Vinegar Joe Proves One Of The Best English Bands In Years
Vinegar joe is a fairly new English band who have been together perharps two years. None of the members are musical big-shots from other groups; only vocalist Elkie Brooks and leader-guitarist Pete Gage have been previously heard from as members of an interesting but short-lived band called Dada. Now they've come together with co-vocalist Robert Palmer, co-guitarist Jim Mullen, Mike Deacon on keyboards, Steve York on bass, and drummer John Woods to form Vinegar Joe - without a doubt one of the best bands to come out of England in the last few years.
Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies (Atco) is their second album and it is very close to being a nice down-to-earth rock 'n' roll masterpiece. Out of a collection of ten songs, none are bad and a large majority of them are excellent.
Certainly the major reason for the quality of the music is the fact that all the musicians in the band know their limitations. The strength of the band is the two vocalists who can most easily be compared to Delaney and Bonnie, but work more closely and efficiently as Grace Slick and Marty Balin at their best. Elkie Brooks has a superb voice, a combination of the raw power and throatiness so vital to rock 'n' roll coupled with a very good range and clearness in her delivery.
The guitar work is very nice; it sounds as if both guitarists share leads, but neither is a superlative guitarist, just very strong, funky and tasteful. Bass and drums aren't ever in the forefront, but they never make any mistakes and always are available when needed; Keef Hartley plays drums on several cuts and his graceful simplicity really cements the songs together. The entire sound is held together most prominently by Deacon who normally plays piano much in the tough and surging fashion of Leon Russell. His piano work is excellent and he shows himself to be probably the most talented musician in the band.
As for the individual songs, they are all tied together by the mutual bond of blues-derivative rock played with sure-handed energetic musicians. The album commences with So Long which can best be characterized as a fast-driving melodic tune where the two vocalists mesh, allowing the song to come across very reminiscent of Delaney and Bonnie at their very best. As the vocals pour forth, the guitar comes in and out with some simple but pleasing little riffs that add to the texture of the song. The second tune, Charlie's Horse, starts off with a good Allman Brothers twin lead, then surges into a hard rocker dominated by organ sounding a lot like Jefferson Airplane. The title song is next and it is an exquisite ballad in the mode of a slightly uptempo Superstar with fine chorus singing.
By the time you get to the second side, the band is really cooking, and they never come down until the last number which serves as a kind of gentle postscript to the energy that has preceded it. The side begins with the Jerry Lee Lewis hit Whole Lotta Shakin' (Goin' On). The band discards the typical contemporary heavy-handed approach to old rock 'n' roll and instead they give us a meshing of rocking piano lines and some strong but restrained guitar along with Brooks' frenzied vocal and the superlative background vocal of Palmer. The song is followed by a nice blues whose counterpart is also on this side.
Both songs feature York playing some strong but simple harmonica while Brooks and Palmer go to town on the vocals. In this type of music, the lyrics have to be tough but interesting. Gage, who writes most of the material, manages just fine with lines like this from the blues No One Ever Do: "We'll have two presidents, black and white/One will rule the day, the other rule the night."
In between the two blues numbers is Hendrix's Angel which dominates the second side. The band probably recorded it as a response to Rod Stewart's recent version, and Brooks takes the vocal and really pours it out with fierce determination, soaring over a range of octaves to accomplish the feat; all the time the band backs her up perfectly, punctuating the pauses with heavy emphasis on the odd chords which characterize Hendrix songs.
As far as contemporrary rock 'n' roll goes, this album is the best you can possibly get. The band is strong at all points, and with a powerhouse like Brooks they have the makings of a real sensation in music. This band knows their stuff and derives great pleasure from a simple energetic music that really moves.
This album is analogous to one of the recent simple but powerful masterpieces in music, Layla by the Dominoes. But with Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies, the vocals produce the real flair instead of the guitars. With the release of Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies, Vinegar Joe has proven that they are capable of very fine music.
Harry Hammitt (The Michigan Daily - March 1973)