His solution to this conundrum is to seek out the young, comely lass and hook up with her again, which has all the romantic implications of a house cat that drank too much milk setting out to mark its territory. The guy in the song is mad that not just somebody, but anybody, could now see his old high school flame exposed, as if she should have been forced to wear four layers of clothing for the rest of her days after their backseat fidaddle. It is also a fairly sexist sentiment that runs through the lyrics. The song is a fun track, tied up with a whistle-coda and filled all over with Justman’s keyboards. He found out about it by looking through that naughty magazine, by the way, and the crux of his angst is that the whole world was getting a good hard look at his “homeroom angel” naked as the day she was born. That song was “Centerfold.” In it, Wolf seethes about realizing his high school sweetheart has decided to pose for the centerfold of a naughty magazine. It sported two hits, the title cut and a song that is so of-it’s-time that it probably has made itself impossible to be covered with a straight face. With EMI now secure that their acquisition of the band was not a mistake, they must have had some influence in keeping what had begun going: build up what worked on Love Stinks, scale back what were the more traditional aspects, and make a monster. They wouldn’t be so easily denied with their next entry. Geils Band back to the attention of rock radio which had been casually overlooking them later in the Seventies. “Love Stinks” wasn’t a #1 pop chart hit but brought The J. It depends on how you felt about the band prior to their transformation. Some might say it was a sell-out and others might call it an act of survival. They were still party rock and they still liked blues and soul, but they deferred it to get the recognition they needed. Overall, that is the song people most remember from the record and probably little else, but it was enough to reshape what they expected from the band. And who of a certain demographic has not (in a fit of insouciance or baldfaced jiltedness) wanted to blast the tune out very loudly? “I’ve been through diamonds, I’ve been through minks, I’ve been through it all!,” Wolf rants, bringing it down with a pissy groan, “Love stinks.” The pivot point comes from Justman’s keys, a leavener for what is arguably the group’s heaviest-sounding moment. Though more lighthearted and accessible, there is not much distance between the song and AC/DC’s “Back In Black,” another guitar stomp of the times. Yet the opening salvo of this new attitude came with Geils in full stomp-mode on the title track of 1980’s Love Stinks, only their second release from new label EMI. It is thanks mostly to vocalist Peter Wolf and keyboardist Seth Justman, the latter of the two becoming the most integral to their success with a large hand in the writing of their poppier material, and an array of synth-keys that would become more and more predominant in their sound. After a decade of solid work and middling achievement, they finally came into their own but didn’t sound quite like the band of old. Geils was also recognized as a pretty hot guitar-player, and yet neither member seemed as essential to what would become the group’s biggest period the “comeback” that essentially wasn’t. You can hear Magic Dick knock it out of the park on a cover of “Whammer Jammer” from the 1971 record The Morning After. ![]() The two primary elements of their sound during this period came from the guitar of the band’s namesake, (John) Geils and harmonica player Richard “Magic Dick” Salwitz. They could swing it and bring it, but they were goofy too, and would possibly have played for a keg of beer as readily as for straight pay. ![]() They were a bunch of white fellows that deeply loved this authentic sound but were, just as equally, the original party rockers (sorry, LMFAO). The band was less a hardcore soul-rock outfit than were, say, The Blues Brothers or The Commitments. ![]() Geils Band and closing with 1977’s Monkey Island, had a distinctive blues-r&b flavor but also had a jovial, freewheeling touch to identify itself with. Let’s get real though - unless you were already fans of the band, their Atlantic Records output was usually something you flipped past in the record racks on the way to something else. Many people knew about the band’s ’70s output and some of their rock radio hits from that time period, and by that accounting the “Bad Boys of Boston” were doing pretty well. The problem with that is there really wasn’t much of a comeback to speak of. I had originally set out to write an entry into our series Call It A Comeback, and it was to be about the J.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |