J. Geils C/D

Taking Sides: J. Geils "Love Stinks" vs Def Leppard "Love Bites"

I just know the song...I don't own an JGB albums...it was on a jukebox of a bar I used to go to alot..

And as for Freeze-Frame: Bob T. and I cranked this album the fuck up while we washed the limousine that later we drove to the prom with our dates Velvet and Polly, so therefore it is one of the greatest albums ever, it was the prime Seth Justman-as-new-wave-songwriter-of-all-time era, "Centerfold" and "Piss on the Wall" and "Angel in Blue" (there's some great faux-country-doowop for ya), and the drum breakdown on "Flamethrower" and the horns on "Freeze-Frame" oh mama it's all coming back, Polly wore pale yellow and was very pretty, Velvet was slammin' in coral, actually our dads drove the limo and we just lounged in back, stylin'. Nineteen-eighty-goddamn-two.

xpost

At any rate, several years later they became my first "favorite band" because my math teacher and basketball coach loved them in grade school, and I thought he was cool. So I bought every last recording of theirs. In retrospect, they have classic moments, but aren't exactly "classic." That said, if every city's gotta have one band that's "theirs" (this one being Boston's), I'll take one with Monkey Island, Sanctuary, Blow Your Face Out and Freeze Frame over Cleveland's Michael Stanley Band any day.

and bloodshot is ace,
fakey reggae, stompy rock,
"throw it off the bridge!"

i suppose that's possible, but growing up in boston, you were basically led to believe that j. geils was the most classic of all clasic rock bands. that woovah groovah ladder of your love intro to "musta got lost" was to boston radio what "stairway to heaven" and "free bird" were to radio on the rest of the planet.

the other song that got mad play was "give it to me."

Ah, I see. Sorry about the pedantry then.

"Ain't Nuthin' But A Houseparty" — stone cold classic and WBCN call theme on TV for what seemed like decades.

except for detroit, where seger's "turn the page" was. (and again, where the live "musta got lost" was not far behind at all.)

danke danke

There's a great story or two about Wolf's Boston DJ days in Fred Goodman's 'Mansion on the Hill.'

And "Flamethrower" was likewise big on WOWI, the superb black radio station where I grew up in Norfolk, Va.

This is a song about L-O-V-E,
and if you abuse it yer goin to lose it
and if you lose it yer goin to abuse and
if you abuse it you aint going to be able to choose it
cuz you aint going to have it further on down the line
and things aint going to be so fine
and yer going to be sitting there on your little machine
tryin to look and keep it clean and
You’re going to be home playing bingo all night all alone
and that's why your sittin there by the telephone
and you know that she aint goin to call you!

So you put on the TV and you're watchin Johnny Carson
segueing right into the Tomorrow show
but that don't got the go so you turn it off ya turn on the radio,
the radio don’t' seem to get the click so you say
"Hey Man, I can't lickety split"
You start to open up a little book
and there's somethin there you got to overlook
and you say "BABY, you know there's somethin on my mind!
You say "Baby there's somethin on my mind -
I know that you're home and I know you aint all alone!"

So you start walking over to her house
and you get over to her house
and you walk over to her door and
you start poundin on her door and you say
"Open up the door bitch!”
This is the wooba gooba with the green teeth, let me in!!"

Well, she opens up the door
and then you just kinda walk up to her and say
"Baby", (say Baby!) you look up way up at her green mascara
and you say "Oh my darling,
you know her and me was at the party as friends -
do not believe what they say
that's only gossip that they tellin ya -
a wise crack of lies!
You say Darling!!!

Take your big curls and squeeze them down Rotumba -
What's the name of the chick with the long hair?
(Rapunzle!) Hey Rapunzle!
Hey Raputa! Raputa the Buta!
Hey Raputa the Buta flip me down your hair let me climb
up to the ladder of your love!!
Because this is the wooba gooba sayin to ya
"Love comes once and when it comes
you better grab it fast cuz sometimes the love
you grab aint going to last and
I believe I musta,
You know I think I musta,
You know baby I think I musta,
You know I think I musta,
I musta got lost!!!"

