Tag Archives: J. Geils Band

So GM is dropping Pontiac. I wonder what Johnny thinks of that.

Thirty years ago, I lived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at a place called Beaver Lodge. Three of us were students. Three others were out of college, but still living the life. Then there was Johnny.

Johnny spent a little time on campus, but he wasn’t a student. He was a different cat. Johnny often talked about having some money, or soon coming into some money, but his life seemed to suggest otherwise.

Johnny often looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, unshaven, his clothes rumpled and his wild, thinning hair all over the place. But that was Johnny. He wasn’t into appearances. He was pretty laid back.

Especially, thankfully, on the day we crashed the Goat.

That’s what Johnny called his Pontiac GTO. Johnny’s Goat — I think it may have a ’69, like the one above — once had been a sweet ride.

But it wasn’t by the end of the ’70s, when Johnny was driving it to his job as a security guard. It rode too low to the ground, and it wasn’t a low rider. It needed shocks, springs and body work.

When he wasn’t working, Johnny liked to fish. He’d tie his aluminum canoe on top of the Goat and take off. A muscle car with a boat on top. That was Johnny.

One day, the Goat was blocking another car in our driveway. I asked Johnny to move it, and he just threw me the keys. I hopped into the driver’s seat of the Goat, thrilled to be behind the wheel of a cool car. The thrill faded almost immediately. The inside of the Goat looked and smelled like a landfill. That, too, was Johnny. So I moved the Goat and went back inside.

A couple of minutes later, we heard a loud, scraping noise. Then we heard the crash.

The Goat had rolled forward on our sloping driveway and smashed through the basement garage door. When Johnny’s canoe hit the house, it slid off and came to rest at a 45-degree angle, with one end against the house and the other end on the driveway, the Goat underneath it.

Johnny’s often bleary eyes grew wide. He put his hands to his head and swept them back through that wild, thinning hair. His mouth dropped open, but he didn’t say much.

“John,” I assured him, “I set the parking brake.”

“It doesn’t work,” Johnny said.

Remarkably, though, neither the Goat nor the canoe sustained much damage. The scraping we heard was the Goat dragging its rear end on the sloping pavement, slowing its trip toward the garage door.

Johnny was cool about the …

“Wreckage,” the J. Geils Band, from “Monkey Island,” 1977.

Our landlord was not cool about the wreckage. He tore out the garage door, bricked it up and filled in the driveway. That said, it made my basement bedroom — the one in which I often listened to “Monkey Island” — that much more comfortable.

Where’s Johnny today? I have no idea. Not sure I want to know.

Johnny, after all, was a guy who liked to bring his fish back to Beaver Lodge, then throw his catch into the freezer without cleaning it or properly wrapping it. Our roommate Mikey took one look at Johnny’s fish staring at him from the freezer and threw them out.

In the news in the last couple of days is word that Velvet Revolver and lead singer Scott Weiland have parted.

Of course, that hardly qualifies as news. It seemed inevitable.

Velvet Revolver played the big outdoor tent at our local casino in the summer of 2005. I went to see that show, curious about what a supergroup is like these days. It was a great show, even though I don’t really care for either Guns N’ Roses or Stone Temple Pilots, the bands that spawned VR. Weiland has a remarkable stage presence, and Slash can really play guitar.

Later this week, tickets go on sale for another show I’m going to see, again mostly out of curiosity.

Kid Rock is playing our local arena in about six weeks. Some of his stuff I like. Some I don’t. But I’m going to check it out anyway. I want to see how he pulls off that mix of rock, rap and R&B.

An added bonus is that Peter Wolf, once the lead singer in the J. Geils Band, is one of the co-starring acts. He, like Kid Rock, appreciates and taps into vintage American rock and R&B.

Our local indie newspaper reported recently that Wolf stole the show with some of those old J. Geils tunes when they played in Milwaukee earlier this year. I’m not surprised.

I drove two hours to see the J. Geils Band live in Milwaukee on Jan. 30, 1982, as they opened the second leg of a long tour to support “Freeze Frame.” It was ridiculously cold outside and impossibly steamy inside the Riverside Theater as we waited … and waited for the band to take the stage. The show was well worth the wait, energetic almost beyond description.

If you wonder why Peter Wolf is on the same bill with Kid Rock (and Rev. Run of Run-DMC), this tune ought to give you some idea.

“Must Of Got Lost,” the J. Geils Band, from “Blow Your Face Out,” 1976. Recorded live in Boston and Detroit in the same week of November 1975. One of the best live albums ever.