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Let It Rock: Best of

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GEORGIA SATELLITES-LET IT ROCK/BEST OF THE GEORGIA SATELLITES: One of Southern Rock's last gritty, greasy, gasps, these guys kicked more ass than a high school football coach, letting fly with a raunchy, raspy rockin' roll attitude spiced with kickin' country, dirty soul, and big-time bar band boogie. Helmed by bad boy belter/geetar slingers Dan Baird and Rick Roberts, the Satellites boasted brontosaurus chops, snotty swagger, AND a sense of humor, which never hurt NOBODY no how in the music biz. Monster hit KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF sets the piledriver pace for this career roundup appropriately named after one of Chuck Berry's most tread upon pieces. Crash 'n burn covers of HIPPY HIPPY SHAKE, the Ringo Starr-penned DON'T PASS ME BY, and a party-perfect John Fogerty medley of ALMOST SATURDAY NIGHT/ROCKIN' ALL OVER THE WORLD blend seamlessly with Baird's bare bones double entendre OPEN ALL NIGHT and the blooze-buster ALL OVER BUT THE CRYIN'. Cranked to an especially high thrash threshold is Terry Anderson's BATTLESHIP CHAINS, not quite three minutes of rock so primitive I'm surprised Fred Flintstone didn't write it. These wild cats were too good to last beyond three albums, but LET IT ROCK delivers a stompin' summary of their meat n' taters years.

RATING: FIVE BEER BLASTS

Rock'n'roll had its heyday in the fifties but the combination of simple music and high energy often resurfaces in an updated form. The Georgia Satellites exemplified everything that a great rock'n'roll band should be, even if their music was updated for the eighties.

The group only recorded three albums although various extra tracks were also recorded. The result was one big hit, Keep your hands to yourself, and two lesser hits, Battleship chains and Hippy hippy shake (a cover of a song made famous in the sixties by the Swinging blue jeans, a Liverpool group).

They wrote most of their own material but they recorded several covers. Apart from Hippy hippy shake, this collection also includes Don't pass me by (Ringo Starr), a live version of Let it rock (Chuck Berry) and Another Saturday night (John Fogerty) - this track also includes a brief piece of Rocking all over the world (another John Fogerty song) at the end.

If you are looking for high energy rock music, this is for you.

This excellent 20-disc compilation gathers almost all the best from the Georgia Satellites three studio albums. I picked it up some ten or twelve years ago on a whim, knowing little or nothing about the Satallites, but I loved it straight away, and I still take it out and play it from time to time.

Equal parts Chuck Berry and AC/DC, the Satellites played rough, tough and gritty rock n' roll, joyous three chords romps with lots of firepower and the gap-toothed Dan Baird in front alongside lead guitarist Rick Richards.
Their debut album, which featured the hit single "Keep Your Hands To Yourself", got lost amid the pop metal of the mid-eighties, and the next two ones sank without a trace, which is a real shame, because the Satellites did what very few other bands could or would in the 1980s - they played real rock n' roll.

And there are plenty of highlight here. From "The Georgia Satellites" come the tough-as-nails hard rock of "Can't Stand The Pain" and the Hindu Love Gods' "Battleship Chains", and the album "Open All Night" provides songs like "Mon Cheri" and a supremely gritty rendition of Ringo Starr's "Don't Pass My By".
"In The Land Of Salvation And Sin", the Satellites' last album, was more stylistically diverse than its two predecessors, and the acoustic shuffle "Another Chance" is one of the group's best songs...all four musicians sing, and Baird's lyrics are some of his best ever.

"Let It Rock" also includes a few non-album tracks, like the title track (a live rendition of the Chuck Berry-number), and a fine medley of John Fogerty's mid-70s classics "Almost Saturday Night" and "Rockin' All Over The World", and a nice little essay by Jimmy Guterman.
This is a near-perfect introduction to an often overlooked little rock n' roll combo which deserved better.

Chuck Berry meets the Ramones. The Rolling Stones on fast-forward. The Faces with a southern-rock twist. You get the idea. These guys didn't last too long, but they churned out some of the best guitar-driven rock'n'roll in a long time. Dan Baird delivers his quirky lyrics with a heavy twang, while Baird & fellow guitarist Rick Richards show they can play good old-fashioned heavy rock'n'roll with the best of them. True, the songs began to sound the same after a while, but what a sound it was. Their repertoire was limited, but tracks like "Keep Your Hands to Yourself", "Battleship Chains", & "Mon Cheri" are worth the price of the CD in themselves.

If you don't own at least one Georgia Satellites album, you're either living in a cultural coma or you're afraid of yourself. "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" is sonic testosterone; the song should be the national anthem of France, a nation that hasn't won a war in more than 300 years.