I did see Peter Wolf live about three years ago and it was pure fire - he still had it, telling stories and continually alluding to his ex-wife, Faye Dunaway (yes, that one)...

100 excellent spoken intros

By the way: CLASSIC, although I find their LPs a bit spotty. (I always tune out the too-slow straight blues.) My favourite: Freeze Frame, a surprising choice, given my usual '70s leanings.

Uh, apparntly it already DID make a nice addition - two yrs ago.

"Come Back" on Love Stinks rocks entire solar systems.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, April 17, 2003 6:35 AM (6 years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RxPXrOr2SM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el9epCgvEcE

Better version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCINR2Nlep8

Wish there were some vintage clips out there...

I've started pulling out my old Geils LPs (as in, pre-Sanctuary) in the past month or so -- Monkey Island and Nightmares (And Other Tales From the Vinyl Jungle) so far. Liked them both, but I gotta say, not as much as I expected to -- maybe I just wish the band kicked harder or something? Still a little confused about why Monkey Island is (or at least used to be) considered their early classic. Guess just because it seems kind of dark, with the title track (which I suppose is supposed to sound reggae maybe?) and "Wreckage" and all. Liked that one more overall, I guess, for the overriding mood, though Nightmares has "Detroit Shakedown" and "Must Of Got Lost" (more replayable without the interminable live monologue intro mentioned above tbh) and the Shorty Long/Pigmeat Markham update "Funky Judge" and the I guess Screamin' Jay Hawkins update "Nightmares," which is mainly Wolf doing his old-school race-music DJ rap thing on Halloween. Maybe somebody should compile all his old "raps" on one record; give or take Steve Tyler (another Bostonian, wonder why) seems he was more ready than any other classic rock guys when hip-hop came along. Don't know if he ever did anything about it, though; "Flamethrower" maybe, and wasn't Lights Out supposed to be sort of hip-hoppy? Haven't heard it in decades. Pretty sure "Oo-Ee-Diddley-Bop!", one of the singles, was a sort of rap thing, albeit basically based on an Army marching cadence.

Dave Marsh on Lights Out, 1985: "On a few of these tracks, Wolf and collaborator Michael Jonzun come closer to merging hard rock and the new street music than anything this side of 'Rock Box' itself."

No idea whether he's exaggerating; I remember thinking the LP sounded pretty compromised back then, though I'm not sure how much I actually listened to it. Still, he's with the Jonzun Crew guy, so who knows?

Parke Puterbaugh: "Teaming up with Jonzun has allowed Wolf to bridge the gap between the good-time, juke-joint rock and soul of the '50s and '60s (where his own roots lie) with the street-smart inner-city techno-funk of the present."

Christgau said current Ashford & Simpson and Chaka Khan albums actually had funkier electro-beats, but he liked the Motown-like ballads anyway, and gave the album a B+. Guess now I'll buy it if I see a copy for $1.

I've started pulling out my old Geils LPs (as in, pre-Sanctuary) in the past month or so -- Monkey Island and Nightmares (And Other Tales From the Vinyl Jungle) so far. Liked them both, but I gotta say, not as much as I expected to -- maybe I just wish the band kicked harder or something?

You're missing the better pieces.

First three albums, s/t, The Morning After and Live -- Full House, the latter of which is the hardest most high energy thing in the catalog. On the first album and for the live one, they turned "Serves You Right to Suffer" into a metal dirge.

Nightmares was pretty iffy, House Party has its moment, mostly for the title cut.

Blow Your Face Out is one from the early period that you still see a lot in stores. It was a double live that was good, but not quite the wallop of Full House.

I was a big J. Geils fan. Even covered "Floyd's Hotel," which was from The Morning After on my blog late last year. You can Google it.

Picked up a couple LPs relevant to this thread in the past month from dollar bins, and finally got around to listening to them this week.

