Good-Bye Jolt, It Was Good To Know Ya!

Jolt Cola, the preferred high-octane beverage of students, computer hackers, musicians, and assorted night-dwelling ne'er-do-wells during the late 1980s and through much of the '90s, is seemingly destined to go the way of the black & white television, the floppy disc, and rock music in pop culture notoriety. The so-called "energy" drink's manufacturer, Wet Planet Beverages, has filed for bankruptcy, and cans of Jolt are beginning to disappear from store shelves across the country.

When I moved to West New York from Tennessee in late 2006, there were two things that I was happy to be moving closer to: Genesee Cream Ale and Jolt Cola, both of which are made and bottled in Rochester, New York. I had my first taste of Jolt in the late 1980s, shortly after it was introduced to the market. Back in the day, the cola was ubiquitous in Middle Tennessee, and I drank boatloads of the sugary, strongly-caffeinated soda.

You could buy Jolt in two-liter bottles at the corner convenience store then, like Pepsi or Coke, and I remember guzzling a bottle and a half of the liquid crack one night while working for my buddy Thom at his Kingpins Company. I pulled an all-nighter, crankin' out product, and when Thom came in the next morning he found a sugar-blasted, barely-coherent employee staggering around the office amidst a pile of half-completed work.

During the early '90s, while working at the long-gone Mosko's on Elliston Place, I sold a bunch of the stuff to punk-rock teens that stopped by on their way to Lucy's Records to catch a show, and to hacker friends of mine who just hung around on the "Rock Block" and in Dragon Park. I had mostly weaned myself off the Jolt by that time after almost a decade of addiction to the beverage, and as the '90s wore on, the drink became more difficult to find as dealers and distributors dried up. My wife once bought me a case of Jolt's Cherry Bomb soda for my birthday, finding the last remaining Tennessee distributor carrying the drink and buying it direct.

Jolt was formed in 1985 by SUNY Potsdam student Carl J. Rapp, who observed his classmates concocting all sorts of funky drink mixtures designed to keep them awake and alert while staying up all night studying. At the time, leading soft drink manufacturers like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Royal Crown were pushing drinks with less sugar, caffeine, and calories. Jolt went the opposite direction, proudly proclaiming on the side of every bottle and can that Jolt had "all the sugar and twice the caffeine" of other sodas. Jolt originally contained 72 milligrams of caffeine, the max then allowed by the U.S.F.D.A.

This was Jolt's glory days, and the cola would be written about in USA Today, joked about on David Letterman's TV show, and would appear in the background of movies like Jurassic Park, Hackers, and Gremlins 2. They'd license the name to caffeinated gum, and to bottlers in almost two-dozen countries. As time passed, The Jolt Cola Company changed its name to Wet Planet Beverages, and expanded beyond its original cola flavor to include new products like Cherry Bomb, Orange Blast, White Lightning (grape-flavored), and Electric Blue colas. When the rest of the soft drink industry went to high-fructose corn syrup in place of cane sugar, Jolt followed the leaders and changed its slogan to "all the flavor and twice the caffeine."

In the late '90s, however, Jolt found itself behind the sales eight-ball for the first time. Its status as the "original energy drink" would be overshadowed by the rapid commercial success of Red Bull, which was introduced into the U.S. market in 1997. As citrus-flavored, ginseng-and-taurine-infused energy drinks began to breed like horny little bunnies, Jolt found itself unable to compete in the new market. Unlike RockStar, which partnered with the powerful Pepsi company, or Monster, which hooked up with Coca-Cola, Wet Planet decided to go their own way and remain independent.

In 2005, Wet Planet Beverages overhauled the Jolt Cola line with a new look, a new can, and a new marketing plan. From this point on, Jolt would become known as an "energy drink," and to sell the corn syrup-heavy swill to hyperactive teens and club rats, the company introduced a hip new can that resembled a battery with a re-sealable top. It was this distinctive new can, combined with economic forces, which helped sink the company.

Wet Planet had contracted with Rexam, a beverage can manufacturer in Chicago, to purchase 90 million of the re-sealable battery cans at a cost of around three times that of a normal soda can. As drink sales slacked off through 2008 and 2009, however, Wet Planet had purchased only 27 million cans against its contract. Efforts to move to less-expensive packaging were stymied by Rexam, who would be owed $2.1 million if Wet Planet didn't fulfill its contact by the end of 2009. Unlike other companies in the energy drink market, Wet Planet was unable to lower the price of Jolt to match the price wars instituted by its competitors, hamstrung by that damn expensive can.

