The Flamin' Groovies - Bust Out At Full Speed: The Sire Years

Mike Wilhelm, who was the Flamin' Groovies' lead guitarist for six years, likes to introduce Robert Johnson's "Love In Vain," with this: "Here's a song Robert Johnson stole from Mick Jagger back in 1936." The Groovies are a band everyone's been stealing from since Roy Loney was still in the group. In 2000, when the San Francisco Chronicle's "critics" made a Pink Sheet list of the 100 Best Bands in SF History, the Groovies were number four, right after the Grateful Dead, and somewhat before Santana, Neil Young, and all those offshoots of Jefferson Airplane and the Dead. There are still famous git pickers who won't appear on stage with Wilhelm. You can hear the reasons herein. Of course the group does have Cyril Jordan, he of the perfect George Harrison imitation, leader and founder; Chris Wilson, George Alexander and David Wright, with an occasional appearance by Danny Mihm, original Groovies' drummer and some Welsh blues by Dave Edmunds to boot. As if that wasn't enough, they shake some action, let the boy rock and roll, please please you, paint it black and don't put you on. And that's just for starters. Wilhelm, about Bob Dylan's age these days and hanging with the Lake County Blues Band "up north" still does a mean Chuck Berry duck walk when the spirit moves him. Cyril has a new band, Magic Christian, with Praire Prince, Paul Kopf, and Alec Palao. Please spend a few moments on Palao's liner notes for this set. He also did those on The Amazing Charlatans and The Zombies' box set among others. Disc One, Shake Some Action is considered the ultimate Groovies release by many but still has James Ferrel on guitar. There's nothing wrong with Ferrel but both "Now" and "Jumpin'In The Night" have Wilhelm (or "Willie," as Jordan calls him) the man whom Cherry Garcia told photographer Herb Green way back in the sixties was his favorite guitarist. Pigpen was Mike's favorite. They used to play slide guitar together at the old Dead House up Ashbury just past that famous sign and Ben And Jerry's where the waitress had only 27 piercings the last time I talked to her. Disc Two, Now, just feels a whole lot better taking you down to that house of blue lights. There's a place, yeah, my baby. I hate to dwell on one guy but when you've seen the guitarist Larry "Mojo" Platz, the man with the single greatest name in the blues, called "a 12 on a scale of one to ten...I'm a two," it's hard not to do so. Forgive me my trespasses and join the Groovies, all of them, for a jump in the night. It's absolutely, sweet, Marie. Disc Three, Jumpin' In The Night is sort of the last official Groovies CD yet there are numerous boots out there including some of their legendary Phil Spector sessions. I've heard some of that at Wilhelm's home studio. The Byrds get a couple of readings here too - "5D" and "It Won't Be Wrong." One time Wilhelm came to my then home in Clear Lake Oaks and talked about the Groovies' European tours non-stop for about eight hours. Wish I had a tape but one story will do. When the Groovies played Manchester, a town known as "a hard room to play," they'd been followed by the Stranglers the night before. Hugh and the boys had received a negative review from one of Manchester's acerbic scribes. So the band went out the next night, found the guy and beat the crap out of him. The Groovies came onstage in their Beatles outfits and faced a very hostile crowd. So, they left the stage and Jordan sent Wilhelm out alone and he made only one comment: "We agree with the Stranglers." You will too. []