J. Geils Band Showtime! -- "historic live album" (the cover says) from 1982. Post-Love Stinks/Freeze Frame, I'm thinking they were basically a studio band by this point, just a lot slicker than in the '70s, and it shows -- way more horns than guitars even in previously fairly heavy-ish songs, my ears tell me, and only in non-hit "Stoop Down #39" (from Nightmares) and maybe the closing cover of "Land Of A Thousand Dances" (which goes into a sort of James Brown vamp) do you hear much musicianly interplay or possible spontaneity going on. Still, the slickness doesn't bother me much; selection makes for a very playable album. "Love Rap" at the end of Side One is 5:14 of Peter Wolf standup comedy jive-talk about Adam and Eve, embarrassingly minstrel-like in its attempts at blackness; he works in Rapudah the Beyoodah stuff, No Anchovies stuff, lame Cheech & Chong style pot jokes about getting the munchies, etc. Odd thing is how Side One ends with the word "love," and then "Love Stinks" on Side Two starts with the word "stinks" -- weird that they split it up like that.

Lights Out, Wolf solo LP from '84 -- yeah, not nearly as loaded with Michael Jonzun electrofreakazoid beats as often claimed (by people other than Christgau) at the time: Only "Mars Need Women" (how many bands have done songs with that title? There's even one on the new Rob Zombie album!) and maybe "Oo-ee-diddley-bop!" come anywhere near Jonzun Crew levels, though closer "Billy Big Time" is the biggest funky surprise -- a sequel to Electrifyin' Mojo hit "Flamethrower," sounds like, possibly with a decent rebel story attached. The rest is mainly reasonably crafty Prince-age crossover pop, ballads (not as Motowny as Xgau suggested, but still nice) and more upbeat trifles like the title-track hit and "Crazy" (sort of Wolf's version of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right" in that he keeps telling some girl how crazy he is but you never buy it at all.) He also covers Billie Holiday's suicidal show blues "Gloomy Sunday," for some reason; maybe he was inspired by the Lydia Lunch version from a few years before. Still, overall, another real good example of how spirited so much mainstream pop sounded in '84.

Need to pull out the black self-titled one from 1970 next, I promise.

Never gave half a thought to JGB until someone gave me a copy of Full House Live. Sweet Georgia Brown! Who'da thunk the best bar band in the world would get a chance to lay down a slab o' glory at the top of their game like that? It's one of those things that's so unexpectedly wicked-awesome that I don't actually even want to hear anything else by them lest it break the spell.

"River Blindness" remains one of the strangest songs ever recorded by a top 40 band.

What about "No Anchovies Please"? That's among the weirdest songs I've ever heard, and yet it was the B-side to "Love Stinks."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-SgGHlZXQc&noredirect=1

Is Magic Dick featured on any of their most famous songs?

The riff on Centerfold is harmonica and guitar. I actually think Justman folded him into their pop material in a really clever way usually.

"River Blindness" remains one of the strangest songs ever recorded by a top 40 band.

Totally agree. As an 8 y/o, the lyrics to that song totally weirded me out.

Yeah I bought that LP when I was 12 and that song did my head in.

Wow! "Freeze Frame" is a fantastic album. Why isn't this a classic?

the only dud is "Rage in a Cage"

I was with you until you called "Rage in a Cage" a dud. It's the best song on the record.

yeah wtf? harmonica riff is all-time

I've wanted to hear a metal cover for nearly 30 years. That riff would translate beautifully.

is it me, or is this album very Oingo Boingo (except good)?

Seth Justman bravely paving the way for "Put 'Em On The Glass."

Rage is so awesome. That was my favorite track on the lp when I was a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrV80UzFcXA&sn

Peter Wolf demonstrates how to win friends and influence people

https://twitter.com/Lowenaffchen/status/742189620423720962

Didn't he get one of those Jann penned 5-star reviews in the 90s?

Notwithstanding the crazy list of demands, I find that whole story kind of endearing.

