The Replacements - Let It Be

Let It Be

(Twin/Tone TTR 8441) 

Released 1984

I Will Dare
Favorite Thing
We're Comin' Out
Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out
Androgynous
Black Diamond
Unsatisfied
Seen Your Video
Gary's Got A Boner
Sixteen Blue
Answering Machine      

The Mats were one of those classic combos whose music, looks and personalities fit together perfectly, the stuff of which legends are made (Ira Robbins (presumably), Trouser Press Record Guide)

In January, 1985, just a week or so into the new year, I picked up a paperback "year-in-music" for 1984, published by Rolling Stone.  I have long forgotten the title, and a web-search yielded no results.  But, suffice it to say, pick it up I did.

And in said book, there were several mentions of some new bands that had bubbled up out of middle America.  Bands that I was not aware of, not, at that particular time, being a regular college radio listener (that came later).  Among them were The Meat Puppets, Jason and the Scorchers, The Minutemen, and two from Minneapolis - Husker Du, and The Replacements.

Intrigued by what I read, I began to seek them out.  There was only one way, in those pre-internet daze, to hear new music.  You hadda go out and buy the records.  And so, armed with some remaining Xmas money, a few weeks later, I had Zen Arcade, Double Nickels On the Dime, and Let It Be under my arm.

All of these albums have a story with me.  And all of them became favorites (both albums and bands) (Jason and the Scorchers became a favorite, too).  But this is Let It Be's story, and so I will tell it.

First impression: it was a weird mish-mash of an album.  It kicked off with an odd, jangling, shuffling toon that couldn't be called "punk" (weren't these guys supposed to be a punk band?), but had way too much edge to be called "pop".  It had a couple incredibly hooky fast rocker that would put all future "pop-punk" to shame (and again, way too much edge to fall into that not-yet-invented category anyway)(one of them was about a tonsillectomy), a hardcore number that turned into a moody piano piece before turning into avant-garde noise, a piano ballad about cross-dressing which for years I took only as a joke, a Kiss cover, a sort-of Faces-meets-The Ramones rocker about an embarassing hard-on, a mostly-instrumental attack on MTV, and three numbers that seemed to have beamed in from some alternate-universe AOR ("classic rock" that is, young'uns), where they undoubtedly sat in heavy rotation next to "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Free Bird" and "Layla", and they kicked with the same magic those aforementioned did before you heard them fifty-bazillion times. 

In other words, this was a very odd album.  And frankly, I didn't think it was all that good.  For some time, I had a mind to just toss those three definite winners onto one of those mix-tapes I was always compiling of singles, b-sides, and good album tracks off of otherwise duff albums.

But something dissuaded me.

I kept coming back to Let It Be. 

I used to stare at the album (the great albums have covers worth staring at).  That odd, understated photo of the four dudes on the roof.  The back cover with some scattered photos of the band members.  But nothing to tell you who was who.  All I knew was, they were four guys, not much older than me (I was 19).  One of them looked like one of the Mexican-American kids from the wrong side of town who constituted the underclass of my high-school.  One was a spiky-haired, snotty looking baby-face.  He looked the most rock-star-ish, and I took him for the lead singer, though somehow he didn't quite look right for it.  One, the guy looking away from the camera - just-got-outta-bed hair, big nose, skinny ... he looked like ... I dunno.  Was he the singer?  It didn't add up.  Actually, he didn't seem to fit anywhere.  Was that him on the back cover, singing into the mic?  With his hair slicked down?  He seemed indescribable and inscrutable and somehow intimidating.  And finally, peering out, was a big, goofy-looking guy.  Frankenstein-ian.  The kind of guy who gets nicknamed "Moose."  On the back cover, he was wearing a grin and a glint that looked, well, almost impish ... but with a heavy dose of malevolence mixed in.  This was definitely an odd bunch.

