5.0 out of 5 stars
Tom Wilson BEFORE he was a Canadian icon, November 9, 2006
This review is from: Beat Music (Audio CD)
Jeez, it's hard to imagine Tom Wilson's subsequent career development without the Florida Razors. One of the great instinctive rock bands ever, Tom could lead them from neo-punk brashness to avant-garde existentialism (he used to read Kerouac onstage while the band jammed) and back again with aplomb. Like the Doors, they were a great rock'n'roll band who didn't necessarily have a rock'n'roll background. Asked about his style, guitarist Jake Avery once said "I don't really know how to play rock'n'roll in the conventional sense. My background is folk music".
For this collection, you get most of their two vinyl studio releases (the LP "Beat Music" & the EP "Half a Rock'n'Roll Record") with a few substitutions for interest's sake. Just having "American Girl" & "Italian Sunglasses" on CD makes this disc worth the price of admission. If the rest is gravy, it's pretty darn tasty gravy. It includes all the staples of their live performances, like "New York Screamin", "Let's Go/New York City", "Think it's Gonna Take My Heart", "Build My Home in the USA" and the incomparable "Burnin' Ethyl". It also includes a couple of tracks from the unreleased "Kings of Klang" LP, including "Could Not Get Across", a song that seemed to get slower and sleazier every time they played it.
There are a couple of minor things I would've done differently - it includes the ultra-rare fast version of "Memphis Connection", which is interesting, but it would've been nice to have the slow version off "Half a Rock'n'Roll Record". But that's a minor quibble.
This Hamilton band was popular in two centres outside its own turf - Ottawa, and Kingston, Ontario. One of the opening acts they used to get in Kingston regularly were a bunch of kids known as the Tragically Hip. I'm not saying that the Hip lifted anything from Tom Wilson, but I will say this - if you like the Hip, you'll love this CD.
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