RIP.

http://www.wcvb.com/article/guitarist-known-as-j-geils-found-dead-in-massachusetts-home/9263211

RIP. It was always weird to me how he was like the fourth best known member of the band named after him. But a fine R&B guitarist.

RIP. It was always weird to me how he was like the fourth best known member of the band named after him. But a fine R&B guitarist.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, April 11, 2017 7:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/j-geils-band-tour-2014/

got a real soft spot in my heart for the dragged-into-the-style "new wave" LP Love Stinks, gonna miss the dude

What Tipsy said. Wolf fronted the band, Justman co-wrote most of their songs, Magic Dick blew harp.... which left their namesake to play guitar, which he did really, really well.

In my youth I saw a double bill with Peter Frampton (basically doing the same show that would become Frampton Comes Alive) and then J. Geils. Frampton was a tough act to follow in those days, but Geils came out and kicked the party into overdrive. It occurs to me this was about the time Blow Your Face Out was recorded, so that was probably more or less the setlist that night. I'm listening to it tonight, for the first time in forever. RIP.

The Creem movie page on FB shared this color pic of Lester Bangs sitting w/Geils on typewriter (chronicled in his famous story for the magazine)

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/53892589_2306825056273450_987309571422814208_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=d8965bdc072a593d9eae3c79bbf39e20&oe=5D1510DD

Isn't that Tony Clifton?

Picked up a dollar bin copy of Bloodshot today, haven’t heard it since high school. Man, this is hitting every monkey nerve, such a fun record.

Was it a RED copy?

No, but it was a buck, and it’s pretty clean for the price.

Also picked up Foghat’s Energized and Richard Betts’ Highway Call, all high school faves, about seven bucks all told. Rockin’ out tonight!

That's a good haul. Energized bangs.

I've been curious about the red Bloodshot. I lucked into what looks like a clean black German audiophile press copy awhile back from somebody that didn't realize what it was for like $5.

I had the red one when it was new, but sold it when I went new wave. When I brought mine to the counter today the clerk said “is it red?” and I’m like “for a dollar?” I don’t think they’re particularly rare/valuable these days though.

Was listening to the extended Blow Your Face Out a couple days ago - man I wish I could have seen them live in the 70s.

Only saw them once, on that tour, as noted above. Memories are fuzzy but they totally brought the goods. I wish I had been as into them then as I am now.

That Live Houseparty Rockplast DVD Eagle Vision put out awhile back is terrific. An abridged Sanctuary-era performance.

Was interesting to read in the Replacements book Trouble Boys that Seth Justman was brought in to produce (I wanna say Pleased To Meet Me?) but got fed up after a single day and bolted the studio, the band chucking empty vodka bottles at him as he fled.

so here was a band that worked hard, a huge live act in several big markets, and ten years after it was signed to a major label had three indelible hits that everyone (maybe just white folks) under 70 and over 40 knows, and instead of producing a follow up with more hits, promptly broke up.

1. I picked up the Houseparty anthology from '93: it does not include "Come back," which am I or am I not correct in asserting is the fourth most famous cut they did? On one hand, I would think that since it's a Rhino comp, licensing cuts from their stint with Capitol is somewhat prohibitive, and they absolutely had to get the major shit from Freeze Frame and Love Stinks. On the other, it was a big single, played on MTV early on? alternately, maybe the band didn't like it, being that it is transparently a DOR bid for "Miss you/Do you think I'm sexy" $$$, and in the early 90s, that kinda shit was unfashionable.

2. But goddamn that song and "Flamethrower" and some other cuts from the late 70s GET DOWN, whereas the early 70s shit sounds too studious, too concerned with sounding exactly like, I dunno, Hank Ballard & the Midniters… not coincidentally Jon Landau repped hard for this band in RS and other spots, his agenda being artists should sound as much like Hank Ballard as possible: he approved of this band because they sounded like 50 R&B, the authentic essence of real rock and roll, notably moreso than the mainstream rock music he considered to have strayed too far from the verities of, again, real rock and roll… then of course his meal ticket entered his life…but he must have been real tight with the Geils guys, right? he certainly made it his business to buddy up to musicians who could be useful in advancing his interests.

