Time has an unforgiving habit of burying most bands. If that\u2019s true, then it\u2019s a minor miracle we\u2019re still talking about a little retro band called Flamin\u2019 Groovies a half-century later. They never shifted many records nor shot up any chart with a pebble, let alone a bullet, and yet the name of this cult band gets spoken in hallowed terms among some as progenitors of power-pop and even punk rock. If you have ever heard the Groovies before now, it\u2019s likely been their brilliant failed single \u201cShake Some Action\u201d from their 1976 album of the same name. The song brings almost nothing original to the table yet unlocks a magic that remains intact after a thousand listens. It\u2019s also the time capsule that keeps getting dug up by young bands, critics, and listeners, preserving the Groovies for others to stumble upon. By no means is a perfect song like \u201cShake Some Action\u201d a poor legacy; however, its relatively long shadow has left the band\u2019s most imaginative era and finest album, Teenage Head, neglected for far too long.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Flamin\u2019 Groovies were an anachronism from the beginning. Co-led by frontman Roy Loney and guitarist Cyril Jordan, the San Francisco outfit ignored their hometown\u2019s late \u201860s obsession with \u201cflower power\u201d and psychedelia in favor of reviving \u201850s-style rock and roll, Merseybeat from across the sea, and rhythm and blues. This iteration of the band\u2014including Tim Lynch on guitar, bassist George Alexander, and drummer Danny Mihm\u2014would record an EP and three full-lengths, all of which dabbled in earlier genres and none of which captured the public\u2019s imagination. However, the Groovies had one very prominent fan of their third studio album, 1971\u2019s Teenage Head: none other than Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger reportedly dug the record and even opined that the Groovies had captured a modern take on blues-driven rock better than the Stones had on Sticky Fingers, their now-legendary blues throwback, which came out a mere month after Teenage Head. While I can\u2019t in good faith argue the Groovies managed to out-blues the Stones, it\u2019s far past due for Teenage Head to receive its flowers, dead or otherwise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t take long to stumble upon what Jagger might have admired about Teenage Head. Though the Groovies look more like the White Stripes than a rugged blues band on the album cover, \u201cHigh Flyin\u2019 Baby\u201d drops us right into a garage decked out to feel like a honky-tonk. They opt to run a victory lap out of the gate before Jordan\u2019s riffing finally merges with the rest of the band\u2019s groove. Loney\u2019s gruff, rapid-fire vocals about the untameable \u201cBaby\u201d ricochet off each other, like a feline hopping from paw to paw on a hot stove, often ending a line with a croak that sounds filtered through a tracheostomy valve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Groovies also reveal a rebelious penchant for bucking structure when it suits them. Instead of a second verse after the harmonized chorus, Loney grunts, which seems to cue Lynch\u2019s searing harmonica and a series of hard-hitting fills from Mihm as the band go careening along. As the song rallies down the homestretch with its chorus on repeat, it\u2019s almost as if the band can\u2019t decide how to end matters, at one point abandoning Loney like he\u2019s the one person left singing to the radio in a packed car. All of it comes together for a raw live sound full of unpredictability and semi-organized chaos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Almost before \u201cHigh Flyin\u2019 Baby\u201d gets a chance to land, \u201cCity Lights\u201d stumbles out of some backwoods country saloon. All daydreams and moonshine, this loitering ambler sets its bumpkin protagonist\u2019s sights and Stetson hat on the bright lights of the big city. It\u2019s a romanticized New York City that Loney sings about longing to visit, one of neon lights, movie stars in big fur coats, and \u201cthe empire\u2019s tallest building \/ where the plane shot that big monkey.\u201d Even if he\u2019ll never quite take a bite out of that Big Apple, we can appreciate the band\u2019s confidence to meander through a slow, melancholy ballad rather than only lean on garage noise and mayhem. Jim Dickinson, who also plays on \u201cWild Horses\u201d from Sticky Fingers, lends some dreamy barroom piano to the city\u2019s siren call, and the Groovies sound like The Band-lite when the others join Loney on harmonies as the song winds down. Just two songs into Teenage Head, and it\u2019s already clear that this earlier version of the Groovies wasn\u2019t going to be easily pinned down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like most rock outfits of that time, a revivalist band like the Flamin\u2019 Groovies knew their way around a cover song. The third track on Teenage Head, \u201cHave You Seen My Baby?,\u201d catches them hitching a ride on a riverboat to New Orleans to cover this chugging 1970 Fats Domino B-side, written and played on by a young Randy Newman. The band manage to keep the song\u2019s integrity intact while also souping it up like a V8 dropped into a go-kart. They crank up the garage racket, turn the interlude into a piano boogie, and hoot and holler until that milkman drops \u201cBaby\u201d back home. In typical Groovies\u2019 fashion, it actually sounds like the band accelerate into the song\u2019s fade-out. The group also demonstrate their reverence for the Delta blues by paying homage to Robert Johnson with their cover of \u201c32-20.