It would be really easy to dismiss Canned Heat as an accident of the '60s.
The band's music sounded good if you were stoned (a condition which,
unfortunately, the band usually found themselves in when creating same) and
sounded lousy, with a couple of very important exceptions, if you were
straight. The argument that recordings could not do justice to their concert
sound was a canard which is laid to rest once and for all with the release of
THE BOOGIE HOUSE TAPES, a set of (mostly) concert tracks from 1967 through
1976, when the band was at its most productive. None of the guys could really
write decent songs (again, with a couple of exceptions), and none of them
could really sing. And yet...they arguably were one of the most important
bands of the late '60s and early ''70s for one big reason: they exposed a
generation of white American kids to blues music.
Bear with me here. The first U.S. albums by the Animals, the Rolling Stones,
and the Yardbirds (in what is known historically as "The British Invasion")
were heavily blues' influenced. Mid-60s radio (and accordingly the music
industry) was geared more toward singles; some of the best work by these
bands at that time accordingly never got heard. The real stuff by domestic
heavies, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, never got airplay and was
tough to find. There wasn't amazon.com, or any of the huge superstores with
lots of backlist titles. You had to special order to Paul Butterfield. Few
people even knew who he was.
A couple of things happened in the late '60s. Woodstock happened, and Canned
Heat played there. "Underground radio," the precursor to what became known as
the album oriented rock format, started to take hold here, there and
everywhere, playing album cuts by bands who had never gotten any radio
airplay. And Canned Heat had a single which crossed from the underground over
to Top 40. The single was "On The Road Again," a haunting number in which a
falsetto lead vocal vied with a classic blues harmonica riff where everything
came together to create a song which stands up just as well today as it did
over 30 years ago. Nothing else the band did after that, with the notable
exception of a classic cover of Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together,"
stands anywhere close. But the band had their following, and stoned or not,
Canned Heat fans listened to their albums, which were loaded with blues-based
riffs. And people whose first exposure to the blues was a Canned Heat album
began seeking out the originals. Canned Heat in fact recorded an album with
John Lee Hooker in which they almost rose to the occasion. The album helped
Hooker more than Heat, but that is beside the point. What is important is
that the band's influence, for many reasons, far outlasted their own
contributions.
So what is THE BOOGIE HOUSE TAPES? Well, it's a fascinating train wreck of an
album with lots of rare cuts culled mainly from Canned Heat concerts from the
U.S. and Europe. The standout tracks are, as to be expected, "On the Road
Again" and "Let's Work Together." The rest of the tracks range from competent
("Tu Vas Trop Vite") to amusing, in an armpit fart sort of way ("London
Blues" - I swear the lyrics are made up as they go along) to embarrassing
("Cherokee Blues") to the fingernails on-the-blackboard awful of "Pulling
Hair Blues." On some tracks the band plays together reasonably well; on
others, you can almost hear them falling off the stage. These tracks are rare
enough to make the Canned Heat aficionado salivate. They are also of great
value from a historical standpoint - if you wonder what the '60s were like,
or what a Clinton White House Christmas party is like, this double-length CD
will give you a clue. The rest of you, however, will find little use for this
collection, other than as an almost Dr. Demento-like oddity.