I kept coming back to those three winners ... and oh yes, those were indeed winners - that was clearer every listen.  The lyrics were sharp and clever and right.  Whoever was playing lead guitar (don't tell me it was the "Moose" guy?!) was one hell of a guitar player.  His solo at the end of "Sixteen Blue" picked up where the vox left off and carried the song into the stratosphere.  The singing was passionate and right in every way.  This was the real deal, baby. 

But I couldn't quite understand why, with songs like that, they'd clutter up an album with dumb jokes and throwaways and such (this is not an uncommon attitude when encountering the Mats for the first, or hundredth time). 

But I kept coming back.  Things began to come clearer.  "Favorite Thing" was everything a catchy punk track should be (and had great lyrics).  "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" was a close second even if it was a joke.  "We're Comin' Out" kicked off as a hardcore song, but the second half was weird and original and memorable and unexpected (that last is key).  "Gary's Got A Boner" might've been dumb but it had drive.  The Kiss cover is amusing and at least an honest nod to their roots.  "Seen Your Video" really got great the more you listened to it - you sat through the amusing surf-oid instro just to get to the good part - when Westerberg starts screaming "Seen your video! Your phony rock and roll!" in a voice thats all passion and contempt.  No greater f.u. has ever been directed to the empty pop and rock of the 80s, and Westerberg, to quote Nine Simone, meant every word of it.

The great albums reveal more secrets with age.  I said that for years I thought of "Androgynous" as merely an odd joke.  Today, when more and more Amurricans whose gender and preferences are far more fluid and unpredictable than we'd ever imagined back in the Raygun era are out of the closet and challenging the status quo, it seems moving, and true, and prescient, and brave.  Paul Westerberg, prescient?  Who'da thunk?

I mentioned before that I didn't understand why they would clutter up an album with jokes and throwaways.  And that this is not an uncommon attitude for those unsold on the greatness of the Mats.  Similarly, there are those who maintain that Let It Be (or, for some, the even more chaotic predecessor, Hootenanny) were the last gasp for the band, before they sold out to the big money and became professional entertainment.  I do not share that opinion, but I do understand the perspective. Because, of course, what made them special was exactly the fact that they would put something as dumb as "Gary's Got A Boner" cheek by jowl with something as great as "Sixteen Blue".  And even more than that - they'd make you like it that way.  In one of the slickest entertainment eras evah, the Mats were willing to dare, to get it half-right, to get it all wrong.  For many, that alone was revelatory.

And the fact that they made astonishingly great rock and roll; rock and roll that was clearly influenced by, but not derivative of, the established classiques, "proof that those who missed the '60s could still build something great on the crass and hollow corpse of '70s music" as Ira Robbins (again) put it.  Well that just made it all the greater.  And maybe the fifth or the twelfth or the twentieth time I put on Let It Be and just let it roll, through the tracks I knew I dug and the tracks I'd initially given a pass but was now digging more and more, and it all came tumbling down again in the roaring/chiming guitars of "Answering Machine," and Paul Westerberg howling out the final lines over and over and over again as his voice cracked and shattered, well I knew I'd found a new love.





 

The Who - My Generation

My Generation

(Brunswick LAT 8616) 

Released 1965

Out in the Street

I Don't Mind

The Good's Gone

La-La-La-Lies

Much Too Much

My Generation

The Kids Are Alright

Please, Please, Please

It's Not True

I'm A Man

A Legal Matter

The Ox   

(Instant Party aka Circles) 

There were about six of us 13- to 15-year-olds crammed into a pal’s bedroom, listening to records. It was the earliest co-ed hang of my life. Exciting, scary, baffling...  when I came across the first copy I’d ever seen of The Who Sings My Generation album.

Off in my own out-of-place world in that bedroom, I stared at the album cover...

Four guys, standing in front of Big Ben on a blustery day .. all four looking like they’re on the edge of beating the crap out of someone who seems to be just a few feet behind the photographer’s right shoulder. The Who, on this album cover, instantly made the Stones seem almost fey. And, truly most weirdly, intriguingly, their hair was the shortest I’d seen in on any British band.

