J. Geils Band • The J.Geils Band
There’s no better way to appreciate what made the J. Geils Band more than just a video-friendly hit machine than to drop the needle on the Speakers Corner reissue of the group’s eponymous debut album. The opening track, "Wait," comes on like a double-whiskey shot of the juke-joint R&B that made J. Geils Band shows something to line up for. Peter Wolf’s swagger starts out low-key as he tries to catch the eye of a barroom princess, but the proceedings heat up quickly with the blazing harp work of Richard "Magic Dick" Salwitz and the barrel house piano of Seth Justman. From there, the band slides from southern-fried funk ("Ice Breaker") to Rolling Stones-flavored road music ("Hard Drivin’ Man") and then sails into a faithfully spooky rendition of the John Lee Hooker classic "Serves You Right to Suffer." That solid stretch on the first side of this album demonstrates what made the early days of the J. Geils Band so good. They were an outfit that could turn on a dime and deliver stunning virtuosity with an effortlessness that only road-tested professionals can; they made gunslinging look easy. While a couple of paint-by-the-numbers instrumentals occasionally slow down the album’s momentum, those missteps don’t spoil the fun on this heartfelt rock ‘n’ blues disc. The J. Geils Band was engineered and mixed by the
legendary Jay Messina, whose encyclopedic credit list includes the likes of John Lennon,
Patti Smith and Aerosmith. Consequently, the folks at Speakers Corner had some good tape
to work with, and this pure-analog remaster stomps the flat-sounding CD [Atlantic
82806-2]. Magic Dick’s acrobatic harp riffs now have a weightier tone, and
Wolf’s vocals and Geils’s guitar licks are more palpably present. Bassist Danny
Klein and drummer Stephen Bladd’s rollicking rhythm work are reanimated with a
propulsive driving force, and the upper-register grain that can be heard on the digital
version has been replaced with a natural clarity. I haven’t heard an Atlantic
original of this LP, but I can’t imagine it would be easy to find an affordable copy
as flat and quiet as this excellent 180-gram Pallas pressing. |
hen news of John Warren Geils
Jr.’s death was announced back in 2017, most people immediately thought of MTV hits
like "Centerfold" and ‘Freeze-Frame." But others remembered him for
his bona-fide blues credentials. Back in 1972, Geils and his bandmates were respected
enough to be invited to sit in on the sessions that would become Buddy Guy and Junior
Wells Play the Blues. In a recent interview, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry remembered
worshiping the band during its electrifying barnstorm performances along the Eastern
Seaboard back in the late 1960s and early '70s.