BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'s: BACK TO BACK (1967)
1) Green Onions; 2) Red Beans
And Rice; 3) Tic-Tac-Toe; 4) Hip Hug-Her; 5) Philly Dog; 6) Grab This Thing; 7)
Last Night; 8) Gimme Some Lovin'; 9) Booker Loo; 10) Outrage.
The Stax-Volt Revue circa 1967 was a pretty hot
affair, largely due to some of its megastars such as Otis Redding — popular
enough for the label to graciously allow even the instrumental backing bands to
leave behind some musical documentation. Technically, Back To Back is a split album between Booker T. & The M.G.'s
and The Mar-Keys. However, The Mar-Keys are featured only on three numbers out
of ten, and they are actually piled above the other band — being represented by
the horn section of Andrew Love, Wayne Jackson, and Joe Arnold who just play on
top of the Booker T. rhythm section, so essentially it's all Booker T., really.
As a document, it's okay: the bands play their
biggest hits, a few obscure tracks, and a bit of contemporary material (such
as ʽGimme Some Lovin'ʼ by the Spencer Davis Group). As something to enjoy, it
is certainly disappointing, particularly for the standards of 1967, by which
time pop bands who knew how to
stretch it out on stage were already beginning to be expected to stretch it out
all right. Granted, the world was only just warming up to the sounds of Cream
and Jimi Hendrix in March 1967, but there is not even the tiniest hint here
that a muscular R&B outfit could do something else on stage than just
faithfully reproduce its studio sound.
They do extend ʽGreen Onionsʼ for about one
minute, that is for sure, but merely to add a small, playful, quiet pre-coda
movement — nice, but nothing special. Everything else is similar, but slightly inferior
to the studio versions, as the band does not have the benefit of choosing the
perfect take or canceling out unnecessary noise (although, to be fair, the
sound quality is quite high, and the audiences at the Olympia Theater are
politely listening to the players without ripping stuff up — ain't no
hurly-burly Rolling Stones messing up the local morals here). The tempos are
sped up just a very tiny bit, so that it is really hard to say if they did it
to raise the excitement level or simply to cramp more tunes into the half-hour
slot allocated to them. Possibly the latter, since the entire performance is
also completely banter-free, bar a short introduction.
The three numbers where the M.G.'s and the
Mar-Keys play together are arguably the most exciting part of the show, because
the M.G.'s thrive on a «stern» attitude where the brass-crazy Mar-Keys are a
little more wild and eccentric, and it is fun to watch the two different
attitudes collide and collate for about ten minutes. Other than that, the
release is completely inessential, although it would probably make much more
sense as a brief instrumental interlude in a large multi-volume retrospective
of the Stax-Volt Revue (and, as far as I understand, something of the sort is
actually available, except all the individual performances have been cut short
on the collective Stax-Volt CD releases).
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