Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bring a jacket - it's still pretty cool, 29 April 2005
Ridiculously easy-to-take sweep through the poppier side of the Cobra's interests. Others obviously miss the explosive intensity of the more straight r'n'b-oriented earlier Cobras stuff. That stuff was great, but here you still get the authority of Rachel Nagy's incredible voice, and there's still plenty of swing. The NY Dolls used to cover a similar line of obscure antique pop-oriented rhythm and blues, and the Ramones had their poppier side too. It makes sense for the Cobras to be following their interests down this line, and there's a lot of really nice moments on this ultra-listenable, enjoyable record. If you want more of exactly the same as the earlier albums, don't bother, but if you basically buy these to hear Rachel Nagy, get this one.
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8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Kid Sister Settles Down, 13 Nov 2004
If you thrilled to the 'Cobras' first two barnstorming albums and felt as breathless as Rachel Nagy finding the right note at the very last second, this album will leave you feeling as though your kid sister has finally gone domestic. She's off the booze, bought a 4 door saloon and wants to start a family, and this album will be fine for Gran and Granpa to waltz to at the wedding.After the raucous high energy of 'Mink Rat or Rabbit' and 'Life, Love And Leaving', 'Baby' continues the restrained ways of 'Seven Easy Pieces'. Gone are the slashing guitar chords and, dammit, theres even the odd shmaltzy guitar solo. There is a brief glimpse of past glories with 'Everybody's Going Wild' but with the fuller production mix everybody's actually well under control with their foot a safe distance from the gas pedal. As if to re-inforce the Cobras intentions, 'Baby' revisits their recent hit 'Cha Cha Twist' and it may well be that the rest of this set was built around it to avoid disappointing newcomers. I just hope our kid sister rejects domesticity.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rhythm'n'Motown, 9 Jul 2007
Singer-songwriters have a lot to answer for, as ever since their advent there has been such an emphasis on original material that the occasional cover version only creeps into many repertoires as a kind of novelty. Criminally, many talented and creative musicians have wasted their talents on the mediocre songs that their keyboard player and his flatmate's brother brought to the group practices in the name of art. It wasn't always so. The first albums by the Beatles and the Stones consisted largely of covers and Elvis Presley barely wrote a song in his life. In the blues and soul booms of the sixties, bands were judged by how well they could play well known standards of each genre.
Thankfully, some bands eschew the profitability of songwriting royalties for the integrity of keeping alive the music they love through their own reinterpretations, and one of the very best of these are the Detroit Cobras. They are not entirely slavish in their adherence to this policy however, and on this album there is one rocking, dirty track called Hot Dog that founder members Rachel and Mary wrote with longtime friend of the band Greg Cartwright, former guitarist in the Oblivians, who helped produce and guests on the record, and who later joined the band.
Otherwise, it's business as usual with a collection of the weird and wonderful from all corners of their record libraries, with a number of title changes and wrongly credited authorships just to throw researchers of the scent.
Clarence Carter's Slipping Around kicks off the album, and then comes Gary US Bond's I Wanta Holler (But The Town's Too Small). This has become one of his most popular works, though it wasn't granted a release in 1962 and had to wait for a CD collection before it saw the light of day, making it a perfect choice for the Cobras to champion. Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand is a standard that was probably first recorded in an earlier variant by Blind Boy Fuller. The Animals recorded another variant, as did Bob Dylan, but the source of this version is an Atlantic single by Hoagy Lands, where it was credited to producer Bert Berns and Wes Farrell, the team who wrote Hang On Sloopy. Stax Records in Memphis provided Weak Spot, as recorded by Ruby Johnson. More obscure is the Northern Soul number Everybody's Going Wild, originally by the International Kansas City Playboys featuring Lee Curtis. They released it twice under different names in 1967, having recorded it for Jack Taylor's New York label Rojac, but it is thought that they went to Detroit to make it.
Betty Harris's Mean Man and Irma Thomas's It's Raining were both written by Allen Toussaint, a Detroit Cobras favourite. Bobbie Smith and the Dreamgirls were signed to Ira Mack and Tom King's Big Top label, and released Now You're Gone on the flipside of Don't Break My Heart in 1962, without changing the world significantly.
A false trail is laid for Just Can't Please You, which they credit to Billie Jean Horton, a fascinating lady who outlived two famous husbands, Hank Williams and Johnny Horton, and who did write a song called I Just Can't Please You, but the song the Cobras have covered here was by Jimmy Robins, who released it on Impression and then on Jerhart in 1966.
The Five Royales are another big Detroit Cobras' favourite band, and their original version of The Real Thing was written by trailblazing guitarist Lowman Pauling in 1959. Baby Help Me is a Bobby Womack song recorded by Percy Sledge. Finally, Cha Cha Twist is a return to a song they first covered on their 1998 album Mink Rat Or Rabbit. Adapted from Hank Ballard's The Twist, it was first recorded by Brice Coefield and the Untouchables, and was re-recorded for a Coca-Cola Diet Coke advert (who one might have thought would have preferred The Real Thing).
The line up for this record is Rachel Nagy (impossibly cool vocals), Mary Restrepo (rhythm guitar, backing vocals, attitude) and on this record Steve Nawara (subversive guitar), propelled by the rhythm powerhouse that is Joe Mazzola (bass) and Kenny Tudrick (drums). Should there not be room for a live band in your lounge, this is the next best thing.
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