You may not know but the great chief has a MySpace music page. He does. It’s been up for over a year now. You can purchase songs from his Sessions with Mick CD along with his recent volume of poetry for a mere fifty bucks. The proceeds from sales go to support his various charitable ventures, one of which is the Association on American Indian Affairs. Kilmer is a good Indian like that – looking out for his brethren by kicking a few dollars their way when he can sell a CD/poetry book or two.

We obtained our copies from a Kilmer associate who maintains his official MySpace page as well as his official website. She informed me he wanted NAICA to have a copy of the CD on the house, free of charge. That was a nice gesture. Now for the not so nice gesture that will be this review of his CD:

Imagine your dad goes into semi-retirement. He’s at a loss for what to do with himself and all his retirement time and money. He gets out his old poetry notebook (he took a few writing classes in college; he always thought he had the goods), his beat up old Fender, dusts off the piano you refused to practice on as a child, and then…god help us…purchases some recording equipment that he installs in the fucking living room along with his drinkin' buddies. His buddies are musicians themselves who happen to be out of work too, and who tolerate your dad's noodling guitar and quasi-blues inflected moans, all because he foots the beer tab.Hell, he practically established his own brewery right in the kitchen just to get these guys to hang around and jam. That is what Sessions with Mick amounts to, an extended jam session with your somewhat talented dad who's bored with his life because he can't decide if he's going to continue working or not.

Note to the great Cherokilmer: Lose the weight chief and get an audition for a real part like the last good one you did in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

So, about the songs themselves, they aren't altogether horrible especially since Kilmer makes fun of himself in a few, as he rightfully should. For example, in the rousing foot-tapper Pig Tails, a tune that could easily slide into limited rotation on the local Easy Listening station, he claims to be "pulling pig tails, reading nautical charts; singing bad blues while out for a walk." Then he entreats us to "listen to the nightingale," though he doesn't say why. Why should we listen to the nightingale, and if we do, what might we expect to hear? Questions like these arise time and again whilst listening to the songs on this demo CD. Perhaps these questions point to the abstract specificity of the great one’s poetic stylings, but I must beg clarification or at least another clue, like, who exactly is the “whale” that cuckolded him in the first place? Cindy Crawford? Daryl Hannah? The only time either one of these ladies was whale-like was when they were pregnant and Daryl never has been. Who, dammit, who is the cuckolding whale!?

The next song on the playlist is the cryptic True Friends. I rather quite like this song as it is probably the best non-Morrison inflected vocal performance on the entire CD, which only has six songs, so that’s saying something special. I also like it because the lyrics belie a paranoid/solipsistic streak on Kilmer's part and there is nothing more entertaining than pointing out the solipsism of others.

“…one more mortal has let me down, I’m alone with my rhyming in an unknown town. Alone with poetry and foreign foot ball on hotel television, text message from a troubled kept woman.”

You have to give it to Val, he does have a flair for the dramatic! The best lines in this song come toward the end in which he wants to ask just one question of a mysterious, vacuous man, "how could you not see my value?"

Honestly, I thought he was referring to director Joel Schumacher who famously declared he’d never work with Kilmer again for as long as he lived after directing him in the most abysmal incarnation of the Batman movie franchise. I blame Schumacher and Nicole Kidman for that mess. But upon further listening, I believe True Friend is about Kilmer himself who seems to be saying to no one other than himself, "Dude, stop with the cheating, over-eating, self-hating behavior. You are talented. You are worthy of love!"

What I want to say to him is, “You are great, you are! Just stop singing please!”

The next few songs on the CD are barely worth mentioning except to say that if your goal is to get a record deal do not put fucking Christmas songs on your demo and for god's sake do not claim that all children are beautiful. They are not. That, my friend, is a fallacy that should be put to rest. If the parents are unattractive chances are their children will be too, obviously. But one more ditty deserves a comb-through, if only to clarify Kilmer's trite declarations about life and love. We All Need is a a slow blues jam that treats us to the worst imitation of Jim Morrison that Kilmer ever put on record. Seriously, guttural, yet soft, moans into the microphone a la Light My Fire coupled with the idea that "... yeah ... we ... all ... need ....... some-bod-ayyyyyyy." Sure, we all need somebody...to wash the dishes, cook us food, do our laundry, and give us an allowance. I remember a time when we called this somebody "Mom" or "Dad," but nowadays it's just, you know, somebody. Unless Kilmer cleverly means "some body" in which case I think that used to be called "a one night stand." I think they're calling it "a hook up" these days. Anyway, you can be sure that if the great one does mean "some body" he wants that body to be filled with the holy Christian Science spirit!

To summarize, the CD's not altogether bad, but it was clearly meant for fans who would listen to it with the hope they can one day sit at his feet alongside a campfire on the ranchavation by the Pecos river and listen to him bleat out cryptic paeans to love, children, and the Christian Science body.

Image courtesy Columbia-Tristar Pictures.