#The j. geils band i do how to

I read a lot of interviews in which musicians complain about the road being hard, but to me, playing rock-and-roll is the most exciting thing to do. ''I'm glad we're still out there in the trenches. Now I look back at our old concert programs, and it's amazing how many bands that opened for us, or headlined when we opened shows, went on to become huge financial successes and then just plummeted out of sight. We built up an audience for our live shows, and they kept us going when we didn't have hit records. ''We had to keep touring it was the only way we could stay alive. ''But for a long time, we didn't make money on our records,'' Mr. When I met him he was under contract to a Boston manager, who insisted that we had to appear under the name J.

Geils had studied jazz saxophone and drums before he started in on the guitar. ''Magic Dick had studied clarinet and other horns, but he dropped out of music for awhile, until he got knocked out by a record of Sonny Boy Williamson playing the harmonica and took up that instrument. Danny Klein, our bass player, loved the blues, and Stephen Bladd, our drummer, was into doo-wop, vocal group rock and roll. He had classical training, but he loved black music. Wolf recalled, ''where he'd gone to a mostly black high school. Geils Band began playing around Boston in 1967, and when the keyboard player Seth Justman joined late in 1968 the group's present lineup was complete. ''It might not work,'' he conceded, ''but if you don't challenge yourself when you make an album, why bother? At least we aren't repeating ourselves 'Freeze-Frame' sure isn't 'Love Stinks Again Like We Did Last Summer.' '' ''A lot of rock bands tend to underestimate their audience.'' He paused. ''I think our audiences will accept the new stuff,'' Mr. But so many of the songs are upbeat and catchy, one can imagine several becoming hit singles. Geils Band, the album could be a risky move.

It mixes influences and elements as disparate as synthesizer pop, rockabilly guitar, James Brown, African and Latin percussion, 1940's crooning, pop-rock sing-alongs, punk-funk, and jazz chromaticism into blends that are consistently startling and fresh.ДЇor a group as established, and as frequently typecast, as the J. Geils album, is considerably more radical. The album's title tune was a hit single and the album became the band's biggest seller to date. A little more than a year ago, the group surprised many longtime fans with ''Love Stinks,'' an album that added imaginatively layered synthesizer parts and other new touches to the basic Geils sound. He was an art student and a dedicated painter before he jumped into music full-time in the mid-60's, and he continues to pursue a much broader range of artistic interests than his adrenalized onstage performances might lead one to imagine. Wolf is one rock star who can confidently make that kind of comparison.

#The j. geils band i do how to

But they knew how to use music for expression they knew how to grab an audience.'' Most of them couldn't have cared less about the technical aspects of playing music. Most of the musicians in those bands couldn't have cared less about becoming rock stars and making millions. That's what I thought of when these punk bands started coming along in the late 70's. ''It was the expressive quality on the canvas. ''The thing that always attracted me to Expressionism in painting wasn't the technique,'' he said. And he was talking about Expressionism and punk rock.

Wolf was listening to a tape of the jazz singer Betty Carter. Geils Band, a Boston-based rock group that has weathered a dozen years in the spotlight without a single personnel change, made its reputation as a full-tilt boogie band, a kind of American Rolling Stones, but Mr. Geils Band, sat on the edge of the bed in his Manhattan hotel room, leafing carefully through a portfolio of Expressionist drawings he had purchased earlier in the day. Peter Wolf, the lead vocalist with the J.