During the last two years, Boston's J. Geils Band has built itself a national reputation as a tight, energetic, popular and extremely good-humored touring band. But, as so often happens with great live bands, the recording studio took the edge off the group's chief virtues: drive, momentum and self-assurance. While The J. Geils Band and The Morning After, the first two albums, stack up well next to other rock LPs of the last couple years, they are below the standard set by the band onstage. They weren't just losing the spirit of things in the studio, they were also trying to be an electric blues band, an old-school R&B group and a Stones-style rock & roll band all at the same
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time. As a result, their energies were being diffused by the differing demands of each idiom. They hit all three musical forms in live performance, too, but the constant dynamic level maintained by the group onstage tends to obscure idiomatic distinctions.
The Geils Band had several alternatives after their second album: raise the energy level in their studio work, make a choice among the forms of music they loved, or simply record a typical live performance. The group opted for the latter, and put out a live album consisting entirely of material from their two earlier albums. Result: another acceptable album at face value, but, like so many live albums, more of a document than an accurate reproduction of the live experience. Full House, the live album, was a sore disappointment for those fans who were itching for something fresh. A live album wasn't the answer.
Bloodshot is the answer. The fourth LP is what the band should've done instead of Full House. It's a complete break-through because it attacks all their old problems at once and solves each with a vengeance. Bloodshot disproves the theory bandied around after Full House that the band was already stagnating; it adds a half-dozen good tunes to their repertoire; it seals the excellent studio relationship between the band and producer Bill Szymczyk (he did the second album, but not nearly as well), and it indicates the group has decided to put aside their preoccupation with big city blues to concentrate fully on the strongly R&B-based style of rock & roll they've been developing.
This style is characterized by authoritatively hard-hitting and deceptively simple bass and drum patterns (Szymczyk gets the punch of the Danny Klein-Stephen J. Bladd rhythm section into the grooves miraculously well), the equally full and simple organ and piano of Seth Justman (whose role in the band has noticeably expanded), the interlaced riffing and lead work of guitarist Geils and harpman Magic Dick (who gives the band the equivalent of a second lead guitar and a sax section with his extraordinary playing), all of it topped by the expansive vocals of Peter Wolf. They don't sound significantly different than in the past, just fuller, more fiery and more sure of themse
Bloodshot is not the J. Geils Band's best album. In fact, J. Geils isn't always the best band. But "Give It To Me" is a great song, and "(Ain't Nothin' But A) House Party" has one of the three finest opening guitar riffs in all of rock music. (The other two are in "Sweet Little Hi-Fi" by Pussy Galore and anything by AC/DC.)