Thus cornered, Wet Planet Beverages filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Federal Court in September 2009, asking for the court's permission to sell the company's assets. Without a significant cash infusion, the company is basically dead in the water, unable to move forward with new products or supply its distributors with old products. During my recent visit to Angotti's, our local beverage store, I purchased the last can of Jolt Cherry Bomb that they had in stock. The manager told me that they had bought all of the Jolt they could get their hands on, and although demand for the soda remained high, there was none to be had from their distributor.

Regardless of what ends up happening to the Jolt name, the company's race is run. In my mind, the end began when they re-positioned the company as an "energy drink" instead of more honestly labeling it as a high caffeine cola. When Jolt switched to corn syrup from cane sugar, they changed the drink's great flavor, and removed much of what had made it unique in the first place. Perhaps if they'd kept the real sugar in the recipe, packaged the drink in traditional cans and bottles, and let the legions of legitimate energy drinks fight it out over their dwindling turf, Jolt Cola might have survived. Instead, it becomes yet another fallen icon of my misspent youth….

Discovering Graham Parker

By 1979 the angry, hurried punk-rock spewed out by such "Class of '77" grads as the Sex Pistols, the Damned, and others had begun to give way to the more considered, diverse, and admittedly softer-edged "new wave" sounds that would dominate the early 1980s. Also by this point Graham Parker, as angry a young bloke as any of his punkier musical brethren, had found near universal critical acclaim with his first three studio albums – Howlin' Wind and Heat Treatment in 1976, Stick To Me in 1977 – that would be unaccompanied by any semblance of real commercial success.

Plagued by lack of promotion and label mismanagement for his albums – Parker would write the song "Mercury Poisoning" around this time about his label – and overshadowed by the commercial emergence of the similarly angry young artist Elvis Costello, Parker swung for the fences with his 1979 album, Squeezing Out Sparks.

Working for the first time with producer Jack Nitzsche after making three albums with musician Nick Lowe, Costello channeled all of his piss-n-vinegar energy, emotion, and frustrations into songs like "Discovering Japan," "Local Girls," "Passion Is No Ordinary Word," and "You Can't Be Too Strong." Squeezing Out Sparks would become Parker's best-known, and most successful album, topping 200,000 copies sold and inching itself into the Billboard magazine Top Forty.

As Parker remembers in the liner notes for Live In San Francisco 1979, management put him and his band the Rumour on tour shortly before the March 1979 release of Squeezing Out Sparks and kept them out on the road, on two continents, for almost ten months. One of the early stops along the way was a two-night gig at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco in April, the second night of which was recorded by local radio station KSAN-FM for on-air broadcast.

This is the show that would later be used by Parker's label for a promotional album titled Live Sparks that culled San Francisco performances of the ten songs from Squeezing Out Sparks, tacked on a couple of songs from a live broadcast on WXRT-FM in Chicago, and would be quickly sent out to radio stations to help provide momentum for Parker's tour and album sales. The limited-edition, promo-only vinyl quickly became a coveted collector's item, but would later become redundant in the CD age when included as a second disc on the 1996 reissue of Squeezing Out Sparks.

Live Sparks only told part of the story, however, while Live From San Francisco 1979, released by archive specialists Renaissance Records with its online partners It's About Music, recreates a longer tale. Featuring a twenty-song performance by Graham Parker & the Rumour as recorded by the radio station, Live From San Francisco 1979 provides a valuable document of the band's reckless live energy and Parker's frenetic vocal pace. Whereas the sound on Live Sparks was always suspect – thin and full of echo – it has been markedly improved here, albeit at slightly less than studio quality. While portions of this performance have circulated among fans as bootlegs for years, none to my knowledge have ever included it in its entirety.

Parker performs his Squeezing Out Sparks album almost in its entirety Live From San Francisco 1979, supplementing those performances with a healthy dose of material from his previous three studio discs. Kicking off with a crash-bang reading of "Discovering Japan" and slipping into a fast-paced version of "Local Girls," Live From San Francisco 1979 jumps into an urgent performance of "Thunder and Rain" that includes some stellar fretwork from guitarists Brinsley Schwartz and Martin Belmont, Graham's strident vocal gymnastics, bombastic drumbeats from Steven Goulding and, just beneath the surface, some great keyboards and special effects courtesy of Bob Andrews.

