Flamin' Groovies - Jumpin' in the Night

Jumpin' in the Night (1979) ***

More of the same, with a grand total of six originals and seven covers this time.  The tunes flowing from the pen of Jordan/Wilson are still fine, if no all-time great knockouts.  It starts off strongly with the jittery title track, which segues into the bruisingly Lennon-ish "Next One Crying."  The homesick "First Plane Home," and the joyously patriotic "In the U.S.A." flow well into each other thematically - got those London homesick blues, eh boys?  "Yes I Am," and "Tell Me Again," are again fine British Invasion originals, but there's not a lot of territory the Groovies have not well-mined on the previous two LPs.  The covers are particularly weak this time out.  Three Byrds covers are two too many, and while the band seems to have based their entire late '70s career on rewriting "Please Please Me," it's not one of their best stabs at the Fabs.  And "Absolutely Sweet Marie"?  What business do the Groovies have of covering Dylan?  Totally out of their comfort zone.  Speaking of which, most bizarre of all is Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London".  Idiosyncratic novelty tunes often verge on the uncoverable, and Zevon's fluke hit of the previous year was no exception - especially minus the swinging ragtime piano that was the musical bedrock of the original.  Rather pointless if you ask me, but so have the Groovies been since 1976.  Ouch - that was a mite too harsh.  Look, these are pretty groovy little rock'n'roll albums if you're looking for nothing other than a lightweight mix of oldies and like-minded originals.  I enjoy'em.  But that doesn't mean I have to take them seriously.

Completing this third and weakest installment of the late '70s trilogy, the Groovies wisely called it a day.  Well, for the most part - rockers still gotta earn their bread with reunion shows, and who's gonna begrudge'em?

Flamin' Groovies - Now

Now (1978) ***

The previous album had kicked off with the immortal "Shake Some Action," and this followup begins with a cover of "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," which should underscore all you need to know concerning the differences between the two LPs.  I should end my review right here, because this is not a terribly interesting album about which there is a lot to say.  Essentially it is a carbon copy of the 1976 LP, the main difference being that while that album was bogged down slightly by a handful too many covers, this album is overwhelmed by the amount of sweatin' oldies.  Of the 14 tracks, only six are Jordan/Wilson compositions, one of which is the fine, deliberately mindless Dave Edmunds co-write "Yeah My Baby," which choogles along like a glue-huffing CCR.  The other Edmunds/Jordan/Wilson co-write, "Good Laugh Man," is similarly fine if insubstantial pop.  There's nothing here as life-changing as "Shake Some Action," though the snarling kiss-off "Don't Put Me On," comes close, with a venomous vocal and deranged fuzz-rockabilly solo - classic Groovies.  But oh, those covers.  Byrds, fine.  Beatles, finer - in fact "There's a Place," is definitive, gushing with energy (the original was cut near the end of a day-long session and the Fabs delivered a draggy, hoarse take that lacks all drive).  Paul Revere & the Raiders - um, OK.  "House of Blue Lights" and "Move It" - yeah, yeah, go on do your boogie raveup thing.  King Curtis - now that's what I call R&R, baby.  And while picking an undervalued Stones obscurity ("Blue Turns To Grey") was a choice idea, a sitar-less take on "Paint It Black" was not.  It's all harmless fun (moreso for the band than the listener, I suspect) and the Groovies do put their unique stamp on all the covers - how could they not with those patented six-strings?  But it's basically an up and coming bar band's set list - interspersing a handful of originals with the crowd-pleasing oldies - and that is simply not acceptable from a band capable of much more.

Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action

Shake Some Action (1976) ****

Just in time for punk, the Groovies minus Roy Loney had successfully retooled their sound and image as British Invasion revivalists, as one can tell from the sharp Mod suits on the cover.  Dirty hippie long-hair begone, it's bowl-cuts from now on.  The first installment of their late '70s Power-Pop Trilogy is easily the best; this and the two follow-ups are practically the same three albums in terms of style and approach.  The only substantial differences are the strength of the original material and how heavily the band relies on covers.  While the next two albums went overboard with reliance on oldies, only 5 of these 14 songs are covers.  Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Lovin' Spoonful, W.C. Handy - they're slight but fun, the definition of harmless filler.  Which is a pity since nearly every single original present in the Bicentennial Groovies' lineup either rocks, rules, or tears out your heartstrings, sometimes all three.  I went on about the title track and "You Tore Me Down," in my review of the previous Groovies' release, so no more here when I could be discussing "Yes It's True," a note-perfect recreation of a lost Help! era album track.  Or "I'll Cry Alone," which does the same for depressively moody Gene Clark era Byrds - perfect for moping around the dark streets alone, yet it's a driving "Paint It Black," style surger.  "I Saw Her," throws in some incense & peppermints psychedelia, while "Teenage Confidential," essays early '60s teen breakup balladry.   "Please Please Girl," and "I Can't Hide," come from the same place musically, both hyperkinetic jangle-pop that jumps out of its skinny jeans.  And have I mentioned that Cyril Jordan, now defacto leader of the Groovies, has polished to a T the perfect guitar tone for this sort of music?  It's light, not in the least bit heavy or distorted - clean and crisp, jingle-jangling like a harder rocking Byrds.  Not since Big Star have guitars sounded so shimmery, shiny, and colorful, with not a hint of stereotypical muscle-car '70s blooze macho, but still rockin'.  If not for the covers, I'd be tempted to rate this higher, slavish revivalism and all - these aren't just pale copycats of British Invasion classics, they stand up to the best of the Dave Clark Five and Hollies in their own right.

Oh, and have I mentioned the title track?  BLOODY FREAKIN' GENIUS.

  

 

Flamin' Groovies - The Rockfield Sessions

The Rockfield Sessions (1989) ***

Like a lot of great bands, the Groovies failed to make it in America, so they broke up (goodbye, Roy Loney), reconstituted the band with new members (hello, Chris Wilson), decamped overseas, and attempted a change in musical direction.  These 7 tracks, produced by simpatico retro-rocker Dave Edmunds in England in late '72, are the missing link between the greaser rock of the early Groovies and the power-pop jingle-janglers that the late '70s Groovies retooled themselves as.  4 covers and a scant 3 originals may not seem like much, until you hear what originals they may be:  "Shake Some Action,"  may indeed, without a trace of hyperbole from your humble reviewer, rank as the finest rocker ever performed or penned - at least it seems so while it's on, and that's what counts.  A vintage Byrds riff put across with the simmering intensity of vintage '66 Stones, sneering yet exasperated teen angst lyrical attitude - I'm sure that's all you need to make it alright.  In an alternate universe (my house) they overplay this as much as "Satisfaction" and Led Zeppelin IV.  "You Tore Me Down," - hipsters today may be most familiar from the Yo La Tengo cover; anyway, it's to shimmering power-pop what "Shake Some Action," was to pure classic rock - sheer perfection, revamping and rivalling Lennon at his '64/65 bitter-young-man-iest.  Both of those numbers wound up in nearly exact same form on the '76 Shake Some Action LP, which renders this EP somewhat less than essential for all but completists.  But wait, I haven't mentioned the third original yet, and amazingly, it's yet another classic - not merely a Groovies classic, but a great rock classic, simple and shut.  The slide-guitar bloozefest that is "Slow Death," wouldn't have fit in with the sound and image of late-period Groovies, but that's certainly the only reason it never wound up on a proper LP.  It's easy to hear why it's one of their most-covered tunes - it rocks the post-hippie modern world blues harder and tastier than all but the title track of the previous Teenage Head LP.  That leaves the four covers, only one of which can be called essential:   "Tallahassee Lassie," which likewise out-rocks anything off of Flamingo, sonically bridging the gap between "Can't You Hear Me Knockin', " Stones and "Surfin' Bird," Ramones.  Yeah, it rocks that hard, and yeah, I betcha didn't know such a gap existed.  Well, someone had to fill it.   The other three covers don't match that rockin' intensity, but they're good fun, and that never hurt nobody.  Only seven songs, two of which wound up on a later album, but they're all good songs, and there's more of'em here than on either Supersnazz or Flamingo (separately, not combined).

Groove on, man.  Or flame on?  I forget which.

Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head

 

Teenage Head (1971) ***1/2

Every single review of the Groovies' third long-player mentions the Stones' Sticky Fingers and the urban legend (?) of how Mick & Keith claimed that the Groovies actually did the Stones better, so I'm getting that out of the way first.  Not that I blame critics:  this indeed sounds like exactly like the American twin, or at least spittin' cousin, to the Stones' classic LP.  And while it is inferior (what were the Glimmer Twins smokin'?), being far too short at barely half an hour and nine songs long, and with less consistently knockout material (the title track is really the only true classic for the ages), it's not that far off from what the Stones were doing in the late '60s/early '70s - which means it's near-classic, swamp'n'gin-soaked, skeevy sleaze-blues & rock of the greasiest and grittiest order.  Easily the finest of the original Groovies' three early albums, with Cyril Jordan grease-frying his guitar in a vat of insanely overabused slide licks, but it's his songwriting partner Roy Loney who steals the show.  It was easy to not pay much attention to the lead singer on the first album, and pay mild attention to him when he did his funny exaggerations on the second LP, but now Loney's grown up into a real presence that you can't ignore.  The Elvis sendup ("Evil Hearted Ada") excesses the great man's excess with its ridiculously overcooked reverb and hiccups, and he even does a credible job of conveying some of the coiled menace inherent in Robert Johnson's "32-20".  That latter influence is more important than the former:  growing into the blues as opposed to the previous album's rockabilly, the album as a whole also displays considerable more variety than the one-dimensional Flamingo.  There's a fine balance between slower numbers such as the Charlie Chaplin inspired (?) "City Lights," (another excellent vocal performance - Loney operates almost as a method actor on this album, slipping into different character voices on each tune), and harder-charging rockers such as the ferocious title track, which both embodies and sends up angsty, angry, lustful teenage rebellion.  The amped-up wall of blooze guitars chomp at the heels like gallopping greyhounds, but the granite-shattering harmonica (of all things) rocks even harder, especially on the wallopping break.  "Yesterday's Numbers," is the Sticky-est track, with a jangle-blues guitar riff that's a blatant nod to "Street Fighting Man," and while's it's not quite up to that level of primo Stones, it's still an excellent growler, with Loney's tone attempting (and succeeding at) both Jaggeresque seduction and Jaggeresque sneering with a sinister smirk.  Two other tracks stand out, one being a Randy Newman cover that's expectedly well-constructed and lyrically hilarious ("Have You Seen My Baby?" a clueless cuckold's lament), and the other, the closer "Whiskey Woman," for sounding ominously close in melody and atmosphere to Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," - two years before Dylan released his tune.  (Knowing what we now know about Dylan's tendency for 'borrowing' traditional folk to contemporary pop material, I doubt that was a coincidence.)  And there's not much else to say about the rest - like I said, only 9 tunes that barely make the half hour mark, mighty skimpy if you ask me.  The reissue adds over a half dozen bonus tracks of oldies covers:  not particularly interesting, as those were obviously Flamingo leftovers, but they're mostly mindless fun and do their part in extending the running time to twice its previous length. 

Flamin' Groovies - Flamingo

Flamingo (1970) ***

Are you ready for some good rockin' tonite?  The opener, which yes indeed is entitled "Gonna Rock Tonite," tells you all you really need to know:  this is Regressive Rock with a capital R, a self-consciously gonzo-primitive throwback to the primordial psychobilly stew years before the Cramps were moaning about strychnine and human flies in CBGBs.  Yet once again the Groovies haven't tightened their songwriting chops as tightly as they've screwed in their grooves.  "Gonna Rock Tonite," boogies as mindlessly as its title, which certainly indicates a calculated self-consciousness to such regressive boogie - true boogie morons would never rock this stoopidly.  Bad news first:  there's a cliffdrop in terms of variety, as the Groovies concentrate on one facet of their sound - good rockin'! - with a couple of sidesteps into excessively sneering country send-ups (the faux-Jagger vocal in "Childhood's End" is literally painful in its smirking insincerity, managing to make the real Jagger of "Faraway Eyes," sound like George Jones in comparison.  And that was one of the most condescending of Stones country send-ups!) and a flaky, recorded-in-a-toilet-stall excursion into pop-psych, "She's Falling Apart".  OK, good news next:  the Groovies have finally discovered their trademark guitar tones - their raison d'être, if you pardon my French.  No, they don't rock as hard as the MC5 (catching a concert of them inspired this change in musical direction), but they do so a lot more colorfully.  Cyril Jordan's guitar snaps and bends with rubber-band crunch - yeah, I know, that's a poor and contradictory description, so I'm just going to fall back on the rock journo cliche re: dancing about architecture, because I'm lazy and not very good at describing things.  What do you take me for, a musicologist?  If I knew more about music I'd probably bore you to death, anyway.

