![]() The Geils boys came from Boston, and the album was recorded in Detroit, at the time the hard rock capital of the USA, but they sure did rock the house with the Boston Monkey vibe, Peter Wolf's jive and the incredible talent of Magic Dick who was the blues harp maestro of the band. ![]() Suffice to say, " Live" Full House immediately became one of my top albums of all time, a frequent guest on my tape deck (once I'd taped the album to preserve the integrity of the vinyl) and a dead cert for inclusion on my desert island disc LP's along with Dr Feelgood's Malpractice, as two examples, from different sided of the Atlantic no less, of how white boys can play the R & B card with energy, commitment and a sense of humour. I believe I listened to the first couple of tracks at the counter top turntable, as one was still able to do in those days, and was immediately blown away, and bought the album right there and then for something like R1,99, which turned out to be one of the great record bargains of my life. It was a live recording released in 1972, it featured a version of John Lee Hooker's Serves You Right To Suffer (at the time I was listening to a Greatest Hits album of his and was very interested in anything else featur4ing his composer credit) and band members featured on the photographs on the back cover looked weird and mean at the same time, especially the wonderfully named Magic Dick whose hair was a band member all of its own. Round about 1979 I was at Stellenbosch record bar (I think it might have been Sigma Records) one day when there was a whole bunch of albums in the "sale" bin and one of them was the " Live" Full House album by the very selfsame J Geils Band. In between there was a long, dry spell when J Geils simply did not feature on the South African airwaves. Unfortunately the J Geils Band never made it back onto the Radio 5 playlist until the release of Freeze Frame in the early Eighties, kind of their commercial peak, but not the best of the band by a long chalk. The Seventies tunes that aren't bubblegum, boogie, glam, disco or Abba. I Must Of Got Lost ranks up there for me as one of the great Seventies tunes. It had a sing-a-long chorus and a great lyric about how easy it is to lose your love: you never see it coming but you always see it going. Not ever seeing the song title in print and not being au fait with America slang, I thought the song must be called I Must Have Got Lost, as that was the proper English, and for all I knew the artists were the Jay Giles Band. (But I’m open to suggestions leave them in the comments.In 1974 one of the stranger and more interesting songs on the Radio 5 playlist was a soul style rock tune called I Must Of Got Lost by the weirdly named J Geils Band. If this doesn’t get you moving a bit faster on a Monday morning, I don’t know what will. Then he picked a key, arranged the licks together, picked a fast tempo and taught it to the rest of the band. He took bits and pieces of the best licks played by African-American blues harmonica greats- James Cotton, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson-who had inspired him and from whose records he’d learned. ![]() The way Magic Dick (born Richard Salwitz) explains it, “Whammer Jammer” is a classic example of what academics call “cultural appropriation”. And, oh yeah, the harmonica player was their best soloist. ![]() Growing out of the Boston blues-folk scene in the late 1960s, building a reputation during the 1970s as the best bar band in America, crossing over in the early 1980s-and promptly breaking up after their first #1 single (“Centerfold”). Named for the lead guitarist (he owned the car), not the lead singer. There aren’t many rock and roll bands that decide, “You know, what we really need is an instrumental that features our harmonica player.” But then, there weren’t many rock and roll bands like The J. ![]()
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