After ramping up the audience with three subsequent barn-burners, Parker & the Rumour deliver a swaggering look at "Don't Get Excited" that befits the song's syncopated electricity before launching into the pub-rock-flavored romp "Back To School Days." A piano-led, tongue-in-cheek boozy roll in nostalgia, the band cranks it out here like Friday night at the local watering hole and their life depends on winning over the crowd. The aforementioned "Mercury Poisoning," spit out here with all of the venomous intent of the original studio version, is one of the best songs written about the music biz. Directly targeting his former record label and its feeble attempts at promoting his music, Parker's nimble wordplay is matched by an infectious chorus and kicked out with a punkish fervor of clashing instruments and angry vocals.

The older material easily fits in between the newer songs here, the band's innate chemistry allowing it to change gears quickly from the swinging R&B rave-up "Heat Treatment" to the rockabilly-tinged "Clear Head" and the hard-rocking "Saturday Nite Is Dead." The band's cover of the Jackson 5 gem "I Want You Back" has always been one of my personal favorites, Parker's reverent vocals doing a great job at expressing the romantic longing and loss of the original song. This live version is pretty cool, a little faster-paced than some performances, but Parker's vox are still top-notch and the accompanying guitars bring just enough Steve Cropper/Stax Records flavor to mimic the Motown sound. Live From San Francisco 1979 closes with the anarchistic "New York Shuffle," the song's pub-rock vibe complimented by a little rockabilly guitar, honky-tonk-styled piano, and more than a little punkish intensity.

Live From San Francisco 1979 documents a road-weary Graham Parker & the Rumour that climb the Old Waldorf stage and kick out the jams with reckless aplomb anyway. The collection is a hell of a lot of fun, mixing Squeezing Out Sparks with the earlier material, and both Parker and the band sound absolutely energized by the loud-n-rowdy audience. More than anything, the album showcases an artist that never quite received the commercial pay-off that his passionate, intense, and entertaining music should have gotten. Luckily we have recordings like Live From San Francisco 1979 to remind us of just how damn good Graham Parker & the Rumour were back in the day. (Renaissance Records / It's About Music)

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(Click on the CD cover to buy Live In San Francisco 1979 from Amazon.com)

Turn Up The Radio with The Rockets!

Detroit in the late-70s was a true rock 'n' roll Mecca. Ted Nugent was hitting the charts, and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band were blowing up nationwide. The MC5 were long gone, but Fred "Sonic" Smith had his Sonic's Rendezvous Band to kick out the jams on stages from Ann Arbor to Toledo, and all points in between. The street scene was vital as well, with a mix of punk, pop, and art-rockers knockin' 'em down at the New Miami club every weekend. Bands like the Mutants, Flirt, Cinecyde, Destroy All Monsters, and the Romantics were redefining the Motor City sound, and those of us in the audience just hung on for a wild ride.

Into this musical maelstrom stepped the Rockets. Formed earlier in the decade as "the Detroit Rockets" by guitarist Jim McCarty, fresh from the band Cactus, and drummer Johnny “Bee” Badanjek, both musicians were veterans of Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels. The original incarnation of the Rockets featured Badanjek on vocals, belting out the songs from behind his drum kit. Although they had begun to develop a local following, it wasn't until they added singer David Gilbert in 1976 that the Rockets truly took launch.

Gilbert was the sort of rock 'n' roll wildman that was typical of the 1960s/70s…a golden-tressed Adonis with a larger-than-life voice and the sort of charismatic presence to take the band to the top of the heap. Gilbert's bluesy baritone had been honed by fronting a half-dozen Detroit-area garage bands, which brought him to the attention of Ted Nugent.

The Nuge enlisted Gilbert to front his early-70s incarnation of the Amboy Dukes, and Gilbert spent a year in the dim spotlight of minor stardom. It lit a fire in the young singer, and he would relocate to L.A. to join New Order, the pre-punk outfit formed by the Stooges' Ron Asheton and the MC5's Dennis Thompson. A little more than a year later, Gilbert returned to Detroit and would be discovered fronting an Ann Arbor bar band by Rockets' guitarist Dennis Robbins. Although McCarty was reluctant, the band recruited Gilbert as their singer and hit the road.

