The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings - No. 10: "Live" Full House

No. 10 - J. Geils Band - "Live" Full House (Atlantic, 1972)

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“Take out your false teeth mama, I wanna suck on your gums…”

Sometimes it is about being a teenage kid on an Arkansas Friday night listening to the subversive Clyde Clifford’s Beaker Street on the “Friendly Giant,” “The Mighty 1090” KAAY-AM, 50,000 Watts of Power, Little Rock, Arkansas. That sneering Peter Wolf quote from J. Geils Band “Live” Full House is about as subversive as it gets.

In the fall of 1972, after an urgent count-off, a four-note piano figure propelled by bass and drums shot out of the Delco speaker in my dad’s yellow 1970 Ford Torino, blowing through the still air and whipping up a dust funnel. A pleading voice wails,

“Baby, I’m gonna leave
Honey, don’t ask me why
Twenty-seven more minutes
Before I say bye-bye…”

J. Geils’ jagged guitar rips every line Wolf sings. After the second verse and chorus, a new sound emerges, Magic Dick Salwitz blows a burning wind through his Hohner harmonica, playing with unheard speed and precision. Seth Justman bangs out a primal piano solo while Wolf coaxes then compels the crowd into the final frenzied chorus,

“Ate at the Four Wind Diner
I slept in the Woodrose Hall
If I don't see my home again
I won't even care at all

Hard drivin’ man…”

The song is the Wolf/Geils original composition “Hard Drivin’ Man” from the band’s debut recording The J. Geils Band (Atlantic, 1970). This was music guaranteed to tweak the gonads of teenagers within earshot.

To understand the J. Geils band, one must first understand Little Walter Jacobs (1930-1968). Jacobs was the harmonica innovator associated with Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, and Muddy Waters, and led his band in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Jacobs' technique was characterized by elegant phrasing, assertive lyricism, and technical accomplishment without peer. He pioneered a playing method where he cupped a small microphone in his hands along with his harmonica and plugged the microphone into an amplifier rather than holding the harmonica outside and away from the microphone.

This was a game-changer. Jacobs’ method allowed for a full, dynamic, and aggressive harmonica sound that could compete with any guitar. Coupled with his virtuosity, he made other masters like Sonny Boy Williamson, I and II sound rural and quaint. He fashioned his sound to mimic a saxophone, further extending the harmonica’s sonic and temporal range in music.

But I knew nothing of Little Walter Jacobs until years after I heard “Live” Full House. Once acquainted with Jacobs, I immediately understood Magic Dick Salwitz's fearsome power and talent on the harmonica. While his technique was all his own, the style of his playing was all Walter Jacobs. Magic Dick was the wailing soul of the J. Geils Band, not lead vocalist Peter Wolf, whose singing was a recognition faction in the band's sound. However, Magic Dick's sound, that driving, full-throated harmonica, defined the band.

The J. Geils Band made a reputation of itself as an over-the-top bar combo, specialists in esoteric soul and R&B songs. Raunchy by way of Wolf, Bluesy by way of Magic Dick, Jazzy by way of keyboardist Seth Justman, and all Rock & Roll by way of J. Geils, the band forged a white bridge between Detroit Soul, Memphis R&B, and American pop culture. The band’s music in the early 1970s fed the appetite of AOR FM and late Night AM radio stations.

It was not until the late 70s and early 80s that the band finally reached a wider audience and produced a string of Top Ten hits and in the bargain lost their original grit. "I Must Have Got Lost," "Give it to Me," and "Centerfold" were all solid pop confections, but they were no match for what the band produced ten years earlier on "Live" Full House.

Minute for Minute, "Live" Full House is one of the densest, most exciting rock live albums ever produced. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, it packs a relentless punch that leaves the listener drunk with pleasure from the powerful momentum the band brought to the stage. "Live" Full House was recorded on April 21 and 22, 1972 at the Cinderella Ballroom, in Detroit, MI. The two nights yielded 31 performances from which eight were selected for album release.

The disc opens with the relatively obscure Smokey Robinson tune, "First I Look at the Purse," which is transformed into a slab-o-rock that proceeds through Otis Rush's "Homework" (easy blues) and the originals "Wammer Jammer," "Hard Drivin' Man" (Rock and Roll), and "Cruisin’ for Love." All of the songs to this point are of 45 rpm, 2-minute length variety, except when one turns the original LP over for John Lee Hooker's staggering nine-plus minutes of "It Serves You Right to Suffer," a funeral dirge turned nasty on homemade whiskey. The recording ends with "Crusin' for a Love" and "Looking for a Love" both driving like a thunderstorm in summer to an apocalyptic end. Forty minutes of pure rock and roll energy.

J. Geils and Seth Justman add their tasty licks to the stew prepared here, tickling all of those R&R receptors in the listeners' brains, and forcing them to dance. Peter Wolf swaggers with all of the greasy Mick Jagger confidence he can muster from his Bronx, New York soul. But in all of this, it is that pre-John Popper harmonica of Magic Dick that steals the show. He distills everything Walter Jacobs, Sonny Boys I and II, and Junior Wells into a manic style played at a nuclear tempo with a dense universal range and sound. Just put on "Wammer Jammer," turn it up to eleven, and let's get back to what rock and roll is all about.