Cat Stevens - Mona Bone Jakon

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Free Music Notes for Mona Bone Jakon

Free Music Review: He's got a Mona Bone Jakon (but it won't be lonely for long)
Hit: 5 Stars

At this point in his career, he had already released two albums' worth of good but largely unremarkable pop music (_Matthew and Son_ and _New Masters_). It's here, on _Mona Bone Jakon_, that he introduces the delicate-textured acoustic sound with which he is most identitifed.

It's hard to explain why I don't think the result, despite its tremendously high quality, is _quite_ as marvelous as the two albums that followed it. There's wonderful stuff on here, my personal favorites being "I Wish, I Wish," "Katmandu," and "Fill My Eyes." And I don't think there's a single really weak track. There's probably a matter of taste lurking in here somewhere; I just think his writing and playing got even crisper and cleaner on _Tea_ and _Teaser_.

At any rate, if you have this one and the next two, you have most of the "very best of" Cat Stevens already, never mind those other "best of" collections. Borrow _Buddha and the Chocolate Box_ from somebody and tape "Sun/C79" and "Oh, Very Young," and you'll have the rest of it.

(Not that his other stuff isn't _good_, but it's mostly not of the same quality -- though portions of _Catch Bull At Four_ come within inches of it. I don't have much patience with "fans" who tell us that the rest of us aren't "true" fans if we find "Foreigner Suite" to be much ado about nothing and don't especially care for _Izitso_. If we have to suspend our powers of discrimination and uncritically adore everything an artist emits, who wants to be a "true" fan of _anybody_? And what genuine artist would want such "fans"?)

Trivia time: this album was originally going to be entitled _The Dustbin Cried the Day the Dustman Died_; the album cover still reflects the earlier title. And "Mona Bone Jakon" was a little private nickname Cat had given to -- let's put it delicately -- a certain portion of his anatomy to which one does not ordinarily call public attention and about which he will undoubtedly not write any more songs now that he's a Muslim.

Speaking of which, here's a little more history for the uninitiated:

"Cat Stevens" was the stage name of Steven Georgiou, who was born in the U.K. in 1949 of a Cypriot father and a Swedish mother. Something of a musical prodigy, he released his first two albums well before he was twenty years old as was on his way to becoming a "pop star." He then fell victim to a terrible case of tuberculosis. When he returned to singing and songwriting, he had taken a decidedly more reflective turn and found himself delivering absolutely beautiful stuff with no apparent commercial potential. That was fine with him; he was no longer particularly interested in commercial success. But, perhaps ironically, his delicate confessional songs and his deliberate avoidance of "commercial-ness" turned him into a huge international star.

Well, he eventually (1977) became a Muslim and adopted the name "Yusuf Islam" (after the biblical dream-interpreter Joseph). At about that time he also left the music industry. He has since recorded a couple of albums about Islam, but his last collection of commercial music was _Footsteps In The Dark_ (ostensibly a second volume of his "greatest hits," but in fact a set of lesser-known favorites and a handful of tunes not available elsewhere).

You can feel safe in ignoring the comments from people who think he has become "rigid" and/or "intolerant." The simple fact is that nearly every Cat Stevens album (the exceptions being his first two) is filled with "spiritual seeking," and he eventually found what he was looking for in Islam. His "recent" (actually, 1989-90) remarks on Salman Rushdie were not what you probably think they were (and in particular he didn't call for Rushdie's death). He's no more "rigid" or "intolerant" than the rest of us; he's simply a religiously observant Muslim, that's all. There's a problem here only for people who think seekers should never get around to finding, or that traditional religion is more "dogmatic" than irreligion.

His songs don't need to "transcend" their creator in order to be great; there's no need to run down Yusuf in order to elevate Cat. And since they _were_ written during his "seeker" stage, they're suitable for everybody -- future Muslims or not.

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