Buscadero (Italy)

March 1998

Review: gb Leighton
Live From Pickle Park
Moonsong Records

Stamp:  Buscadero Recommended Disk

This is the show I would like to see tomorrow night. The cover is enough (amplifiers and instruments closed in their cases, piled up by a backstage door and ready for use), enough to understand that the show will be hot and exciting, that the night will be filled with the best rock 'n' roll, that the songs will make people shake and will bring joy to the little world of the American province.

gb Leighton is the latest saint to arrive in the city, and little does it matter that this city is a lost suburb of Minneapolis. Its little stage is a tavern called Bunkers, like so many throughout the world (but only in those of the States do they play music like this). gb Leighton is a rock 'n' roll animal of the fierce sort that open with "Sweet Jane" and immediately throw us into the electricity of a concert, making us feel lucky to be here.

It seemed the time of such prodigies had ended. Then came gb Leighton who, with a band called the Silver Bullet Band until Bob Seger sent them to the barbers, creates an event that is a Titanic of energy,of joy, and of music.  The 70's records of Bob Seger must have been around Leighton's house, otherwise there would be no way to explain this marriage of essential rock and the ability to write and sing pieces ("True to Love", "Love for Sale," for example) with the appeal and the magic of the sixties hit, while the songs have the capacity to dream and are "made to fall in love." gb Leighton is demonstration of simplicity-as-beauty, in rock, and in true art. No need for big technological devices, of cultural and aesthetic "gigantographics." What's wanted is an enthusiastic artist who is intelligent and who sings in the manner of Southside Johnny of the Jersey Shore, who 'directs' a band , like the E-Street Band of The Wild and the Innocent, but who, without being a Springsteen or a Steve Earle, writes of real life. This is done through lyrics in which anyone can see themselves and therefore which anyone can make their own. The art of the song is not something that can be learned but what happens. It does not take place away from the world of the public, of the community in which it lives. Presley went to pieces when he was isolated.

gb Leighton springs, instead, from outside the supermarket of music; a little blue collar hero of the provinces with two self-produced recordings (One Time, One Life, and Comes Alive), preparation for this undeniably vibrant Live From Pickle Park.  He is aided by a band surrounded in the smoke of the boogie bar, consisting of a guitarist (Luke Kramer), a high class organist and pianist (Buzz Bray), and a bass player (Johnny Vincent), and a double rhythm section, drummer Randy Baugher and percussionist Tony Kamana. It is band with a full and mature sound, the guitars (Leighton's as well) blending with the keyboard and the powerful rhythm section, creating a hard and romantic sound that was heard on the East Coast at the time of The River.

That history is able to look back and repeat itself from time to time is a salvation, because, between the aracneo-techno of the Prodigy and the provincial backwardness of gb Leighton, I prefer the present Live From Pickle Park...that is, rock in its pure state without the interference of industrial discography.

It's not a question of states but of emotions, and this live recording transmits plenty of them, enough to make us feel there, amidst the crowd at Bunkers, singing and dancing with the rest of them.

Live From Pickle Park consists of 13 songs and has the feel of a boogie bar band when it is rolling and playing on its own turf. The opening song is a missile, "Sweet Jane" with an overbearing sound, metropolitan and in a dazzling version, the best since, of course, the original and that of Mars di Denti and Boerchio, subtitled as a song for friend's weddings and birthdays. Jokes aside, "Sweet Jane" is like a royal flush in a poker hand. This is only the beginning, because the next cut, "Love for Sale," which already appeared with other material in Comes Alive, has a cardiac power - that Springsteenian harmonica and that piano and organ which grab the senses, and a melody which leaves raw the beating of the heart. It is a declaration of love that goes arm-in-arm with "True to Love," another perfect definition of the pop song. Fresh, airy and positive, it ranges from romanticism to the fruits of a well-worked guitar to, contrarily, a rough, biting street quality. "I'm Seventeen" is, instead, a minor teen hit of the brisk, punk type from the pen of Tom Conwell, another rebel of neo-blue collar rock.

It is the second cover song of the show, after the Lou Reed classic and the new "Hey Baby," a song by Cobb and Channell, which wags its tail around the style of A.M. radio of the sixties. It has the spin of a 45, the soul and appeal: today it would end up in a commercial; once it would have worked perfectly to seduce someone.

It's of the same cloth as Man In the Moon, From Now On and One Foot Over, the most melodic side of gb Leighton, in which his voice is the least hoarse, and his innocent songwriting is in evidence.

But gb Leighton is above all a street rocker who confronts with a slide the R&B of John Hiatt, in Contradiction and who unchains the audience in the devastating sequences in Cruising, Baby and Shag.

The first is a bit of rock that puts together the steamroller of the Silver Bullet Band and the Southern fury of the Georgia Satellites. The second opens with an acoustic guitar which later became a rock ballad of American Babylon. And Shag is a collective drunkenness of contagious energy in which everyone sings, awaiting the afro-Cuban rhythm of Sympathy for the Devil opening into guitar and piano and finishing with a hallelujah of rock.

It's a worthy finale to a disk that has 'the feeling,' enough to sell, and which gives out the will to play in a rock 'n' roll  band. Like in the times of "Rosalita."

-- Mauro Zambellini