The Flamin’ Groovies, Teenage Head

The Flamin' Groovies are one of the odder cult bands in rock and roll. They began, in the late 60s, as a band that unabashedly worshiped Beggar's Banquet-era Rolling Stones, and then they gradually morphed into a band that unabashedly worshiped pre-Sgt. Pepper's Beatles. The only thing that changed between these two periods was the lead singer. Either way, their devotion was total, even slavish, and they strove harder than almost any band around them — even in the Copycat Land of '60s British rock — to disappear completely into the skin of their idols. Of such curious ambitions was born a curious new kind of band: behold the first power pop group.

What makes the whole thing more remarkable, of course, is how the Groovies themselves have become the object of the very same cultish adoration that drove them. As the first Power Pop Group, they also became one of the very first bands that Record Store Clerks used to Inform You Of Your Ignorance. This record, from Groovies Version One, gets roughly 50 percent the Record-Nerd love, while the other half goes neatly to Shake Some Action, the pinnacle of their 12-string Rickenbacker period. It's sort of a David Lee Roth/Sammy Hagar dichotomy for the types of guys who need to breathe into a paper bag when someone mentions Van Halen.

Teenage Head, to me, is the better of those two records; it was made with the original Groovies vocalist, the greasy-haired, bug-eyed wild man Roy Loney. His chemistry with guitarist Cyril Jordan was undeniable, and together, they conjured the gangly sprawl of the Rolling Stones' bluesiest records far better than Jordan and future vocalist Chris Wilson would nail early Lennon/McCartney. Except for the classic title cut, the tunes on Shake Some Action feel strangely blank and rote to me, invoking the old saw about getting the words but not the music. On Teenage Head, however, Loney and Jordan inhabit the seediest corners of the Jagger/Richards universe with sleazy joy: "City Lights" is pretty much a straight rewrite of "No Expectations," but it nails the drunken, warped-carousel vibe so well that it doesn't matter. There are classics galore here: from the loud, fast and snotty "Have You Seen My Baby" to the sneering John Lee Hooker-style one-chord vamp of the title cut, Teenage Head is a deeply satisfying classic of a very specific kind. If you have ever downloaded anything from Sympathy for the Record Industry or In the Red records, for instance, and you haven't yet heard this — well, you're wasting valuable time.