Gilbert brought an entirely different dimension to the band's sound, one that was exploited by their debut album, 1977's Love Transfusion. The album received favorable reviews, including a nice write-up in Rolling Stone, and the Rockets status changed from Detroit bar band to opening act for nationwide tours by Kiss and Bob Seger. By the time that they convened in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with producer Johnny Sandlin (The Allman Brothers) to record their self-titled sophomore effort, tensions were already high and relationships strained by touring, drugs, and alcohol.

Tension and stress often times create great art, and if The Rockets isn't a great album, it's a great example of Detroit rock 'n' roll nonetheless. Sandlin coaxed great performances out of singer Gilbert, guitarists McCarty and Robbins, and drummer Badanjek. Most of the bass parts on the album were played by Muscle Shoals session legend David Hood. The result was a fine collection of high-octane Motor City raw meat tempered with a little Southern soul seasoning.

The Rockets is remembered fondly by fans for the minor regional hit "Turn Up The Radio" and an inspired cover of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac gem "Oh Well," which earned the band it's first Top Thirty charting single. There's plenty of other stuff to like here, though. The album-opening "Can't Sleep" is a sly piece of Southern-friend funk that mixes a pop-rock chorus with a slippery rhythm to great effect, similar to what Wet Willie had done on early albums. As the second single off the album it rose to a respectable #51 on the Billboard Top 100 chart. The fan-fave "Turn Up The Radio" is a no-frills Motor City rocker with blustery vocals, the sort of rebellious rock 'n' roll fable that fueled the 70s-rock sound and is sadly missing from today's music.

The band surprised many with the deft hand applied to Green's "Oh Well," a difficult song that has been covered by many but mastered by few. The Rockets come mighty close here, with McCarty and Robbins' dueling guitars outpacing the band's rhythmic accompaniment. Gilbert's vocals are dropped a little low in the mix for my taste, but phrased nicely and appropriately echoed; it is the guitar framework that drives the song, however, and the two fretburners add just enough feedback and fireworks to claim this turf for the Motor City.

The moody, atmospheric "Lost Forever, Left For Dreaming" shows Badanjek's skills as a songwriter, the song's bittersweet lyrics delivered with some fine emotion by Gilbert and echoed by some rare harmonies. The song showcases Donnie Backus's pianowork, which adds to the ambiance of the song. Bob Seger gave the band his "Long Long Gone" to record, and lyrically it sounds like a typical winsome Seger song from this period, but this isn't the Silver Bullet Band, and the Rockets deliver it their way with Gilbert perfectly expressing the song's wanderlust while the band follows with a lush soundtrack that again emphasizes Backus's keyboards.

McCarty's "Love Me Once Again" is a balls-to-the-wall rocker with Chuck Berry-inspired duckwalkin' guitar licks and reckless Jerry Lee-styled piano-pounding. A cover of Little Richard's classic "Lucille" amps up the guitars and pumps the keyboards full of steroids and Gilbert delivers his stomp-and-stammer vox above screaming guitars and explosive drumbeats. The Rockets closes with Badanjek's "Feel Alright," a happy-go-lucky mid-tempo rocker with crashing rhythms, shouted harmonies, and scraps of molten fretwork.

After the minor success of The Rockets album, which rose as high as #56 on the Billboard album chart, the band would return to the same well for their follow-up, 1980's No Ballads. With the addition of bassist Dan Keylon, the band plumbed much of the same musical territory as their sophomore effort, i.e. no-frills rock 'n' roll with occasional strains of Southern funkiness creeping into the grooves. The album would keep the band on the cusp of success, the first single "Desire" only climbing as high as #70, although No Ballads itself would beat its predecessor by a few notches, hitting #53 on the chart.

No Ballads shows the band stretching out a little, augmenting its hard-rockin' guitar-bass-drums-energy formula with a few flourishes. The album's charting single, "Desire," is a nifty lil' slab o' period rockola, a screaming rocker with a locomotive rhythm, great vocals, a few memorable guitar licks, and an overall riot-inciting vibe that should have taken it higher up the charts if not for those new wave wimps that were beginning to creep onto the 1980s rock scene.

The band's label at the time must have given up on the Rockets, 'cause No Ballads has a couple of other tunes that coulda, shoulda groped their way up the charts and onto the radio airwaves. The swaggering, muscular "Restless" features a bluesy undercurrent that synthesizes blues-rock and pop-rock in way that the J. Geils Band would hit gold with a couple of years later, and McCarty's (or Robbins') guitar solos here sound just like Geils' on that band's Sanctuary album. A spry cover of Lou Reed's "Sally Can't Dance" literally drips with Southern funk spirit and badass cock-rock strutting that could have fought its way into the upper reaches of the Billboard singles chart.

