Review:

on 2011-03-22 CharlesMartel Said:

This album rates as one of the greatest of the overlooked R&B albums of the early seventies. Often cited as influences on the punks a few years later, with "Teenage Head" the Flamin' Groovies deliver an album that works on so many levels. Perhaps, it has to be said, that is its greatest strength and, at the same time, its downfall. The band wished to retain a sense of the garage about the album and made sure, in terms of its production, that it retained a dirty, almost sleazy feel to it. Listen to the album and you feel as if you are hearing some bar band rocking out songs to a crowd of brawling dockers in a waterfront bar in some stereotypical Hollywood blockbuster (Patrick Swayze, "Roadhouse" for example?). It is almost as if the performer who is not credited as being on the album is Booze.

While there can be no doubt that, musically, the album is a tight and well-constructed work (the Flamin' Groovies could, unlike so many the punks who allegedly emulated them, play their instruments with more than a basic degree of competence), it suffers from an overall lack of cohesion. It is as if the band is struggling to find their true identity. Sure, the back-to-basics rock and roll is a style which never goes out of fashion, and the Flamin' Groovies push that boundary as far as it will go. Yet the lack of cohesion, the lack of identity stems from the band's apparent desire to cram so many different styles into one album. This is even more apparent on the remastered and extended version, where the Groovies try their hands at a whole variety of different styles and end up settling on none of them.

"Teenage Head" may well be Loney's quasi-autobiographical anthem, and there are many tracks (especially on the extended album) which echo that sound if not the sentiment. Some of the great early R&B tracks make an appearance - "Walking the Dog" and "Louie Louie", the latter probably being the finest rendition of that song since the Kingsmen did what most regard as the definitive version. Then there is the Robert Johnson classic "32-20" played in a mock authentic delta blues style, almost as an act of homage to the man who underpins so much of modern popular music. Country Music lifts its head with "City Lights" while pure rockabilly puts its best foot forward on "Evil Hearted Ada". To cap it all, the band even tries its hand at a sort of updated sixties bubblegum with "You Tore Me Down". Never let it be said that the Flamin' Groovies were just a one-trick pony or that their principal musical style placed limitations on them. This album shows that the band can turn their hand to almost anything you can imagine. If this had come out twenty years later you can believe there would have been a hip-hop track on it for sure.

And yet, in spite of the inability to find and lay claim to an identity all their own on this album, "Teenage Head" remains a surprisingly good listen and has stood up well over the years. Perhaps it is because you never quite know which style the Flamin' Groovies will turn their hand to next which keeps you coming back for repeated listens. But at the end of the day, this is what the Flamin' Groovies always were - good rockers. After all, as Jagger once screamed, "It's only rock and roll".
Rating: 7/10