[Albums] Roger O'Donnell - The Truth in Me

One sunny Sunday suave Sceneless editor Billy Gray hands me a promo copy of the new solo disc by Roger O'Donnell, The Truth in Me.

I scan the press sheet. "An album made entirely on the Minimoog Voyager synthesizer". Oh dear, this sounds like it's going to be a laborious investigation into myriad sounds rather than an album with songs. Worse yet, the Voyager is monophonic. I'm not sure my brain can handle an album without chords.

"Former member of the Cure and Thompson Twins". Aren't there about 30 former members of the Cure? Who really gives a crap about the Thompson Twins?

Fast forward a couple of days. I'm at work, I have yet to listen to the album, but I am doing a little research:

A little prodding reveals O'Donnell helped record Disintegration, Bloodflowers and a couple others, but only helped write any material on one album. He was unceremoniously ejected from the band by Robert Smith in 2004 when Smith decided (again) that his philosophy wasn't jiving with people not named Simon [Gallup].

My phone rings. It's Shannon. It seems our dog Simon (really) thought it would be a good idea to taste the Roger O'Donnell promo disc. Apparently, he didn't like it too much. A pile of disc shards and paper were left in the middle of my living room, all topped off with a rhinoceros sized bowel movement. Absorb that for a moment: My dog hated O'Donnell's disc so much he destroyed it and took a shit on it.

Not being one to resign myself to any notion of fate, I decided to check out O'Donnell's MySpace page. Clearly my dog does not prefer 9 minute long explorations of the same basic musical theme on one instrument. Nor does he like the Moog. I'll keep that Wendy Carlos record on the high shelf from now on, I guess.