Lyrics are more my speed - I was an English major, y'know. (ROCK CRITIC CLICHE ALERT!  90% of the rock critics that have huffed cough syrup in the shadow of Lester Bangs have been English majors!  Except for Bangs himself, I think.  I'm pretty sure that guy barely had a high school education.  Hell, just look at his stuff, he could barely write even when he was on drugs.)    It's the lyrics, along with the zippy guitar tones and hi-NRG, that make this record amount to more than just Sha Na Na with worse haircuts.  (No wonder these guys never became famous.  Just look at that cover!)  "Gonna Rock Tonite," aside (and it was meant to be mindless), the words to the tunes are fairly clever (all originals except for "Keep a Knockin' " which is actually kind of pointless).  Sure, Jerry Lee Lewis would have lusted after his "Second Cousin," but he'd never have been so explicit.  And "Comin' After Me," is a wryly humorous send-up worthy of Chuck Berry's pen, satirizing druggy paranoia with uproarious lyrics about getting pneumonia from holes in your shoe and all your friends telling you to give up the glue.  And then....uh, yeah, well like I said, the songwriting's still too damn thin.  And the rent's too damn high.  So what?  You hear me complainin'?  The sound's good, and if you want a whole album of mindless post-Yardbirds boogie raveups (with a couple of crappy country songs half-baked in for token variety), then you could do worse.  If you expect or ask for anything more, such as depth, originality, artistic ambition, etc., you're barking up the wrong pool hall.  The reissue adds some bonus tracks, but it's all the same - just six more slices of greaseball psychobilly.  Man, I think this album just gave me heartburn.

Flamin' Groovies - Supersnazz

 

Supersnazz (1969) ***

1) The songwriting's thin - out of the 10 originals and 3 covers, not a single knockout.  Nearly all of them score respectable base runs, but none hit'em out of the park or score home runs.

2) The major-label production sands the edges too soft - not a lot of grit in this boogie, which matters when you're rollickin' bar band.

3) The band has an overboard of influences and the eclecticism seems to overwhelm the band:  as an Encyclopedia of Roots Rock, the variety keeps the album from ever sticking in a dulls-rut, but where do the Groovies seem to want to take those influences?  The resultant sprawl can either be taken as assured exploration of American roots'n'roll or confusion as to what sort of band the band intends to be.  Lessee -

Ragtime
'50s rock'n'roll (lots of that - mostly that, as you might expect)
Folk balladry
Hippie pop
Country & Western (more Western than Country - the Groovies did hail from Frisco)
Showtime vaudeville
Repetitive hippie pop chant ("Around the Corner," which works as a goodbye kiss and little else)

....anything I forgot?  Probably, but track-by-track reviews are kind of a chore.  This pleasant and enjoyable album doesn't live up to the promise of the cartoon cover - it's less a barrel of firecrackers than a head-noddin' toe-tapper.  And while as I noted, none of the individual songs will bowl you over, the album works a good time magic definitely greater than the sum of its parts.  The Groovies' debut aims for little more or less than a boogie hoedown, and sustains that lighthearted groove throughout without any real bummers disrupting the consistent flow.  Its failure to attract much notice at the time (the Groovies were dropped by Epic after this epic fail) is due not only to no true knockout singles material ("Laurie Did It," comes closest), but the nature of the scene and its time.  Only mild traces of Haight-Ashbury psychedelia rubbed their patchouli over the Groovies' grooves, aside from the groovy hipster name.  The Groovies come across as more mellow and laid-back (man) than they would shortly become in their classic incarnation, which does fit in snugly with the hippie zeitgeist:  it amounts essentially to late '60s roots-rock revivalism, with updated post-Hendrix guitar tones and slightly updated spaced-age sensibilities.  The band would groove much groovier (groan), but this ain't a half-bad start.