That distinctly against-the-grain hirsute oddity, taken with their two syllable punch-in-the-nose name, their unusual faces (especially that one with the nose!), taken with that genuinely hard thuggish attitude they were exuding, made them look exotically dangerous to me.  I can still feel it. I was awestruck before I heard a note.“Wow! Hey, can we hear this?” (Binky Phillips, Huffington Post)

A quavering, woozy-sounding chord progression blares out of the speakers – seven chords in rapid succession, repeated, and then a final one – this one, clear, ringing.  And then a young tough’s voice snarls one word:  “OUT---!!”

It’s a startling sound.  The martian musicologist who’s arrived to inquire about the genesis of rock`n’roll (Greil Marcus sent him a list of records, with commentary, back in `79.  He arrived at my place in the wee hours –those aliens and their sense of time - hoping to find a copy of The Zurvans “Close the Book,” on End.  I was, alas, unable to help him) finds it startling, too.  He has asked me a variation on the usual questions, wanting to know not what my desert island discs are, but rather, what would be my desert island disc for a particular artist, the legendary British Invasion-cum-70’s-arena-filler superstars, The Who.  He finds my choice quite unexpected (“What, not Who’s Next? Quadrophenia?” he chirped, antennae fluttering in bafflement).

I should note that, to add to the extraterrestrial’s confusion, the copy of the album I have chosen – My Generation, their 1965/66 debut, is a special, deluxe edition, produced at home with the help of RealPlayer.  This edition substitutes the b-sides “Daddy Rolling Stone” and “Shout and Shimmy” for the two James Brown covers, and further includes their covers of “I’m A Man” (which appears on the British, but not the American, version) and “Leaving Here,” an early outtake which I appended cause (a) it fits in with the rest of the material here and (b) it kicks ass.[1] 

I can understand the martian’s confusion.  This is not, after all, what he has come to associate with a Who album.  There are no songs of spiritual longing.  No keyboard ballads (no ballads at all).  It is not a concept album.  It is not a “rock opera.” One gets the sense that the group of thugs who recorded this album would have stomped such ideas into the ground, laughing derisively as they swaggered off, in search of a bird and a pint.  In some ways, this is the work of a different group entirely than the one with which he has grown familiar. 

This is tough, tough rock`n’roll.  Tough in sound and spirit and intent.  It is rooted in the hardest-hitting American soul and blues – Motown’s stomping beat and the overpowering rhythm sections of Stax/Volt and Detroit, John Lee Hooker’s storming blues workouts, Howlin’ Wolf’s late-night rambles.  It is the rumble of Link Wray’s guitar and the chime of the 12-string found on contemporary Beatles singles (“Hard Days Night,” et al).  Vocal harmonies found there, too.  And add in The Kinks frenzied attack and hammering chords.  Add crashing, furious drum rolls lifted from “Wipeout” and a dozen and more surf classics.  It is pure, undiluted rock `n’ roll, among the last of such that would ever be heard.

My Generation has often been called the first punk rock record.  Not altogether inaccurately.  But not entirely fairly, either.  Punk rock certainly drew from its energy and its bare-knuckled aggression.  But mostly (The Stooges and MC5 – both of whom undoubtedly listened to it - are a notable exception) punk missed the R&B underpinnings.  Not just the James Brown covers. Motown and Stax/Volt soul lies underneath this music – you can hear it Moon’s drums, which combine that hard Motown stomp with surf music’s freneticism, the call-and-response vocals, and Daltrey’s macho growl.  The Who never sounded black, or tried to.  They were white boys who took much of what they loved about soul and r&b – its tough swagger and hard-hitting drive, and made the most of it. This is unsentimental guy- rock.  There are no songs of spiritual yearning, no magic buses or pinball wizards.  And almost no love songs.  Women are territory to be claimed (“Out in the Street”) or, more often, baggage to be discarded, for being too cold (“The Good’s Gone”) too clingy (“Much Too Much”) too demanding (“A Legal Matter”) or just plain excess baggage (“The Kids Are Alright”).

