Roughly ten years before the J. Geils Band broke through to broad mainstream acclaim via the execrable “Centerfold,” the group had made something of a splash for itself via the popularity centered in their Boston-area region.
And the sextet garnered growing attention with 1973’s “Give It To Me.” Culled from and edited down by half from their third album Bloodshot, that hit predates the aforementioned pop smash of 1981, as does the next year’s “Must Of Got Lost” from Nightmares…and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle.
The very title of the successor to the latter LP, Hotline (released 9/9/75), is a thinly-veiled reference to their collective loyalty to roots (right down to emulation of vintage Atlantic Records labels). Yet the uncanny accuracy of the album’s back cover caricature drawing by Lou Brooks may well have undercut the legitimacy of their devotion.
Nonetheless, the technical expertise of co-producers and engineers Bill Szymczyk and Allen Blazek ensured the self-composed songs of keyboardist Seth Justman and vocalist Peter Wolf fused into a whole with the selected covers. The craft is comparable no matter the authors, so the original “Think It Over” is of a piece with John Brim’s shuffle “Be Careful What You Do” and Curtis Mayfield’s “Believe in Me.”
To a similar end, pithy solos like Justman’s on the former–echoing the namesake guitarist’s on the stomping opener “Love-Itis”–generated and sustained the momentum of the performances. And scant breaks between the nine tracks further foster comparison to the breathless unfolding of a Geils concert.
Meanwhile, even as Magic Dick (Salwitz) used his harmonica with great savvy in spotlights on cuts such as “Jealous Love,” he could also utilize the instrument to accurately mimic horn arrangements reminiscent of their r&b/soul foundation, as on “Easy Way Out.” And the rhythm section of bassist Danny Klein and Stephen Jo Bladd was comparably deft, accenting the internal beat of compositions like the infectious syncopation of “Mean Love” without ever turning heavy-handed.
Hotline‘s closing cut might well have been posited as the follow-up to the aforementioned hit, in its extended form, from two years prior. The insinuating reggae overtones near the end of “Fancy Footwork’s own five minutes plus were sufficiently obvious to hearken to its predecessor, yet without contrivance.
There too frontman Wolf’s near-satirical poses prevented anyone, least of all the sextet itself, from taking the group’s persona too seriously. Nevertheless, when the one-time late-night disc jockey sang it straight, as on the twelve-bar workout that is “Orange Driver,” he was as credible in his own way as in his on-stage raps.
Like the studio albums prior to it, on Hotline, The J. Geils Band was consistently able to capture plenty of the dynamism documented most expansively on their double live album Blow Your Face Out. Still, the terse moniker ‘Geils’ for 1977’s Monkey Island preceded the next year’s move to the more pop-oriented EMI-America label for 1978’s Sanctuary.
With the (misplaced?) intent on being taken more seriously as artists, the somewhat darker tone of both long players carried implicit hopes of dispelling at least some of the wacky facade the group had cultivated over the years. With a five-decade perspective on Geils’ entire career, then, it may well be public misperceptions of their fundamental skills that led to the internecine squabbles of later years.
The namesake fretboarder of the group actually sued his bandmates when a group under his name toured without him. And lead vocalist Wolf was also conspicuously missing: he had been asked to leave due his allegiance to authenticity rather than a pop-oriented approach. Fortunately, Hotline is just one of eight J. Geils’ studio LPs that reaffirm the worth of his staunch stance.
