Something 4 The Weekend # 166

The J. Geils Band: Blow Your Face Out: "Detroit Breakdown" [mp3]

After 13 years as one of the greatest live acts in the music business (led by the manic ex-radio disc jockey Peter Wolf), The J. Geils Band finally hit the big time in 1980 with "Love Stinks", a great song that many wrote off as a novelty of sorts, which is too bad in a way, because it obscured the fact that they were such an awesome live band. And even though their studio albums throughout the 1970s never sold well, they always always always had great songs. Songs loaded with R'n'B goodness through and through.

I'm glad the band hit it big with "Love Stinks", and kept their chart-topping success going with "Centerfold" and "Freeze Frame" a couple years later, because a band this good, this entertaining, and this hard-working deserved some compensation, some reward, for all that goodness. Seriously, if you like this song, please buy this album, then buy their other live album from the 1970's, Full House, and then keep on buying whatever other J Geils Band albums you can find, because they simply don't make 'em like this anymore.

Plus, the harmonica/sax player calls himself Magic Dick, arguably one of the greatest stage names in Rock history.

Hotcha! Hank