3. Anybody who was around Boston or New England in the 70s: was there a Springsteen--ish hometown pride in the Geils band? They were big in Detroit and other midwestern markets, but were they a particularly big live draw in Boston, or like, Providence? It is often said that Aerosmith were disdained by many aesthetes for imitating the Stones too baldly (apparently Mick Jagger cannot fucking stand the fawning Steven Tyler) but is there something to Aerosmith ripping off the Geils band?

There was a lot of hometown pride for J. Giles around New England in the early 80s, moreso than Aerosmith who were clearly losing steam, as Joe Perry was off doing his solo stuff at Club Casino in Hampton Beach like every weekend if the ads I remember on AOR radio are to be believed. Hometown pride for The Cars and Billy Squire, too, but even less 'cause they didn't stick around. We were quite excited in my high school that J. Giles himself and one Asmith (was it Whitford?) had homes in the affluent town next door. We never saw them. Someone I knew tiled one of their bathrooms though. Encounters with greatness.

Peter Wolf lives in my neighborhood, and even though he's in his late 70's, you would never mistake for not being a rock star.

I've actually run into him in the local record store flipping through the new releases, and I got a bit self-conscious because J. Geils Band records are pretty plentiful and usually priced at like $2, but I imagine he's pretty used to clogging up the dollar bins.

Like true journeymen, they were lapped by an unbelievable range of their opening acts: Yes, Van Morrison, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, U2

https://www.concertarchives.org/bands/the-j-geils-band?page=7#concert-table

I heard that the J. Geils draw in Boston was big enough to fill large halls, just as Bob Seger was popular enough to fill big places in Detroit, and each would often ask the other to open up in their respective hometown to throw them some quick cash.

xxxp used to see Peter Wolf (and Tom Hamilton as well) on the reg at Newbury Comics in Harvard Square.

J. Geils were a huge point of pride in the Boston area. The classic “(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) Houseparty” riff was played all the time on TV as an ad for the preeminent classic rock station, WBCN. Wolf had been a famous DJ for them (before Geils, I believe). And after having been one of the biggest American live draws in the 70s, they had one of the more unlikely #1 records.

I think mention upthread but my 8th grade math teacher and basketball coach was super into them – he’s the one who got me into them and he had all their records. So I had to as well. They are def. my first “I’m obsessed with them” band.

30+ years later, I can still sing 85% of the lyrics to their songs (including the really oddball ones on Freeze Frame) and yet I’m still kind of routinely surprised at what a broad fucking career they had. In addition to a sneakily enormous stylistic range (yes, Stones and New Wave but also disco and prog), they have a ton of killer ballads and some very tasty playing, mostly from Magic Dick, Justman and Geils.

Perhaps most surprising is what a complete frontman Wolf turned out to be. There are definitely moments where the Woofa Goofa in the mid-70s can be a little too much to take, but the guy could move from macho Jagger-y growl to convincing white soul revue leader to sensitive balladeer pretty effortlessly.

If I thought we’d get more than 10 people, I’d run an artist poll on them on ILM. They really do deserve one.

Elvis T. was asking about vintage live clips upthread...I didn't know they did The Test in '73.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmSB2CZuDjI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S755FSgGEo0

"Looking For A Love" & "Floyd's Hotel"

Feel I should also add that as a tall, thin geriatric millennial who started having knee/leg problems in his late '30s, this is insanely painful music video to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwOzeaL08Gg

Wow thanks for those live clips. Impossible to not move after that

30+ years later, I can still sing 85% of the lyrics to their songs (including the really oddball ones on Freeze Frame)

Yeah this bit from “Insane Insane Again” just popped into my head, as it does about once a week: open fire, shell shock, knee jerk, lock step, shrink wrap, clap trap, mind bend, echo send, chicken coop, drug soup, nerve food, solitude, back track, meat rack, cardiac yakety yak