The other differentiating factor is, let’s face it, musicianship.  I don’t mean to suggest the long-standing myth that punk bands couldn’t play.  Such an attitude elevates virtuosity over creativity and style.  Most of the celebrated punk outfits usually included at least one ringer (anyone who’s going to suggest that John Cale or Topper Headon weren’t any good doesn’t have ears) and all of them could at least hammer out their own music expertly, most of the time (sure, The Ramones’ stuff is easy to play – but putting it across with the same power and wit which the boys themselves did is a trickier proposition.  Go ahead, Steve Howe fans – try it!)  It also mistakes being limited or idiosyncratic for being inept or amateurish.   The Who were limited – Moon was no timekeeper and Townshend never had, say,  Eric Clapton’s finesse or gift for blues soloing.  And they were definitely idiosyncratic – not without their influences, but none of them really played like anyone else before or since.  But they were also polished.  This is not “raw wails from the gut,” as Lester Bangs might have it.  There is none of the rawness of the Sex Pistols.  This is a band that has its chops down.  By the time My Generation was recorded, The Who had been playing together for several years, and had countless gigs under their belts.  They knew how to compose, how to get the sounds they were after, and how to give each song its own distinct voice and identity.  Far from being a detraction, their very skill makes these songs hit even harder.

Rock crit Dave Marsh has noted that My Generation would be important if all it had to offer was the debut of drummer Keith Moon.  That would be fair enough.  He is brilliant-plus throughout.  Moon would fade fast, but here he’s incredible, not just for his unhinged crashing around the kit, but for his sense of dynamics.  The Loon knew when to lay it on hard, but also when to lay off.  When it was time to STOMP.  As well as when it was time to fire off all the cymbals.  Meanwhile, Entwistle, even then, was inventing “lead” bass-playing (the prime example, of course, being his solos on the title track).  And over it all Townshend’s guitar rumbles away like the Spawn of Link Wray that it is.  But perhaps his greatest moment comes on the Beach Boys-ish “The Kids Are Alright” when he slams out six chords (BAM! BAM-BAM!! BAM BAM-BAM!!) that ring like the tolling of Big Ben itself.

Roger has often been dismissed as the weak link in the band.  Described (with a certain imperious sniff) as “swaggeringly macho,” not a songwriter and possibly perceived (in contrast to, of course, the sensitive, intellectual Townshend) as something of a brute.  (or is it just that it was so much easier for us geeky, gawky, introspective music fans to identify with the geeky, gawky, introspective Townshend rather than Daltrey – rugged, handsome, aggressive – just like the jocks at school we hated – and secretly wished we could be more like) . True, there are better sets of pipes out there.  He hadn’t yet developed the harsh howl or leather-lunged scream he would use later.  Instead he growls and snarls his way through these songs.  Swaggeringly macho he is indeed.  It works, because he sounds like he means it.  Of all the tough guys in rock`n’roll, Roger Daltrey always sounded (and seemed) like one of the few who really was tough.  His best moment comes at the end of “Out in the Street” as the band suddenly lays off.  Unacompanied now, he shouts “You’re gonna know me woman – and I’m –“ and the band crashes in with a barrage of drum rolls and slashing, flamenco-like power chords – “I’m a-gonna know you!” 

And that, pretty much, is the end of the story.

Not really, of course.  But after that, everything changed.  The Who escaped the clutches of producer Shel Talmy, and recorded a few more singles (including the glorious “Substitute”) and finally a second LP, A Quick One, in late 1966.  There were moments on A Quick One that echoes the glories of the previous year: the rumbling, Link Wray-like “Run Run Run,” “So Sad About Us,” yet another bitter kiss-off, driven by a chiming guitar and punctuated with blows from Moon’s drumkit, and the bizarre “Boris the Spider,” which brought John Entwistle’s compositions into the fray.  But A Quick One was compromised, partly by weak material (incomplete songs by Daltrey and Moon) and by the title track, known affectionately as “the mini-opera,” which pointed The Who into new and dangerous territory. 

