Although a 2000-seat venue, the Cinderella Ballroom qualifies by evidence of its infamous “No dope-smoking, no beer sold after midnight” signage.
#J. GEILS BAND THE J. GEILS BAND ALBUM FULL#
It is with Full House that you would make the best-bar-band-in-history argument.
#J. GEILS BAND THE J. GEILS BAND ALBUM HOW TO#
Side two features the knock-down, drag-out slow blues “Serves You Right to Suffer” and closes out with tireless pounding of “Looking for a Love.” Musicians: if you want to know how to end an up-tempo rock ‘n’ roll jam, this is how it’s done. Side one of this record is some of the most hard-driving, tight and raucous fifteen minutes of live rock and roll you’ll find, and if you haven’t heard it in a while, saddle up and give it another spin. It is a monster set of music played at the Cinderella Ballroom in Detroit, a city that served as the band’s second home. One of the best live albums of any type is the classic J Geils Band album, Full House. Are they the best American bar band in rock ‘n’ roll history? The case could be made. A charismatic frontman, an enigmatic and reserved guitarist and a punishing rhythm section are similarities enough.
The Rolling Stones would qualify as a bar band in some definitions, and it is sometimes said that the J Geils Band was the United States’ answer to the Stones. There are high concept album bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, ELP and Yes, and then there are bar bands. Hardly anyone stateside else even comes close to Tyler or Wolf, and if you want to take that Gene Kelly, Ken Berry, Danny Kaye polished song and dance man into the rock idiom, it’s hard to imagine a non-instrumentalist frontman on either side of the Atlantic that put in a more accomplished or energetic performance than Peter Wolf from the J Geils Band. If there has ever been a better American front man in that tradition, it was from another band out of Boston, Aerosmith. In the classic strutting-with-a-straight- stand rock star avatar established and defined by Robert Plant and Mick Jagger, America had no finer offering in the category than Peter Wolf. Seth Justman joined on piano and organ in 1969, and that lineup would hold steady for 14 years and as many albums. Wolf had a band at the time - The Hallucinations - and was particularly fond of their drummer, Stephen Bladd Wolf proposed to bring him along into an amped-up, ramped-up version of what the J Geils Blues Band was already doing. A fast-talking DJ named Peter Wolf from the Bronx arrived in town and landed a job at Boston’s brand-new FM radio station, WBCN, and when Wolf heard the J Geils Blues Band at a Cambridge club one day, he saw the future. Fans of the band can probably guess these accompanists were Magic Dick and Danny Klein. J Geils himself was an acoustic slide guitarist who was popular in the Cambridge folk scene around that time, playing in an eponymous blues trio with a master harmonica player and an acoustic bassist. The J Geils Band formed in Boston, Massachusetts in the late ‘60s.
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