Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker
"Live At The Fox Venice Theatre"
Rhino, 1981

"I want you to roll me, roll me, roll me
'Till I don't want no more"

Rating: 2/5

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At the end of the 60s, Canned Heat was a force. The two singers Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson and Bob "The Bear" Hite headed one of the premier white boogie bands of all time, and lined up explosive classics such as "Going Up The Country", "On The Road Again", "Bullfrog Blues" and "Amphetamine Annie".

By 1980, that energy was gone. "Blind Owl" had died from a heroin overdose many years ago, and "The Bear" would also give in to long-time drug abuse shortly after this recording was made. The band was tired and "The Bear" sounded like a Las Vegas crooner. Anyway, they decided to gather up their friends John Lee Hooker and the Chambers Brothers and have a real party, which was of course recorded.

The result is miserable. I don't know if "The Bear" does it on purpose or if he's simply too stoned to care, but he manages to fit every single blues cliché into "Hellhound On My Trail" and "It Hurts Me Too" - except the original lyrics. The music is as watered-down as American beer - on any given night in any large city, you could easily find 10 blues bands with more nerve than Canned Heat on this recording. They briefly come to life in the gospely "Wrapped Up" (which is not sung by Hite, but by guitarist Mark Skyer), but then they go back to the plastic 12-bar mush they did before.

Then, John Lee Hooker steps in, introduces himself with the words "They call me Mr. Blues and I AM the blues!" and saves the record on the last three songs. He does a horny "Tease Me Baby" and a fine version of "Serves Me Right To Suffer", before leading the band into a marathon boogie called "Nobody Else But You", which proves that Canned Heat could still rock if they were shown how.

Bob "The Bear" Hite bids the audience farewell with the words "Don't forget to boogie!" Too bad nobody told him that before the show, or this might have been a decent record. As it is, it's mediocre at best, not counting the John Lee bits, which are well above average.