\u201d Loney updates the lyrics (most notably disarming \u201cBaby\u201d of her deadly .38 special) as Jordan\u2019s slide guitar jump-starts this cheating song into a swinging, little ditty that most might never guess was older than everyone in the band.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday\u2019s Numbers\u201d is the Groovies in a perfect blend of locked in and incorrigible. Alexander\u2019s bass thumps like a finger to the chest as Loney insists, \u201cI want to know you well \/ Know your heaven, baby, know your hell\u201d while the melodies drip from Jordan\u2019s guitar and harmonies. And for all this tight interplay, the band still opt to have a cathartic group scream midsong and leave all the studio banter in the final cut, including the hilariously wishful declaration that \u201call\u2019s well that ends well\u201d as the track comes to a merciful resting place. Similarly, Lynch\u2019s squawking harmonica drives the title track, making the frog-throated Loney\u2019s most lascivious lines (e.g. \u201cShe\u2019s a teenage love machine\u201d) sound even more lustful. Midway through \u201cTeenage Head,\u201d the song mysteriously teleports itself from the roadhouse to the stadium arena for a muffled, inexplicable guitar flex before hopping back to its home dimension. It might be partly due to these types of leftfield curiosities that the Groovies rarely grow stale and tend to defy genre even as they\u2019re creating pastiches.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The back stretch of Teenage Head sees the band playing the retro game a bit straighter. After the aforementioned \u201c32-20.,\u201d the jittery rockabilly of \u201cEvil Hearted Ada\u201d finds Loney snarling, yelping, and hiccuping like Elvis Presley about his \u201csassy\u201d and \u201csly\u201d woman, including a final dramatic flourish that sounds like he\u2019s closing out a Vegas show before hitting the buffet and craps table. They did not learn this down on the bayou, but it\u2019s still damn good fun. The same can\u2019t be said about the following track, \u201cDoctor Boogie.\u201d Despite the band latching on to a tight groove and Loney promising us that he\u2019ll \u201ckeep boogying until they throw [him] in a hearse,\u201d it\u2019s hard not to skip past this one. It\u2019s an example of the Groovies bringing the chops but not the oddball chutzpah that makes them memorable.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If one song could replace \u201cShake Some Action\u201d as the Groovies\u2019 signature number, closer \u201cWhiskey Woman\u201d would be the one. It\u2019s the band\u2019s big-hearted stab at something truly grandiose, their \u201cFree Bird\u201d moment. A simple strum drops us into a thick, swampy rocker, with Loney sounding like he\u2019s singing into a tin can and the band\u2019s voices floating in like a fog above marshland. \u201cAs I sit and write this song,\u201d Loney plaintively sings. \u201cYou\u2019re the one thing on my mind.\u201d Yearning may not be the most complicated emotion, but the frontman sure as hell sells it here. As the band speeds up and accelerates toward the last available groove on the record, Loney sounds like a desperate man (\u201cI want you \/ Where are you?\u201d) wading through the bog as he tracks down his lover. The song fades out before the search concludes or the band slows down, leaving us to believe that the whiskey woman remains missing.<\/p>\n
The history of the Flamin\u2019 Groovies can be told as a tale of two bands. Original members Loney and Lynch left the group shortly after the world failed to wrap their noggins around Teenage Head. Jordan would become the driving force behind the outfit from then on, bringing in Chris Wilson to fill in as frontman for Loney. Together, the new Groovies would all but abandon the raw, rambunctious blues sound that had once tickled Jagger in favor of leaning more into pop and revitalizing the sounds of the British Invasion. It\u2019s a shift that brought us \u201cShake Some Action\u201d and shaped how we still remember the Flamin\u2019 Groovies all these years later. Still, on certain nights, it\u2019s those city lights and a whiskey woman that call us back to the high flyin\u2019 days of Teenage Head.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Time has an unforgiving habit of burying most bands. If that\u2019s true, then it\u2019s a minor miracle we\u2019re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-567298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}