Customer Reviews

Frijid Pink

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Alternating boogie and heavy, sludgy proto-metal, FP's self titled release is a must-own for those with an interest in the period. Every 'Yah' and 'Gut-ta' uttered (and there are a LOT of them), every overdriven, fuzz-drenched chord is worth the price of admission.

I first had this album on 8 track. The tape broke and for 25 years I looked for it, but was unsucessful. It is a great piece of work for that era of rock'n roll/garage punk/underground culture. Their remake of The House Of The Rising Sun is electrifying. Gary Ray Thompson on lead guitar is out of sight. This remake went to number 7 in Feb 1970. It was even hotter in Europe going to number 1. Drivin Blues and Heartbreak Hotel are just as impressive. The whole CD is great. A short lived band like so many back than, but some of the best music made.

I can't believe I'm getting an opportunity to hear this music again after all of these years!! (I grew up only a few blocks from the drummer Rich Stevers and used to listen to the band practice from his basement!) This recording is nearly 30 years old but sounds great. I had forgotten how this band stayed with the roots of rock and roll by including some blues tracks.

Kelly Green's voice is soulful and unique. Gary Ray Thompson's use of the wah and other guitar effects are awesome throughout the CD. Obviously, "House Of The Rising Sun" is the best known song of the bunch, but there is not a "stinker" on this CD.

I highly recommend it to anyone out there from the days of the REAL (and one and only) Woodstock. It will be a delightful reminder of the days when rock was rock and attention was paid to true musicianship!!

Detroit was and still is one rockin' city and this band is just another outstanding example.

To the genius who made the decision to re-release the music of Frijid Pink - THANK YOU.

I heard this LP for the first and only time 10 years ago and I couldn't get the fantastic melodies out of my head--especially track number 8 "I Want To Be Your Lover".

Luckily I remembered the band's unforgettable name. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it in record stores. But now I have it on a CD!

This is authentic rock & roll blues coupled with pyschedellic boy wants, gets, loses and sometimes keeps and sometimes cheats on girl.It really captures the era of the late '60s early '70s.

However, it's timeless music. Great harmony and melody, melded with a lead guitar that rips through you and a bass that beckons to your primordial roots. The drum solos will make you slap your thighs, but you'll be challenged to keep up. What there is of keyboards isn't bothersome like some groups from the same era. Kelly Green's voice is superb, unique--a musical instrument by itself. This may seem superfluous, but the lyrics are very poetical.

This is a great CD for a road trip or just trippin' in your house and being mellow--but you'll find yourself dancing and singing along as well.

Frijid Pink's debut album is an exciting tour de force of fuzz-driven, blues-inspired Detroit rock n' roll. The obvious standout is their incredible version of "House Of The Rising Sun," but there are others that make this a very enjoyable release. "Music For The People" is instantly catchy and certainly classifies as an anthem of sorts. Both "Drivin' Blues" and "Boozin' Blues" hint at classic Canned Heat. "Crying Shame" is fuzz-a-plenty and "I Want To Be Your Lover" has a funky groove that carries throughout and is very memorable. All in all this is a very good CD that any fan of the era will enjoy adding to their collection.

One of the lesser-known bands that emerged from the late 60's Detroit psychedelic/garage rock scene (along with Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes, Iggy Pop & The Stooges, MC5, etc.), Frijid Pink had a very brief brush with stardom thanks to their distortion-drenched cover of The Animals' "House Of The Rising Sun", which reached #11 on the U.S. charts in late 1970; it fared even better in Europe, especially in Germany, where it went to #1. Unfortunately, Frijid Pink would never again return to the charts following this impressive debut, which contains tracks like the excellent "God Gave Me You", "I'm On My Way", featuring high-octane slide guitar, and a "I Want To Be Your Lover", with angst-driven lyrics that accurately reflected the time period: "You can keep your drugs, man/don't inject 'em in me/You can have Vietnam, man/gotta gotta catch me".

The focus of the band's attack is lead vocalist Kelly Green, who delivers each song with power and passion, and accents his lyrics at times by blurting out 'Yaaah!' instead of the standard 'Yeah!'. Green was without a doubt the most unique, but overlooked rock vocalist of that time; he recorded one more album with Frijid Pink, the lackluster "Defrosted", before departing in 1972 and fading away (like the band itself would in a few more years) into virtual obscurity. Included as bonus tracks on this CD are two rare gems: their 45 rpm single releases "Music For The People", and their boogie rave-up version of "Heartbreak Hotel".

This is a great CD; nothing more to say. Buy it and enjoy it!

