Most rock fans know
Bob Seger had a career before 1976's
Night Moves first gave him a major hit outside the Midwest, but given how much of his back catalog has stubbornly remained out of print, many don't know just how far back the trail goes. Plenty of folks are aware of the 1975 album
Beautiful Loser, and the better informed even know he hit the singles charts with "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" in 1968. But
Seger has been a major presence in his native Michigan as far back as June 1966 (a month after he turned 21), when "East Side Story," a tune he cut with his band
the Last Heard, became a potent local hit in Detroit. Between licensing problems with the
Cameo/Parkway catalog (the label that issued
Seger's earliest sides) and the reluctance of
Seger and his management to look deep into his history, his early singles with
the Last Heard (guitarist
Carl Lagassa, bassist
Dan Honaker, and drummer
Pep Perrine) have been dead out of print since the mid-'70s. That has thankfully changed with the release of
Heavy Music: The Complete Cameo Recordings 1966-1967, which collects ten tracks
Seger recorded before moving up to
Capitol Records in 1968. While most of this music falls into the broad category of '60s garage rock,
Seger was already an eclectic artist, and
Heavy Music covers plenty of stylistic ground.
Seger and his bandmates nimbly jump from the
Van Morrison-style drama of "East Side Story" and the bluesy wail of "Chain Smokin'" to the artful folk-rock of "Very Few" and the bold but lyrical "Vagrant Winter." Even when
Seger and his gang were kidding, they delivered the goods; "Florida Time" is a hilarious bit of Midwest surf pop, "Sock It to Me Santa" is a Christmas novelty that burns like
Mitch Ryder on trucker's speed, and "Persecution Smith" may be the greatest fake
Bob Dylan song (
Highway 61 Revisited era) ever committed to wax. And "Heavy Music" is as passionate and powerful a celebration of "the big bad beat" as you could hope for, and
Seger's first step into inarguable greatness. For fans who know these songs from bootleg pressings sourced from scratchy singles, the clarity of the remastering is a marvelous surprise, and the liner notes by
Jim Allen sum up the period with concise enthusiasm. These tracks could be described as
Bob Seger's juvenilia, but that clearly underestimates the music;
Heavy Music is proof that
Seger was a major talent as a singer, songwriter, and frontman right from the start, and this is as good as Midwestern rock of the mid-'60s gets. For
Bob Seger fans who've never heard his first recordings,
Heavy Music is nothing short of a revelation. ~ Mark Deming
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