reason to move.

The Meters were the great funk band of New Orleans, America's capital of rhythm. Neville had already been making rhythm & blues for two decades; he led the Hawketts when they recorded "Mardi Gras Mambo," a carnival anthem, in 1954. In 1967, he recruited Leo Nocentelli on guitar, George Porter Jr. on bass and Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste on drums, and they became the house band for producer Allen Toussaint. They backed up Lee Dorsey and Ernie K-Doe; they tightened the funk, then tightened it some more. As New Orleans' answer to the Stax/Volt Memphis studio band Booker T. and the MG's, the Meters cut instrumental albums for the local Josie label. When Reprise signed the Meters in 1971, Neville started singing again.

From its songs to its time-capsule cover -- a girl with a puffy Afro, with Ripple wine and watermelon on her coffee table, holds up a Meters LP -- Rejuvenation is a high point of 1970s funk. The Meters shot their rhythms full of holes, removing obvious beats and letting accents ricochet around the spaces. Nocentelli's guitar talks in sly asides, while Modeliste's terse drumming crackles and snickers. The silences are as danceable as the notes.

Rejuvenation distills Mardi Gras, gospel, R&B and a little bit of country; it has a social conscience in "People Say" and a shout-out to roots in "Africa." The band captures a moment of perfect lust in "Just Kissed My Baby" with a hop-around wah-wah guitar riff, a slide-guitar cameo from Lowell George of Little Feat, and a vocal that slips and slides all around the beat. Phish might well be jealous of the eleven-minute jam "It Ain't No Use," true psychedelic funk in which each member takes his own tangent while the pulse never falters.

The Meters marked a road not taken by funk. Their rhythms were too light, too subtle, too New Orleans; disco and hip-hop listeners wanted the beat to come down hard on the one. But the Meters' funk never disappeared; Neville brought it into the Neville Brothers, and he still tours with Porter in the Funky Meters. They carry New Orleans in every off-beat. (RS 846)

Further Listening:
The Meters: Look-Ka Py Py (Sundazed) FOUR AND A HALF STARS
The Meters: Struttin' (Sundazed) FOUR STARS
The Meters: Fire on the Bayou (Sundazed) FOUR STARS
The Neville Brothers: Neville-ization (Black Top) FOUR AND A HALF STARS

JON PARELES