Teenage Head

I haven't felt this good about buying the CD version of one of my old vinyl albums ever! I had burned a copy of the vinyl onto CD and lived with that for a long time. But I got an urge to hear the album again with clarity and presence. And this delivers! Plus, the Replica packaging is absolutely wonderful. Why everyone does not do that with every CD, I don't know. As for reviewing the album itself, what can I say except that this music holds up over the years! Not one cringe-worthy song that did not age well. This could've come out a month ago. The songs rock, they groove, they smile and they sneer. This is an album you could play at the hippest party, in the car, or through your buds. There are cuts that bounce, cuts that sound punk, country or bluesy. The singing is great, the instrumentation is perfectly done without any extra notes, extended soloing, etc. No musical virtuosity, but every note feels just perfect. If you want to shout, it shouts for you. Personally, my favorite Groovies album is Supersnazz, but this is a very close second. Supersnazz incorporated some more energy in presenting harmonies that fill out the sound, and it seems more of a studio album with more of a flair for production values. Teenage Head is more bare bones, straight ahead. The Groovies' lyrics are a blast: funny and filled with irony. It's not this review's job to make readers into Groovies fans. The job here is to tell existing Groovies fans to not hesitate, for an instant, to buy this beloved album on CD. Worth every cent!

NOTE: THIS REVIEW APPLIES TO THE 2013 PAPER-SLEEVE EDITION OF THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES' TEENAGE HEAD, ALTHOUGH IN FAIRNESS ANY WAY YOU HEAR THAT ALBUM IS GREAT.Supposedly somewhere out there in the ether is a quote from Mick Jagger to the effect that the Stones wanted EXILE ON MAIN STREET (or was it STICKY FINGERS) to sound like TEENAGE HEAD. I've never bothered to track it down, but one can see why that might be the case, listening to this edition -- layers of decade-old age, which can even encrust itself however slightly on music as vibrant as this, is stripped off. And with it we hear how well the Groovies had absorbed and adopted (and adapted) the punkiest aspect of the Stones' sound -- especially Keith Richards' and Brian Jones' playing -- into their own sound. This is the record that the Stones might have cut had they been 20/21/22/23-year-olds in 1971 and on their second or third album (say, where they were psychically with Rolling Stones Now or 12x5), presented in audiophile quality, and it's still bracing to this listener 35+ years after he first heard it. The Groovies' line-up would split and reconfigure along more self-consciously British invasion-influenced lines not too long after this, and they'd never quite be the same, even if they were just as good in the total scheme of music; and it would fall to bands like the New York Dolls to pick up where they left off on this track. Teenage Head was the last, glorious work of that first band, and it's been given back to us in all of its original glory.

The Groovies at their best. I say this is their best album. Great, raucous rock and roll!

Good album