In 2001, John Kennedy compiled the early vinyl singles and album selections from his bands JFK and the Cuban Crisis, Love Gone Wrong and the Honeymooners.
17 years later, its follow-up retrospective collection is out now in all good record stores.
Leading music journalist and former Sydney Morning Herald writer Bernard Zuel has reviewed the set known as “Second Best: Greatest Bits Vol. 2″.
“Well of course John Kennedy would call the second set of his career songs collections “second best”. If he’d called it something like “the other bits”, “warmed up leftovers” or “oh no, not me again”, none of us would have been surprised,” Zuel writes. “This way he gets a play on words, a dig at himself, and a reminder he’s been around long enough to warrant at least two sets of favourite songs before we have stopped laughing: result.”
Kennedy and his band (with the current line-up of Love Gone Wrong drummer Peter Timmerman, ex-Wiggle Murray Cook on guitar and former Pop Mechanics’ leader Paul Scott on bass) blend pop, rock, folk and country, all topped with the uniqueness of Kennedy’s vocal and lyrics.
Zuel says, “Some of his lines have the double dose pleasure of being funny on first hearing and rather telling on second, an effect which is enhanced with a voice that sometimes just seems to be taking the piss. Even when it’s not. Speaking of his voice, yes, when he is not dropping down to a Johnny Cash-ish timbre he has always sounded a fair bit like Elvis Costello – which is what caught the ears of some of us way back when he first appeared as the presidential JFK & The Cuban Crisis.”
Read the entire review here at Bernard’s website: https://www.bernardzuel.net/single-post/2018/11/04/JOHN-KENNEDY-–-SECOND-BEST-REVIEW
OUT NOW on Foghorn Records through MGM.
Available on CD and digital platforms.
Connect with John Kennedy:
