Page 26 - the NOISE January 2014

BoB SeGeR’S HeAVY MuSiC
Yes, heavy.
Yes, that Bob Seger.
Yes, the bearded cheeseball responsible for inflicting such
classic schlock as “Mainstreet,” “Against The Wind,” and (ew- www) “We’ve Got Tonight” upon radio listeners. And when the latter was covered by fellow bearded cheeseball Kenny Rogers, ol’ Ken just slipped right into the driver’s seat of that sucker and no one batted an eye. Rock and What?
Yes, the guy who sold one of his tunes for yet another car commercial with the unbeatable one-two punch of material- ism and jingoism.
Yes, the dude who gave us the barely-rocking “Old Time Rock ‘n Roll,” a song that’s guaranteed to get the party start- ed at any political convention and for many of us is forever tied to the visual of Tom Cruise jumping around in his Jockey shorts. Thanks, Bob.
Yes, the man whose family-friendly “rockers” are mostly lukewarm dishwater duds like “Her Strut” or “Betty Lou’s Get- tin’ Out Tonight.” Gang-Rape’s Greatest Hits, anybody?
Heavy ... yeah sure.
Yet every once in a while, you’ll hear something in one of those warhorses that says this boy’s got the juice, or at least knows where he left it: the populist lyrics of “Feel Like A Number,” the Muscle Shoals funk of “Come To Poppa,” the joy of a good car song like “Making Thunderbirds,” the gallop- ing choogle of “Hollywood Nights,” the lonely spaces within
“Night Moves” (a Springsteen cop, but a good one. Even Bruce thought so), and more of those great little moments in rock, like when “Travelin’ Man” majestically falls into “Beautiful Los- er” on the live album.
OK, ol’ Bob can roots it up good as Mellencamp and uh ... Kid Rock can, but HEAVY?
Yes, heavy.
Prior to Bob Seger’s mainstream breakthroughs Live Bullet and Night Moves, his resulting slide into mediocrity lay over ten years of hard work and hard rockin’. After all, Bob hails from Michigan, home of the Nuge, Iggy, Grand Funk, and the almighty MC5, chest-beating shirtless yodeling troglodyte rockers all.
More to the point, Michigan was home to Motown, the label/hit factory that put Detroit on the music map. In the
1960s,”The Sound Of Young America” was in direct competi- tion with the harder edged R&B of Stax and Atlantic (as well as a host of smaller labels) for the American teenager dollar. The result was a wealth of the most glorious music ever heard.
It must be something in the air around these scenes that the white kids pick up on. Stax in Memphis bred musicians like Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Dan Penn and Alex Chilton, all of them soulful crackers. Alabama’s Muscle Shoals studio birthed the Swampers, the baddest all-white rhythm section around, Aretha’s crew. If you want to sit at the big folks’ table,
off the 1969 Bob Seger System noah album cover
you best be bringing an extra large jar of funk, wonderbread. Same with Detroit in the ‘60s. If your garage band has a Sat-
urday night gig and Smokey or Marvin Gaye or the Temps or the Four Tops are playing just around the corner, you better make something exciting happen or you’ll be singing to the guy who mops the floor.
One of the first Michigan bands to stir up white suburbia was Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, who played a hopped- up au-go-go R&B mixed with the new British Invasion beat, helmed by powerhouse drummer Johnny Bee. The kids went nuts. Somewhere in New Jersey, highschoolers Bruce Spring- steen and Max Weinberg were listening.
The mid-1960s were amazing years for music, and Michi- gan’s local rock scene was getting ready to bloom. Teen- throbs Terry Knight and The Pack contained future Grand Funkers Mark Farner and Don Brewer (Knight would become their manager). Grand Funk bassist Mel Schacher was in ? & The Mysterians, who had a #1 hit with “96 Tears.” The Amboy Dukes featured hotshot guitarist Ted Nugent. Iggy was still Jimmy Osterberg, playing drums with the Iguanas and the Prime Movers but soon to step out from behind his kit. A bunch of dope smoking misfits formed a band called the Mo- tor City Five, soon abbreviated. Hair salon owner and stylist George Clinton, head of a doo-wop group called The Parlia- ments, wondered what this LSD thing was all about.
Into this scene came young Robert Clark Seger. He had been playing in local bands since high school, and it was Bob who always sang the “black” tunes. He got a job as staff song- writer and session musician at Hideout Records, co-owned by Edward “Punch” Andrews, who recognized Seger’s budding talent and encouraged him to become a frontman. Punch would be Bob’s manager and producer for the rest of his ca- reer.
Their first single together was “East Side Story,” credited to Bob Seger and The Last Heard, released in January 1966. “East Side Story” was tough, urban. A mosquito-fuzz guitar riff and overdriven organ propel it along. Seger obviously idol-
ized R&B shouters like Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding, yet the voice jumping out of the grooves is unmistakably his own. The song’s subject matter is the same kind of Johnny and Janey teenage melodrama (scrunched into 2:25) that Bruce Springsteen would later excel at.
“East Side Story,” as well as most of Seger’s early output, is essential garage rock, prime Nuggets raunch. It sounds like Detroit, dirty and dangerous. Those who observe the origins of popular music’s trends and movements can point to Bob Seger’s first release and say, “That’s punk rock.” And it is.
The single was a hit in Michigan, but Hideout Records was a shoestring operation without the resources to get their prod- uct beyond the surrounding states, so it was barely heard outside the midwest. Into the picture steps Cameo/Parkway, a New York label run by impresario Neil Bogart (later the head of Buddah and Casablanca records) that was riding high from
26 • january 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us