J. Geils Band's "Full House" Gets Bass, Loses Pace
more "listenable", less "excitement" and a gatefold surprise!
First things first! The Deluxe embossed, laminated cover looks swell! The "LIVE" and "FULL HOUSE" have never had this deluxe cover treatment, nor did the record ever have a gatefold edition. The gatefold photo is kind of a shocker. I never saw these guys dressed like that onstage in Boston, which is the only place I ever saw them. This set recorded live at the run down former vaudeville theater renamed the Cinderella Ballroom in rundown (at the time) Detroit and according to Peter Wolf's annotation torn down shortly after their performance, could not have been where that photo was taken! Wolf says in the notes that the place attracted a "blue collar crowd".
Wolf in tights and what looks like a dress? Stephen Jo. Bladd in satin Everlast boxer shorts? More appropriate for a Bowie audience than the people showing up for Geils. The photo had to be a backstage goof or a post concert party after the curtains closed! Maybe I'm wrong but I think we've not seen this photo before because it wasn't meant to be seen (or it's been published and I've just not seen it).
I called Wolf but he had no comment about any of this reissue even though he wrote the annotation. He just said he'd rather not talk about it and definitely didn't want to be interviewed in a ZOOM call. He gave no reason, though when I asked about him attending the Acoustic Sounds "Vinyl Summit" next fall he gave a definite "no", but not because he's not a customer or a serious crazy audiophile because he most definitely is! "I limit my traveling to live show appearances" he told me.
This one was a raucous, high energy takes your breath away performance taken at a pace only youngsters could have managed and it's exciting as hell all these years later. You tuned in then and you're tuning in now for the excitement and energy rush a group so tight it might explode not because you expect nuance and meaning to exit the grooves.
The original pressing mastered by George Piros, is bright and thin, and lacking in any sort of bottom end, but it gets the band moving like a bullet train and that's the pace you figure the band kept live, and you get the sensation of being in the room with a not particularly full range lo-fi P.A. sound system. The tape was an "equalized, limited master" copy dated 9/7/72. Interesting because the original release date was a few weeks earlier on September 26th, 1972. My copy has the original matrix/runout listed inn Discogs so this tape also labeled "REMAKE" in lipstick red remains a mystery. Was it EQ'd for a remake to get the pacing and excitement going? I don't know and Wolf wasn't talking.
Before playing this Rhino reissue I the original (which admittedly I hadn't played in a long time) then I played the Audio Fidelity Hoffman/Gray edition mastered at AcousTech (AFZL 044). For the most part Hoffman/Gray remastering meant that Hoffman sets the EQ and Kevin cuts. That one has the well-known "Hoffman mid-bass boost) and that one reeks of "EQ". Sorry Steve! The boost slows down the musical pace and puts the band almost in a cave. I definitely didn't like it at all.
Then I put on the Rhino and immediately you can hear Kevin's more deft touch on the EQ knob(s) but he too changed the sound of the equalized tape but in ways you don't hear "EQ". Instead you hear body added to Wolf's voice and Daniel "Ace of Bass" Klein's bass is sounding out rhythms. I looked him up to see if he's still with us and tomorrow (May 23rd) he turns 80! Happy birthday!
So yes, you hear the bass lines and Wolf's voice has more chest and the EQ doesn't turn the Cinderella Ballroom into a can, but damn if the pacing doesn't again slow down, though not nearly as much as on the AF.
So this is a good sounding "High Fidelity" reissue of one hell of a great live, high energy rock band performance and it's easy to argue that it improves on the original in its high fidelity-ness much like the Marquee Moon reissue, but the sonic improvement definitely diminishes the excitement.