After that, The Who became a somewhat different band.  Townshend found his vision, and art with a capital “A” began to raise its head.  Unadulterated rock`n’roll gave way to acoustic ballads, psychedelia, concept albums, “rock operas,” songs of spiritual musing and longing, experiments with synthesizers and electronic music, laser light shows, aborted (and should-have-been aborted) film projects.  For a long time, a very long time, their innate “smash the bloody lot” spirit protected them from drifting off into the ozone.  But in time, even this mighty bunch of bruisers would succumb to theatricality and pretension.

I don’t mean to suggest that The Who never made any good music after My Generation.  Far from it.  Hey, I wore the grooves off a copy of Who’s Next in high school, too.  And spent a summer blasting Quadrophenia day in and day out.  I spent a lot of my younger years idolizing Townshend and anything he did.  And even in their later years – and I don’t need to trot out again the litany of disappointments that would come with the death of Keith Moon, and following – I find moments of surprise and joy.

But nowadays, when I find myself wanting to hear them, and that’s still fairly often, I find myself in a different place than, I suppose, 99% of those who call themselves Who fans. It’s not Who’s Next (generally considered their best album) or Quadrophenia (album of choice of true Who fanatics), and its definitely not Tommy (I like Townshend's guitar playing and the songs in general, but am indifferent to the "opera").  Actually, my true favorite Who album remains Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, which collects much of the cream of My Generation, along with contemporaneous singles – all of them brilliant, and as close to a perfect LP as I think has ever been heard – one killer track right after the other. 

But when it isn’t Meaty that I reach for, it’s this one.

And yet, My Generation is all but forgotten.  Except for the title track, these songs disappeared from their live set almost as soon as they were recorded (a few of them were performed on BBC, and preserved now on The BBC Sessions).  Most Who fans wouldn’t know them, and probably even Pete and Rog themselves would have trouble recalling them. 

What’s more, those who do know them tend to be dismissive of them, as “early work,” and therefore somehow inferior to what came later.  A glance at Amazon.com reveals die-hard fans apologizing for, or outright lambasting, these songs (excepting, of course, the title track) as embarrassments.  This attitude extends to The Who themselves, who disparaged the material at the time of release (okay, granted they disparaged all their albums at the time of release) and left it behind them, never to look back. This is wrong, as it has meant the effective loss of the Motown-meets-"Anyway Anyhow Anywhere" of "Out In The Street", the menacing drive of "The Good's Gone", the wham! of "Much Too Much", their smoldering take on "I'm A Man" which is as distinctive as The Yardbirds', but radically different, the Link Wray-meets-"Wipeout" of "The Ox" and the winding, hypnotic "Circles" aka "Instant Party".

Part of this attitude stems from an illusion of sophistication that came to affect both fans and artists as the sixties wore on.  Rock`n’roll itself became no longer good enough.  It had to be musically sophisticated.  It had to say something.  It has a good beat and you can dance to it just didn’t cut it anymore.  And the artists played right along.  The last gasp of My Generation-style rock The Who would produce was “Call Me Lightning,” a flop 1968 single that had, in fact, been written as far back as 1964.  Townshend and Entwistle both dismissed it as junk, and it was forgotten (it rarely even appears on the multitudinous Who compilations).  I think it’s great.

So, while Who’s Next and Live At Leeds and Quadrophenia and even occasionally Tommy routinely make lists of the Greatest Rock Albums Ever, My Generation is left behind, a forgotten artifact of the early 60’s, a relic, owned mostly by Who completists and then only as a kind of obligation.  It didn't even see a proper CD reissue until late in the game (actually, this was in part due to legal entanglements with producer Shel Talmy).  And then they messed up the mix!

But it’s a shame.  A shame that rock`n’roll fans and rock`n’roll artists have forgotten where they came from.  The Who evolved and changed, as all artists must.  And in time they rotted, as most artists will.  Most of the music they made after My Generation was, in fact, remarkable.  And most of it has been (deservedly) celebrated.  But, really, they were never better, and certainly never more direct, than here, playing unadulterated rock`n’roll, undiluted by pretenses of Art and aspirations toward “progressive” ideas.  If this had been their final statement (as it very nearly was), they would still deserve their place in rock`n’roll Valhalla.  It doesn’t mean that The Who weren’t any good afterwards.  Only that they were, in fact, that good, right from the start.

