I Love Baby

About ten years ago, I was watching TV on a Saturday afternoon, and I came across the movie "What's Love Got To Do With It," the story of Ike and Tina Turner. I had heard about him abusing her and that they were married and all that. But I didn't really know the story. I also didn't know that Ike's "Rocket 88" is considered to be the first rock n' roll song ever. I guess I didn't realize because the song was credited to Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, but the band never existed. Jackie Brenston was the sax player in Ike Turner's (early band) The Kings of Rhythm and sang the vocal on the ode to the Oldsmobile 88. The song was recorded in a time when the singer was the most visible 'leader' of a band, so it would be easier to sell the record by naming the band after the singer.

Anyway, I didn't know how closely connected R&B and rock and roll were. I had heard Andre Williams and Gino Washington and all that (early Detroit soul/R&B acts), but I never heard the seriously rocking stuff until I saw this movie.

So that got me on an Ike & Tina kick, but sometimes, you heard the acidic Jimi Hendrix influenced guitar and her voice, and you WANT it to bust out, but it doesn't. The problem isn't a lack of power, because they sure as hell had it. And the problem wasn't a conscious downplaying of their sound. They weren't holding back. I think the issue I have with it is the sound could've been so much bigger. Maybe it was the times they were living in, I don't know.

I found what I couldn't get out of Ike & Tina. One night at the Magic Stick in Detroit in 1998, this band from Southern California was playing. My trusted music professor Tim Lampinen (aka Tim Vulgar) was freaking out that the Bellrays were playing and his band The Clone Defects were opening. I knew nothing of the Bellrays, but trusting Tim, I checked them out.

HO-LY CRAP! They describe their sound as 'maximum rock and soul', and I think that's quite perfect. Seriously, imagine if Ike & Tina had supported the Stooges on tour of America instead of the Rolling Stones in 1969. That's no joke. You read that right. The fucking Stooges in a mashup with Ike & Tina.

And that's just me being simple for the sake of brevity. I really should bring in all the things I hear like Stax/Volt soul, the MC5, the Ramones, Motown, Fortune Records, and the Detroit punk of the early '70s.

It's easy to look at the band and assume that it's exactly the sum of it's parts: three white guys and a leggy black woman up front singing. Does that mean that she sings soul while they play punk rock? No, not quite, these three white guys have some serious, serious soul. They know what they're doing.

Their new album "Have A Little Faith" just came out recently on Cheap Lullaby Records. Click here to check out their site. Right from the first track "Tell the Lie," they have me hooked. I'm in and I won't let go til it's all done. If you go to their site, there's a music player down on the bottom right. You can listen to the whole album right there. Or, you can click the pick below and that'll take you to their site as well.