Forgive my relative infamiliarity with this group, but very few other people know much about them, what they did after this album, and what any of the members are doing now. I do have this album myself, and apparantely many other people did, too. It made number 11 on the Billboard charts, so some sort of word-of-mouth got out around the country, as well as around the world, about this group (as their version of The Animals' "House of The Rising Sun" topped the charts in parts of Europe.) I'm not sure how word got around about them. They weren't on a very big record label, so they couldn't have been promoted very highly. They weren't on any tours by major groups, or were invited to any of the major pop festivals that were popular at the time. But somehow, amongst all the other bands in Detroit, word got out that a band called "Frijid Pink" made a very special debut album. And musically, they did have a lot going for them here. From the proto-power ballad, "God Gave Me You", to the psychedelic, Cream-"White Room"-inspired, "Crying Shame", the Ten Years After-style boogie of "I'm on My Way", the harmonica-driven Yardbird-ish rave-up of "Drivin' Blues", all the way down to the 12-bar blues of "Boozin' Blues"--song-after-song, Frijid Pink lays all their musical influences on the table and shows its diversity--most certainly trying to avoid being labled, as most heavy rock/garage bands were, as "one dimensional". Yes, they were as heavy as could be when they needed to be, but they knew when to show restraint, as well. I don't know if critics panned them in those days, as they did almost every other heavy metal/garage band, but I know that critics always liked it when even a heavy rock band could show its variety on an album, and this one has it in spades! AS for lyrical content, unlike a lot of other groups of the era, whose topics were mostly focused on drug-trips, science-fiction, and political protests, this was a heavy rock band that apparantely liked to sing about innocent love and realtionships. The first 5 songs almost seem to deal with that subject in some way. It's really interesting that right after "God Gave Me You", a wedding song if I ever heard one, they start a number about cheating and unfaithfulness, called "Crying Shame", which is peculiar in the bluesy-lyrics set to heavy, psychedelic rock. The song itself sounds like it was lifted right off the lumbering rhythm pattern of Cream's "White Room"--"White Room" with lyrics about cheating! They do tackle other subject matter, however. "End Of The Line" is apocylyptic in nature, and the one song where they do get somewhat political is a song where they explain why they are apolitical--"I Want to Be Your Lover" is basically them saying they don't care what else was going on in the world in 1970, they just wanted to be a 'lover' (not a 'fighter', maybe?)
As far as the band goes, musician-wise, guitarist Gary Ray Thompson wasn't near as flashy as many other hard rock guitarists at the time. He doesn't even really 'solo' much until the song, "Boozin' Blues", where he cuts loose on a fine blues solo. He mostly sticks with a lot of fuzzy power chords, which really made me wonder if he was just afraid to take solos because he would show his incompetence as a guitar player. The drummer, Rich Stevers, seems to be the best musicician in the whole band. He pounds the stuffing out of his drums on nearly every song, and even solos on a couple. He could have been "the Ginger Baker of Detroit rock" , as he plays almost identical rhythm patterns to the Cream drummer on "Crying Shame" and "End of the Line". And finally, the singer, Kelly Green, had a lovely, sixties-style voice that was still unique for him, but hardly what I would call "over-powering", given the often powerful music they made. I would have almost liked to hear him "scream" over the music once in awhile!
And there you have it. This is probably the only album you need to have regarding Frijid Pink, as none of their other albums made it on the charts. But its one of the better albums of Detroit rock, nontheless. I know they were on a low-budget record label, and without good promotion, that can often hurt a band's future, no matter how well the one record does on the charts, as this one did. In the liner notes to this disc, even the "expert" on the group seemed to be at a loss as to the whereabouts of the individual band members these days. "Crying Shame", indeed!

I completely wasted my older brother's 8-track tape of this album and can hardly wait to get my own CD. (I also ordered one for my brother). I found a badly recorded cassette (recorded from an 8-track with a microphone) of some of this music about 5 years ago. I have been searching for it on CD or even vinyl since that day. It was one of the most listened to albums in my collection 30 years ago and will be once again when my CD's arrive. Anyone who is a fan of hard-driving blues must have this one for their own.

This album is great. Frijid Pink should have been much bigger then they were. The music is heavy and it's all good, not just the cover of "House of the rising sun". It's one of the better Detroit metal bands from the period. If you like Steppenwolf, you will like this band.

The best version of "House Of The Rising Sun" ever recorded. "Music For The People" and "Heartbreak Hotel", previously only available on 45's are included as bonus tracks and make this CD even better!