---

[1] I should further add that the tracks are drawn not from the gawdawful deluxe edition, released a few years back, the mix of which ruins these songs (whole guitar solos are missing!), but from the original, cheapjack CD issue of the American version which, cheapjack or not, sounds good, which cannot be said of the more recent disaster.  

The Yardbirds Greatest Hits

The Yardbirds Greatest Hits  
(Epic 24246) 

Released 1966

Shapes of Things
Still I'm Sad
New York City Blues
For Your Love
Over Under Sideways Down
I'm A Man
Happenings Ten Years Time Ago
Heart Full of Soul
Smokestack Lightning
I'm Not Talking

The Yardbirds were a bit of a mystery. They had an eclecticism — the Gregorian chant-ness of the vocals, the melodic diversity, the way they used guitar feedback ... They did things with harmonics — minor thirds and fifths — that created this ethereal, monstrous sound ... The Yardbirds' music is a gold mine waiting to be stumbled upon. (Steven Tyler in Rolling Stone)


The `birds, like most of the British Invasion bands ... like most rock and roll bands, actually, were ultimately a singles band.  They actually only recorded two proper studio LPs in their day - the proto-psychedelic Roger the Engineer and the odd, popped-out Little Games. Both of those are worthwhile albums, but it was their singles from 1964-1966 that remain their definitive body of work.

 The Yardbirds Greatest Hits is not the definitive `birds comp.  That honor would have to go to Rhino's Ultimate!, which collects all the singles, and the best of the b-sides, album cuts and rarities, and adds a nifty little book full of rare pictures and good liner notes, all on two affordable discs, and it's got everything that anyone but the most die-hard Yardbirds fanatic could ever want (did I mention I'm one of the most die-hard Yardbirds fanatics?).

But the great albums tell a story.  And the problem with comprehensive archival collections is, however great they are, they are too inclusive and sprawling to tell a proper story.  We're talking aesthetics here.  I wouldn't part with my copy of Ultimate! for nothin'.  The opportunity to plug in a disc and hear everything from r&b garage demos to overproduced pop failures is too great to let go.   But Ultimate! is a library.  Greatest Hits is a story.  And if it isn't the whole story, that's because The Yardbirds had more than one story in them.  Which means, yeah, there's lots of great Yardbirds tracks that ain't on here.  But don't worry, little ones ... we'll be getting to those...

It kicks off hard, in a most Yardbirds-y fashion; a barrage of hard chords - dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah/dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, then into a "Bolero" like march, all martial drums and and slamming power chords, as Keith Relf intones his fears of the future. 

I have long held the theory that some rock bands are song bands, meaning they have great songs, and some are sound bands, meaning they may have less-than-stellar songs, but they sound great.  This is not to say that a song band might not sound great, or that a sound band might not get their hands on an occasional outstanding song.  But sound bands don't have a strong in-house songwriter.  The Yardbirds are the very definition of a sound band.  Lyrically, "Shapes of Things" is schoolboy poetry.  That isn't to say they're not evocative; a young person's plea not to let our beautiful world die (sad irony, the world outlasted Keith Relf).  But it is the pounding music that puts it across.  Marching like the four horsemen of the apocalypse across the soundscape, then yielding to one of Beck's memorable guitar flip-outs, twisting and bending the notes until they sound like a sheet being wound so tight the fabric will rip.  The song itself, like many `birds originals, seems so slight, so sketchy, it can barely hold the band's relentless sonic attack.  It may be odd to kick off an album with such a doomy track, but it's as good an introduction to The Yardbirds as you could ask.

