There's a lot to be said for marijuana: Smoking it mellows out the mind and soothes the psyche, using it appeases symptoms of diseases like AIDS and glaucoma, and the plant itself can be used to make a bonanza of products. That said, there's nothing quite so boring as watching other people smoke pot. The conversation tends to drag, people laugh at jokes that aren't funny and words like "whoa" and "dude" pop up with disturbing frequency.
Unless you're prepared to get majorly stoned first, there's not much to recommend HEMPilation's 17 tracks. While each one celebrates the ganja, the smoke, the blunt -- with a hazy hit parade of stoner anthems resurrected by a relatively new crop of musicians -- it's clear that the players should have waited to light up until they were out of the studio.
(I mean, dude, even if those cock-rock guitar licks sounded awesome at the time, once the high wears off, you'll figure out it's just wanking off. Sure, it feels real good, but afterwards your hand is all sticky.)
The Black Crowes' version of Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" (with that bitchin' "Everybody must get stoned" chorus) takes you right back to the high school dance, complete with a mental image of hair flips and low-slung guitar posturing. Better is Blues Traveller's reworking of Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher," with John Popper's harmonica ably taking the place of horns. [TAG track two: 1:27 to 1:40]
Outside of a few players -- Cypress Hill, phoning in a version of "I Wanna Get High" straight off one of their Lollapalooza gigs, Ziggy Marley with one of the few originals here, "In the Flow," and 311's version of "Who's Got the Herb" (penned by the Bad Brains' HR) with its noodly rasta groove wrapped around the stony refrain of "skunk, indica, sativa, ariba" -- the bulk of the tracks here belong to the loser side of the pothead aesthetic.
David Peel and the 360s' "I Like Marijuana" features an all-time idiotic chorus, "Marijuana marijuana, hey hey get high" [TAG track four: 0:00 to 0:15]; Metalheads Sacred Reich sleepwalk through Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and Ian Moore's version of Muddy Waters' "Champagne and Reefer" is an overwrought mess, redeemed only by the Muddy Waters sample at beginning and end [TAG track ten: 5:39 to 5:54].
Still, small touches like that save the benefit album from being total red-eyed drivel. And hey, proceeds from the album do go to NORML (National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws), which is a good thing. Too bad that's more than can be said for the album as a whole.
By Julene Snyder