Badanjek's "Takin' It Back" is nothing more than "Turn Up The Radio" redux, with a similar boogie-rock based rollicking rhythmic soundtrack, scattershot vocals, plenty of potent guitar riffing, and mile-a-minute drumbeats that swing harder than John Henry's legendary hammer. McCarty's "I Want You To Love Me" is a blues-rocker not dissimilar to some of the best of Cactus' songs, an up-tempo barn-burner with honky-tonk piano and imaginative guitarplay that evokes the sound of British blooze fretburners like Eric Clapton and Peter Green.

Both The Rockets and No Ballads albums fell short of Gold Record status, selling around 400,000 copies each and failing to break the band with a the mainstream rock audience. The latter album, in particular, had its commercial prospects hamstrung by label RSO's desperate financial condition. When RSO went belly-up, the Rockets signed to Elektra Records. Still seeking that monster hit, they moved from Detroit to Los Angeles to record Back Talk with noted producer Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, Cheap Trick). The partnership didn't work out as they had planned, however, and the album barely crawled into the Top 200 at #165, stiffing even in their Detroit stronghold.

While tensions in the band were already stressful, drug and alcohol use – especially by Gilbert – didn't help the band's fragile musical chemistry, and it showed with 1982's Rocket Roll, the band's final studio effort and a last gasp attempt at relevance in a world that had clearly moved past them. Friction between band co-founder Badanjek and Robbins would result in the guitarist's removal as the band stumbled back home to record Rocket Roll. The label even budgeted for a video for the album's lone single, "Rollin’ by the Record Machine," but even MTV couldn't save the Rockets by this time. A live album represented the band's swansong; recorded in the Rockets' backyard, it did little to capture their previous magic. Shortly after its release, the band broke up….

Dave Gilbert would move onto other bands, none nearly as remarkable or successful as the Rockets. Years of alcohol abuse finally caught up with the singer, and Gilbert died in 2001 at the age of 49 years. Guitarist Dennis Robbins, unceremoniously sacked from the band, ended up having the last laugh, moving to Nashville where he became a successful country songwriter with hits by Garth Books and Travis Tritt to his credit. Jim McCarty would spend much of the '80s and '90s with the Detroit Blues Band and Mystery Train before taking part in a Cactus reunion in 2006 that resulted in the album V. McCarty recently reunited with his long-time friend Johnny "Bee" Badanjek in the Hell Drivers, the Detroit rockers performing songs by the Rockets, Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, and Mitch Ryder to appreciative audiences.

Often overlooked in an album-oriented-rock world dominated by the likes of Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon and their ilk, the Rockets never received the acclaim they deserved, nor did they ever deliver the masterpiece album that would endear them to cultists and collectors. The band retains a small albeit loyal following worldwide, and the Rockets' catalog goes in-and-out of print with alarming regularity. This 2009 Renaissance Records reissue pairs The Rockets with No Ballads so that you can experience the band's two best albums on a single disc. (Renaissance Records)

Related Content:
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(Click on the CD cover to buy The Rockets/No Ballads from Amazon.com)

The Gilded Palace of Sin

You'll get no argument from me about Gram Parsons' role as the forefather of the "alt-country" movement, as well as an incredible influence on both country and rock music from the '70s through the present day. As an artist, Parsons' all-too-brief catalog has taken on a near-mythological status, the man himself deified with a fervor reserved for dead icons like Nick Drake and Tim Buckley that never achieved the fame and/or notoriety of a Hendrix or a Morrison.

As writer Bob Proehl shows in his excellent and insightful addition to Continuum's ongoing 33 1/3 series of books, as talented and visionary as Parsons was, he didn't do it all alone. Often overlooked as part of both Parsons' grand experiment in late-60s country-rock after he hijacked Roger McGuinn's Byrds, and as a founding member of the much-lauded Flying Burrito Brothers, without multi-instrumental talent Chris Hillman, neither the Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) or The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969) albums would have been the same, and indeed might not have existed without Hillman's invaluable contributions.

Proehl tackles The Gilded Palace of Sin album for the 33 1/3 series with an approach that is part historical and part critical. In truth, this is a difficult musical masterpiece to dissect…although the album's mix of rock, country, and classic R&B was undeniably unique, and it would take decades for it to be fully digested and spit back out by bands like Uncle Tupelo, it's an album of dichotomies, as well. The songs penned by Parsons and Hillman are among the best the two men would ever create, the tense chemistry between the two artists resulting in lyrics that were topical and timeless.