Before there were The Black Crowes, there were The Georgia Satelites, hailing from the same area and with a sound that their latter counterparts would sell millions of albums with. The Satelites' problem was that other than the delightful single "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," they just weren't able to come up with any big hits. The song was a delight, bursting through on rock radio that was at the time just shaking off its new wave hangover. "Battleship Chains" was a near miss follow up from the debut album, but after that the band never again was much of a chart success.

With 20 selections, "Let it Rock" is a generous anthology. There are a healthy collection of covers, including Rongo Star's "Don't Pass Me By," John Fogerty's "Almost Saturday Night/Rockin' All Over the World" and Chuck Berry's "Let it Rock." The rest of the material is mostly solid, even if individual tunes sometimes have difficulty standing out. The CD booklet doesn't have a lyrics sheet, but does contain extensive liner notes.

Overall, a decent anthology album from an often-overlooked southern rock band.

When the Georgia Satellites blasted out of Duran Duran world in late '86 with a killer hit called "Keep Your Hands To Yourself," we knew real American rock & roll wasn't quite dead yet...Though they were never again able to match the massive chart success of that great song, they do not deserve to be dismissed as a "one-hit wonder." "Battleship Chains" and their remake of The Swinging Blue Jeans' (you remember them, don't you?) "Hippy Hippy Shake" (for the otherwise forgettable Tom Cruise movie "Cocktail") both were minor hits, and their recorded output over three albums was a non-stop barrage of bar-room classics comprised of clever lyrics, blue-collar attitude and crunching guitars. This is just great stuff from start to finish and the 20 tracks on this collection are an excellent representation of this band and its sound. Standout tracks include "Don't Pass Me By" (a Ringo Starr tune!), "Mon Cheri," "I Dunno," "Hard Luck Boy" and "Dan Takes Five." Many of the songs were written by group leader Dan Baird, who has gone on to do solo work (Love Songs For The Hearing Impaired is a minor classic), produce other artists (Blue Mountain) and join up with Eric "Roscoe" Ambel and others to form The Yayhoos. Highly recommended.

This is pretty strong guitar rock. Dan Baird writes clever lyrics. Their cover of "Almost Saturday Night" is much better than Fogerty's original. "Another Chance", "Six Years Gone", "Mon Cheri", "Down and Down", "Dan Takes Five", "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" are all terrific songs. "Saddle Up" is the highlight for me - a straight-ahead 3-chord song, but done at completely full tilt.

For a while, Rock music has been so bad I stopped listening. Well, stopped listening to newer stuff. (No angry letters, please, that's how I see it)

It seems like Rock is a lost art, so many performers haven't learned to play their instruments, or they are "sampling" the better riffs of their betters. But I have recently discovered this. So it's new to me, from the mid 80's. It seems there is a pocket of, Hmmm, what we used to call Country Rockers in the late sixties, (when Michael Nesmith and Gram Parsons melded Rock, Rockabilly and Country and all the other rockers followed). Some of these "Country" musicians still know (or knew) how to make music! The Georgia Satellites sound to me like late sixties early seventies Rolling Stones and earlier, Chuck Berry. And what could be better, the Stones certainly didn't use up all the notes! The Georgia Satellites records remind me in places of "Let it Bleed".

These guys only made three or so albums and these are the best, that is the "rockers" off of those. melodies, harmonies, masterful Bill Wyman type bass lines and Keith Richards type leads.

It was a put together group with a lot of egos pulling in different directions. Shoehorned together from two other groups the "Hellhounds" and "Woodpeckers" (and that was ultimately their downfall). Dan Baird has that countryish nasal twang in his voice but is ultimately a better lead singer than their great guitarist Rick Richards. "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" was a great hit about a Southern miss who teased a lot but wanted that ring first - funny!. "Don't pass me By" was originally a Ringo song with the rest of the Fab Four playing backup. GS's version is much stronger rock. I particularly like "Hippy Hippy Shake" a tune the early Beatles covered.

"Mon Cheri" has just the right note of sleaze. The protagonist meet a girl who doesn't speak English:

"Well she sat herself down right on the park bench/
Her skirt rolled up and I could see she was French/
and my heart said 'Toujour L'Amour/
Avec ma ami!'/
My My My Mon Cheri"

This is wonderful Roadhouse music, and great music at that. Drips of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll at it's finest. Rock with gonads. I wish the Satellites had stayed together.

Buy it, you won't be disappointed.

One of those bands that few people knew about but those that did got their socks knocked off. Rock n soul with a good splash of twang. These guys tore up their little part of the rock world.
Anyone interested in good rock n roll has got to get this best of edition.