathed", is about a car crash that he gets into; he never says in the lyrics that he had been drinking before crashing the car, but I think it's safe to assume that he had been. In "Neon Tombstone" Logan sings "I spend most of my time/lyin' flat on my back," but he doesn't ask you to feel sorry for him--he can't remember how he got there anyway. You know how drunk people get really sad sometimes? Logan's music can be really sad too--he sings about his daughter who lives in Texas and how much he misses her, and how he's kind of scary and that girls sometimes avoid him when he walks by. The thing about his music is that his saddest songs are also the most upbeat and driving. He may be sad and lonely, but he sticks around his friends and gets drunk with them, which seems to make it all OK. In fact his music can be described as alternately irreverent and celebrating the emotion of sadness. Jack Logan may be the most incredible (and relatively unknown) songwriter/ musician in the country, but I think it's safe to say that it won't stay this way for long. I mean, let's face it, the guy's been on The Today Show, for chrissakes. Buy the new album, it's called "Mood Elevator." Listen to it over and over again, because you won't get sick of it. Tell people you know that you've got this great new guy for them to listen to named Jack Logan. They won't believe you. Force him on them--they'll thank you later.