However talented the assembled musicians, however, much of the music on The Gilded Palace of Sin sounds tentative, weakly produced, and often times it is Parsons himself who fails to deliver in measure with the status he has since been accorded. Make no mistake – this is a classic album by any standards, but it is Hillman's voice that often soars in harmony with Parsons', and the impact of Sneaky Pete Kleinow's mournful steel guitar on the band's sound cannot be underestimated. In short, it was a true band effort, not just the GP show.

Proehl frames his book by quickly touching on Parsons' brief, but tumultuous membership in the Byrds, an artistic invasion if you will as Parson attempted to bring the vision of country music that he tried to create with his previous outfit, the International Submarine Band, to McGuinn's folk-rock hitmakers. Under Parsons' influence, Sweetheart of the Rodeo would become a different album than McGuinn originally envisioned, but in the end, one of the band's worst-selling albums would become, perhaps, its best-known based entirely on Parsons' meager presence on the final product.

Proehl offers up just enough biographical information on Parsons to explain his Southern heritage and country music inclinations, quickly plunging his protagonist into late-60s Southern California and the formation of the Flying Burrito Brothers with former Byrds bandmate Chris Hillman. Proehl divvies up each chapter according to Biblical sins, using "vanity," "envy," "sloth," "avarice," etc to frame the story of the band, and of key songs on The Gilded Palace of Sin album.

There's a lot drama here for Proehl to draw from…Parsons, a trust fund baby from a well-off Southern family had the money to ensure comfort and plenty of drugs to feed his growing habit, while the rest of the band struggled as the stereotypical "starving artists." A cross-country tour by train (Parsons was notoriously afraid of flying unless "doped up to his eyeballs") was a financial and artistic disaster, the barely-practiced band's performances outside of Los Angeles drawing meager audiences. The album, although receiving glowing endorsements from Rolling Stone magazine and counter-culture icon Bob Dylan, sold sluggishly and was mostly misunderstood by its target audience.

Proehl's descriptions of the culture, environment, and aspirations behind the album are lively, while his use of quotes from musicians and hangers-on alike helps put the story in proper context, fleshing out the story. Surprisingly, although Proehl included Hickory Wind, writer Ben Fong-Torres' biography of Parsons, in his research he seems to have neglected musician Sid Griffin's excellent biography of the artist, as well as John Einarson's acclaimed Hot Burritos book on the band, although he does include Einarson's Desperados: The Roots of Country Music in his bibliography.

In the end, the same creative and economic tensions that helped make The Gilded Palace of Sin a classic album also forced Hillman to fire Parsons shortly after the release of the band's sophomore effort, Burrito Deluxe. Hillman would later play musical matchmaker, pairing his former songwriting partner with singer EmmyLou Harris, thus providing the spark that would launch Parsons' widely acclaimed (and equally influential), albeit brief solo career. Proehl ends his telling of the tale with Parsons' tragic, but not entirely unforeseen death in 1973.

Proehl does a fine job of describing the musical dynamic in the band, Parsons' and Hillman's creative process, and both the triumphs and obstacles experienced by the Flying Burrito Brothers. Proehl's prose is entertaining and informative, providing the casual fan or newcomer to the Burritos' mythos an easy-to-use guide to the band's most important album, while still providing plenty of meat on the bone for longtime fans to gnaw upon.

More importantly, whether he set out to do so or not, Proehl places The Gilded Palace of Sin in its proper historical context, his emphasis on Hillman's role with the band in no way diminishing Parsons' importance. His work doesn't deflate the still-growing Parsons' mythology as much as it humanizes it and grounds Parsons' enormous musical contributions in reality, where they belong. (Continuum Books)

(Click on the book cover to buy The Gilded Palace of Sin from Amazon.com)

Nils Lofgren - Cry Tough

Nils Lofgren would first come to the attention of the rock 'n' roll world when he was offered a position with Neil Young's band as a guitarist and keyboard player at the tender age of 17 years. Playing and touring in Young's band with the members of Crazy Horse, Lofgren would appear on Young's After The Goldrush and Tonight's The Night albums, and would also record with Crazy Horse for their solo debut. During this same time period, circa 1969-1973, Lofgren also fronted his own band in Grin, recording four albums before breaking up the band and launching his solo career in 1974.