As if it's cold-war-era fears were not dark enough,  "Shapes" gives way to a dark, gregorian chant.  "See the stars come falling down from the sky ..." intones Keith Relf in his darkest croon, as a lonely acoustic guitar strums out ominous, heavy, dark minor chords, and the backup singers (McCarty/Dreja/Beck?  The mind boggles) groan that gregorian chant behind him.  This is a lost love song out of Edgar Allan Poe.  There would be nothing like it until the Stones "Paint It Black" many months later.  "When the wind blows, we are apart..." Relf farewells.  A strange choice for a bid at the Top Forty.  But The Yardbirds were the definition of strange.  "New York City Blues" is a straight Chicago blues pastiche, with amusing lyrics about a girl, her dad, and a shotgun.  It's amusing and the playing is, as always, stunning.  But it's great strength is instrumental.  It does however, remind us that The Yardbirds cut their teeth as a blues band.

Then the ominous, sustained ring of the harpsichord, and some warning slaps on the tabla, announcing "For Your Love", the Graham Gouldman-penned hit that drove Clapton out of the band.  Clapton may not have liked it, but I've always dug that slinky rhythm, the harpischord's snaking tones, and Relf's sinister vocal.  And when they hit the chorus, its still pure Yardbirds - they stomp it like a grape.

 A winding guitar riff that seems to spin around and around, and shouts in the distance, and we're into "Over Under Sideways Down", their catchiest rocker (allegedly based on "Rock Around the Clock", though damned if I can hear it).  Beck's guitar spins and spins around McCarty/Samwell-Smith's churning rhythm while Relf extols the virtues of the carnal lifestyle; "When I was young, people spoke of immorality/All the things they said were wrong are what I want to be."  This is probably the best lyric Relf ever got his hands on, and the song's relentless drive is irresistible.

That's one side, and we've already covered "Bolero" rhythms, gregorian chants, harpsichord driven avant-pop, basic blues and a winding rocker allegedly based on Bill Haley.  Are you gettin' the idea this band was eclectic?  And yet, all of it a piece.  And all of it rocks.

Side Two (the great albums have sides, did I mention?) kicks it off with another martial beat.  "I'm A Man" is the `birds masterpiece; 2:38 of relentless riddim, driven by blasts of Relf's harmonica and Beck's total guitar wipeout - when he runs out of frets, the fucker just keeps going!  It don't get any hotter than this.

There's only one way to follow such a thing.  Go further.  "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" seems to bring home all the menace and fear evoked on Side One, then stir it into a whirling stew of power chords and winding solos, with Relf intoning ominously about losing his sense of time and self, "sinking deep into the well of time" he chants, over and over, as the band flies around him like a mosh pit.  The mid-break features not only the most crazed soloing Beck had yet laid down, but a sound-collage of hot guit licks from Beck, Chris Dreja and newcomer Jimmy Page, sound effects, Relf laughing maniacally, and a cockney voice babbling insults, presumably at the band ("Pop group are ya?  Where'd you get that long `air?").   This is the descent into the maelstrom.  No other rock and roll band has even come close to it - this is the sound Sonic Youth spent their career chasing.

After that particular blast of sonic insanity, it's back to Beck playing sitar-licks on his guitar, "Heart Full Of Soul", a Top 40er even Chris Isaak couldn't ruin (though he tried).  This picks up where "For Your Love" left off, but is even more signature Yardbirds, with its middle-eastern guitar and chanted, minor-key chorus.  

"Smokestack Lightning" takes them back to the blues, live from the Crawdaddy club in `64.  The sound is rough, bootleggy.  The `birds had power, but the couldn't cut Wolf and his band (who could???).  This gets by on the sinister tune and Relf's hard harp.

 Another barrage of power chords announces Mose Alison's "I'm Not Talking", here taken with punk-level tempo and intensity, Relf barking out Alison's witty lyrics like an angry dog.  This is the second great rocked-up Mose Alsion cover (after The Who's glorious takes on "Blues" aka "Young Man Blues").  The Yardbirds run it down to the ground.

10 tracks, 30 minutes, and The Yardbirds have blown all but their strongest contemporaries, and a couple generations of pretenders out of the water.  If that don't make for a great album, I don't know what does.