Booty Shoe II - Dave Cloud & The Gospel Of Power

For me, rock’n’roll is like my religion. Of course, other people have their own idea of religion. That’s up to them. But of course, I have to admit that relgious fervour goes back a long way. One well respected historian of religion has described the “shaman” as a specialist in ecstasy, able to "penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky" in a transcendent state.

It’s not surprising, then, that the word "shamanistic" has been used repeatedly over the years to describe the incendiary performances of Nashville's Dave Cloud and his band The Gospel of Power. Weekly late-night shows for the unenlightened Nashville masses quickly established Cloud as the Music City's enfant terrible, garnering diehard converts along the way.

Holding a dusty mirror to pop music's tawdry conventions, Cloud and his colleagues deftly dismember the Frankenstein's monster of modern musical excess. Their seminal 1999 release “Songs I Will Always Sing” received great reviews from around the world, including Wire magazine which said "he sounds like a cross between the acid-addled Roky Erickson and boozed beat writer, the late Charles Bukowski".

The first non-US release “Napoleon of Temperance”, which hit record stores in Europe on the Fire label in 2006, revisits selections from the two US-released albums, with the addition of a few brand new originals. The following year saw Cloud appearing on advertising for the US beer, Budweiser, commanding a band of musicians on both television and billboards.

Part of rock'n'roll's foundations stands on something a lot like the music of Dave Cloud – that is, a compulsion to make noise with an unabashed lustfulness. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.