While Nils Lofgren's self-titled 1975 solo debut would become the stuff of legend, sending the guitarist and songwriter's career into the stratosphere, Lofgren's second effort, 1976's Cry Tough, stands tall as an accomplished work in its own right. Partially produced by rock 'n' roll wunderkind Al Kooper – no slouch in the musical genius department himself – and Neil Young cohort David Briggs, Lofgren was backed by his brother and former Grin bandmate Tom, and a band of session pros, including drummers Jim Gordon and Aynsley Dunbar and bassists Paul Stallworth, Wornell Jones, and Chuck Rainey. As such, Cry Tough would serve as a fine follow-up to the guitarist's debut.

The album-opening title track would become one of Lofgren's long-time fan favorites. The fretwork on "Cry Tough" is wiry and just a little dirty, with a bit of blues falling in between the lines, and Kooper smartly segregates Lofgren's best solo to a spotlight of its own. The song's lyrical rock 'n' aesthetic didn't hurt, either, and it would become a live staple of Lofgren's performances for years.

Although Briggs would often feature Lofgren's guitar high in the mix, Kooper would make the best use of Lofgren's guitar hero status and six-string acumen. Take, for instance, the mostly mid-tempo, near-ballad "It's Not A Crime"…although Lofgren's vocals struggle at times to be heard above the mix, and the song's lush orchestration and backing vocals threaten to bury the frontman altogether, Kooper amps it up for Lofgren's roof-raising solos, which provide the song with an athlete's heartbeat.

On the other hand, the Briggs-produced "Incidentally…It's Over" is one of Lofgren's best tunes in a catalog deep with such, a taut guitar showcase with Lofgren's ever-present fretwork threaded throughout, but with plenty of room left for a couple of scorched-earth solos, a fine vocal performance, and real piss-off lyrics. Kooper has Lofgren try his hand at the old Yardbirds' gem "For Your Love," the early-60s blues-rock number transformed into a galloping rock 'n' roll leviathan with bluesy vocals, rapidfire drumbeats, steely bass lines, and a display of six-string proficiency that would light the sky like the fourth of July. Lofgren's solos are all over the place, from psychedelic squiggles to fierce, semi-metallic razorblades cutting straight through the mix.

Lofgren follows the inspired performance of "For Your Love" with the equally devastating "Share A Little." A muscular rocker with blistering, molten fretwork and staggered, syncopated rhythms, Wornell Jones' bass provides a foundation on which Lofgren goes nuts with his flamethrower solos. The song includes backing vocals from his former Crazy Horse bandmates Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot. With only sparse accompaniment…just Scott Ball's spry upright bass lines and Holden Raphael's fast-paced percussion…Lofgren's "Mud In Your Eye" is a departure, the song depending mostly on his lively vocals and a bit of acoustic guitar strum and piano. Lyrically clever, its words delivered with no little spite, it's an odd little romantic passion-play and quite entertaining.

Another bittersweet romantic rocker, "You Lit A Fire" is complimented by Kooper's thick orchestral arrangement and Lofgren's inventive, fluid guitarplay, which sounds a lot like he'd been listening to a little Ernie Isley at the time. Lofgren's vocals are fine, and the slightly-funky backbeat provided by the Rainey/Gordon rhythm section could have easily played into the strengths of AM radio circa 1976, sliding in right beside the Isley Brothers on the charts. Cry Tough closes with a funky rocker, "Jailbait" a story of illicit love delivered amidst a flurry of rampaging rhythms and a fat rhythmic groove, Lofgren's guitar taking on a Southern rock feel similar to what Kooper accomplished with Gary Rossington a year earlier on Lynyrd Skynyrd's Nothin' Fancy album.

Cry Tough would become the best-selling album of Lofgren's solo career, rising as high as #32 on the Billboard charts and ensuring the guitarist the opportunity to follow up with albums like 1978's I Came To Dance, 1979's Nils, and the acclaimed 1983 set Wonderland. Lofgren would put his solo aspirations on hold for a decade when he joined Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band in 1984, and although he has released only a handful of well-received studio albums in the years since, Lofgren has kept the fires burning for his beloved early material through archival releases and a string of live albums. Cry Tough is the album that cemented Lofgren's musical reputation, however, and it sounds as electric and vital today as it did in 1976. (Hip-O Select Records)

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(Click on the CD cover to buy Cry Tough from Amazon.com)