32. Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions (1962)

Tracks: Green Onions//Rinky-Dink//I Got A Woman//Mo'Onions//Twist and Shout//Behave Yourself//Stranger on the Shore//Lonely Avenue//One Who Really Loves You//You Can't Sit Down//A Woman, A Lover. A Friend//Comin' Home Baby

OK, so let's be perfectly honest - I am a complete and utter square. I own terrible "tango for lovers" albums and watch dubious romantic melodramas, and I loved this here Booker T and his M.G.s album too. It's a bundle of badly-dated, go-go boot-wearing, hip-gyrating fun. I say this with some trepidation, as a poke about the internet indicates that most people don't really hold this album in that high a regard. I'll grant that it's hardly a classic, and doesn't really stick with me after listening, but it's still a pretty cool album, all things told.

Booker T. and the M.G.'s were formed as the house band for Stax records, playing on damned near every recording the label put out through the 60s and forging in the process a distinctive "Stax Sound" - tight grooves, cool organs and twangy guitar riffs. And they were one of the very first racially-integrated bands in rock music - two white, and two black - which is a pretty neat thing and carries on from the racial politics and subversiveness of the last album we had, though how much of it was calculated as such is debatable. Anyway, Green Onions was apparently slapped together as a cash-in on the title track, and a part of that can be heard in the number of free in-studio improvisations and in the reliance on covers material. The results are hardly earth-shaking, but this is still some extremely enjoyable music - you get jumping dance music like "Twist and Shout" and the massively-influential "Green Onions", and you get laid-back, swinging affairs like "Lonely Avenue" and "Behave Yourself". It's kind of reminiscent of Jimmy Smith, I guess, except working in a more overtly rocky idiom.

This isn't really essential listening, aside from the title track which you will have already heard even if you don't realise it (it is the riff that sounds just like "Gloria" from Them), and maybe "Comin' Home Baby" which sounds like a dry-run for Seventies cop-show music (oh hey and the cover of "Twist and Shout" is pretty ace, too, once it gets to the big swelling mid section). Oh god! But the title track is just so damned funky and cool, and there's a damned good reason why it managed to be such a big hit - although cranking out the copy-cat "Mo' Onions", as fine as it is, may have been a bit much. Anyway this may not be essential listening, but it is a pretty handy document of the band, who would go on to define so much 60s soul and rock music. Everything from cheesy Italian sci-fi soundtracks to the Beatles and the Doors owe a clear debt to these guys. Plus it is fun! Do the Monkey! Now do the Mashed Potato! Now oh I don't know I'm not Johnny Bravo god damn it.

I kind of wish they had called this album "Leeks".

7/10

Download: Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions Mp3
Download: Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Comin' Home Baby Mp3