I Feel Like A King

I feel like a king
'Cause I just kissed my baby
And money don't mean a thing to me, no
'Cause I just kissed my baby

I feel like a king because I’ve been listening to The Meters Rejuvenation, luxuriating in the sheer precision, dignity and warm clarity of it all. If you need some escapism from our vexatious world* then listening to this LP is akin to flying first class to heaven.

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Rejuvenation is the Meters fifth album, and it continues the evolution in their sound of ’72s Cabbage Alley**. By 1974 the Meters had moved on from the mostly instrumental New Orleans R&B groove machine that they began as and were lacing their gumbo with rock and funk elements; partly as a consequence of being the collaborators of choice for a slew of discerning types such as Paul McCartney^, Robert Palmer and Dr John.

So when they cut Rejuvenation with Allen Toussaint co-producing, their music had moved on from their ‘Cissy Strut’-ing phase and it was laced with pop melodies, some rock crunch and progression and mucho-mucho confidence. The latter goes without saying, this was a bunch of frighteningly great musicians, all of whom would have excelled in any unit but having Neville, Modeliste, Nocentelli and Porter almost smacks of cheating.

The Meters take all of 20 seconds to hit a sublime groove on Rejuvenation‘s opener ‘People Say’. That this unique skittering strutting beat, awesome vocal melodies and uplifting guitar hooks is wrapped around such a downbeat assessment of the state of the nation makes the top of the sublimeometer fly off like a test-your-strength machine at a county fair.

Then we change down into ‘Love Is For Me’ a beautiful soul ballad with just an edge of da funk lurking at the edges to stop it getting syrupy. The smooth vocal, by Art Neville I think^^, is a thing of rare heartfelt beauty. The backing singers lend the whole track a slightly Stones-y air too.

Then ‘Just Kissed My Baby’ somehow manages to take it all up another gear, the sparseness of the music is incredible, Modeliste just casually laying it down in an utterly godlike fashion with some slide guitar assistance from Lowell George. It’s so great that some nights it’s my fave track here, there aren’t many higher accolades I can award it.

The funk gets heavier with ‘What’cha Say’ to great effect and you can hear whole sub-genres of rock and funk being birthed as you listen. ‘Jungle Man’ basically invents 33% of mid-period Beastie Boys oeuvre within 20 seconds of dirty keys and vox.

Speaking of whom, I was pleasantly shocked the first time I ever heard ‘Pocky A-Way’ as I knew it as part of ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’ on Paul’s Boutique. Anyway, I digress the track is a brilliantly perky swinging New Orleans playground groove and if it doesn’t move your feet don’t bother checking your pulse, just get a cab straight to the mortuary.

Then my favourite favourite track on Rejuvenation hits, all 11:58 of ‘It Ain’t No Use’. Again, we are walking in the valley of the gods, as a great tune spirals into a wonderfully poised long-form funk rock freak out with all four musicians just taking off for the distant horizons; particularly Leo Nocentelli on guitar who somehow plays so much with so few notes. There are shades of Ike Hayes’ ‘Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic’ about it, but the Meters are even better. There, I said it.

The keys-led ‘Loving You Is On My Mind’ is the only misstep the band make here in my view, it’s all a bit too sugary and primary coloured for my gnarled tastes and flinty heart. But we jump right back on the consciousness funk express with ‘Africa’ where Mr Modeliste again shows us his chops with a beat that is somehow simultaneously primal and ultra-sophisticated, taking it all back to the motherland, as they put it.

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Much as I would love to kid you that I first latched onto Rejuvenation as a peculiarly hep 2 year-old, honesty forbids. This is simply the best LP I have stumbled across this year and for a few before that too.

I find it interesting too that I can really hear the genesis of the world conquering sound of Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers in these grooves, although they traded in the occasional trace of New Orleans grit found here for their machine tooled disco precision.

It isn’t just the song writing and playing, jaw-dropping though that is, Rejuvenation may well be the best produced album I own. Nominally co-produced by the band and Allen Toussaint^* it manages to capture absolute clarity and warmth throughout.

Buy it.

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My copy of Rejuvenation is a decidedly fancy pants Vinyl Me Please reissue. As well as a great neon yellow record-y thing, it comes with a nice booklet, an art print and tip-on cover (i.e. shiny bits, contrasted with a matt finish). More to the point the pressing just sounds amazing when I can stop caressing it long enough to actually play it.

1206 Down.

*and if you don’t, you are exactly the sort of stone-cold sociopath I don’t want to hang around here.

**an LP with such a weird, almost frightening cover I refuse to own a copy; it freaks me and hell I’m a fan of Brassica oleracea. Word.

^who booked them for the launch party of Wings Venus And Mars, where by all accounts they were incredible, Cher, Joni Mitchell and Michael Jackson all boogieing their asses off.

^^he and Ziggy Modeliste shared duties and I can’t determine who is who.

^*the band now claim his input was minimal.