The ugly truth about this review is that the only people who are going to read it are 1) British blues enthusiasts, or as they’re commonly known geeks, 2) Brummie bricklayers on the dole, and 3) Seventies kids who understood that “Slow Ride” was the greatest song ever written about fucking, although they’d never come with forty-girls-length of having sex and couldn’t escape the sneaking suspicion that it was actually a lecture set to music on the wisdom of driving the legally posted speed limit. I fall into the third category.
We’re an oppressed lot. People spit on us from a great height, but what irks me more is they spit on Foghat too. Critics I respect heap shit on them—Robert Christgau wrote, “Is good competent rock really good and competent if its excitement never transcends the mechanical? Is that what getting off means? So maybe they’re not good and competent.” Chuck Eddy wrote, “Can you imagine millions of teenagers paying good money to watch four unemployed gas station attendants? Can you imagine if you were a kid, and you had to explain to your class that your dad plays in Foghat for a living?” And then there was the joker who wrote, “Foghat plays meat and potatoes rock, but they forgot to add the meat.” Wait. That was me!
The basics: Foghat was a London group formed when three of its four members split Savoy Brown after coming to the realization that they were wasting their lives in a group that forgot the potatoes too. They were “Lonesome Dave” Peverett (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Roger Earl (drums), and Tony Stevens (bass). They were joined by Rod Price, whose prowess on the slide guitar led to his being dubbed “The Bottle.” “Foghat” was the name of Peverett’s imaginary childhood friend, which is pretty fucking weird if you think about it.
Foghat was not the most exciting band around. They were a road act, a 369-days-per-year touring band for kids who couldn’t get tickets to see Led Zeppelin. Or Robin Trower even. They make Bad Company sound downright charismatic. Can you imagine someone telling you Foghat is their favorite band? I call myself a fan, I love ‘em even, but I’m not deranged. Foghat didn’t produce a slew of indispensable albums or unforgettable hits. A reasonable person can get by with 1975’s Fool for the City and 1977’s Foghat Live, which is a must-own if you were one of those kids who actually got Led Zeppelin tickets.
That said, Foghat had its hat screwed on tight enough to produce some pretty damn good songs you won’t find on either of the aforementioned discs, which makes owning a greatest hits compilation a not altogether ridiculous proposition, even if the band produced only a few hits, none of which came within screaming distance of the top of the charts. What’s your alternative? Buying all of their albums? That’s not an alternative. That’s tinfoil-hat lunacy. So the question becomes: which best-of compilation should you spring for? And that’s where I get pissed off, because the eight worth counting all have one inexplicable shortcoming—they don’t include the full-length version of “Slow Ride.” Insane, right? They include the piddling “single edit” of the song! Which is why I refuse to own any of them! They’re not worthy! I will say this once and I will say it no more—the title of the song is NOT “Short Ride.”
If I had to choose a comp to own, I’d go with the first, 1985’s The Best of Foghat. It has a cool cover and is “comprehensive,” which is another way of saying it includes at least six songs (and that’s being charitable) you’ll never listen to, but who’s counting? The important thing is that includes a few cool ones you won’t find on some of the other comps, including “Chateau Lafitte ’59 Boogie” and “Maybelline.”
The Best of Foghat is put together chronologically until it isn’t (at some point the folks who put it together just stopped caring), and opens with the not-as-salacious-as-it-could-be cover of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” But what it lacks in slobbering lasciviousness it makes it for in sheer guitar power—Peverett’s pipes are powerful, but what makes the song work (and it does work) is Rod Price’s truly awe-inspiring axemanship. He’s all over the thing, slipping and sliding on the slide guitar when he isn’t hammering out humongous power chords. It’s followed by the band’s hellacious and piano-hammering cover of C. Berry’s “Maybelline,” which is no slow ride but a high-octane ride in reverse straight back to the late fifties. Peverett sounds possessed, and Price comes on like Billy Zoom’s baby daddy. Go cat, go!
“Ride, Ride, Ride” is workmanlike boogie and as solid a rocker as e’er traveled the same interstate as B.T.O.’s “Let It Ride” and “Roll on Down the Highway,” with some much-needed flash thrown in gratis some (uncredited) female backing vocalists. And Price’s slide guitar is magical. “Take It or Leave It” is AOR pap pop and I’m shocked Foghat ever lowered themselves to its level. They should have saved it for their “worst-of” compilation. It’s followed by the live version of “Home in My Hand,” which chug-a-lugs like a good road song should but in general makes me think R. Christgau was on to something. Take away Price’s sizzling slide guitar (which adorns these songs like solid gold shoelaces on a pair of scuffed-up work boots) and what you’re left with is sub par Bad Company.
By the time the rip-snorting “Drivin’ Wheel” comes screaming off the off-ramp you will have correctly deduced that everything is a steering wheel to these roadhogs, in the same way that everything looks like a nail if you’re a hammer. And the compilation doesn’t even include “Road Fever,” “Leaving Again (Again!),” “Highway (Killing Me),” “Chevrolet” and that’s just the ones I can think of off the tope of my head. “Drivin’ Wheel” is all feedback, slide guitar, and fourth-gear get up and go, and as classic as representative of seventies rock as you ever will hear, promise. I wish the same could be said for “Eight Days on the Road,” a grinding but rather pedestrian slog not to be confused with Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road,” which was famously given the Cosmic Country treatment by the Flying Burrito Brothers. Those two additional days seem to have taken it right out of the band.
The unforgivably truncated “Slow Ride” (they cut the damn thing in half!) is great if you’re in the mood for a quickie. But quicky or no it’s a beast with two backs with a lot of John Bonham in its DNA, and I’m betting the guys in Flipper were big fans. “Easy Money” has ZZ Top guitar pizzazz, but lacks the courage of its convictions and a catchy melody to boot. Forgettable, with the exception of the guitar pyrotechnics contained within. “Wild Cherry” has get up and go but goes nowhere interesting; “Night Shift” is all about how rock and rock is a day job turned upside down, and none of these guys sound happy with their jobs. Maybe this is why Brummie bricklayers love them so much.
“Honey Hush” is a mash-up of the Big Joe Turner classic and “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” and lacks the, er, charm of the former and the relentless power of the latter. It’s confusing as well—Lonesome Dave’s better half won’t let up with the yakity-yak and he’s holding a baseball bat but I collected baseball cards in the seventies and I never saw his mug on one! And he doesn’t sound like the kind of monster who would hit her with it, which leads me to think he intends to hit himself over the head with it if she doesn’t shut up.
“Stone Blue” is a perfectly decent slice of seventies radio rock that I never heard on the radio—it’s got more of a studio sheen on it than the boys’ usual fare. Dave’s always in the wrong place, by which he may mean Foghat, but I love the way he goes out by telling us to turn it up, turn up the radio, cuz rock’n’roll will see us through. And while I may have never heard it on the radio one John Mellencamp probably did—there’s so much “Hurts So Good” in the thing it actually hurts.
On the might-as-well-be-Journey (although I hear John Mellencamp in there too, which tells me the guy was a superfan) AOR confection “Third Time Lucky (First Time I Was a Fool”) Peverett fails to tell us what happened the SECOND time, which is a serious omission if you ask me. The great “Chateau Lafitte ’59 Boogie” does just that, and at Autobahn speed at that. It’s got a nice ZZ Top thing going on, Price performs water into wine miracles on slide guitar, and speaking of wine it doesn’t sound like Peverett is giving the estimable vintage in the title the respect it deserves—I get the idea he’s chugging it straight from the bottle like its Thunderbird.
Which leaves us with (I almost forgot!) “Fool for the City,” on which Price’s guitar grabs you by the neck and never lets go. This one belongs to the Velvet Underground “Train Round the Bend” anti-back-to-nature school of thought. To hell with Canned Heat and “Going Up the Country”—fresh country air can kill you, which is why Peverett (who wants to live, damn it!) sings “air pollution here I come!” This is what “China Grove” would have sounded like if the Doobie Brothers had brains, and nobody ever called Foghat smart. I love Peverett’s hillbilly monologue in the middle, and the way the song really turns into a train coming round the bend at the end, whistle blowing and shooting sparks, out of control and headed into the station, while everybody IN the station goes a running.
Humble, homely, and every bit as much part of the rock vanguard as Grand Funk Railroad (but better!), Foghat were preservers of the blues rock tradition, zero-pretensions road warriors who fought a rearguard action in the arenas of America and Great Britain against the punkers, prog-rockers, glitter strewers, and other apostates out to slay the boogie. They were like a mangy cur—and I say this as a fan—who wasn’t going to win any dog show ribbons but who nevertheless occasionally stood up on its hind legs and cut a caper. And they caper on just enough of the songs on The Best of Foghat to make it worth robbing your own wallet. That said, it still pisses me off that they cut off “Slow Ride” at the knees. As any Brummie bricklayer will tell, a job done half right is a job done all wrong.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
