Where the Beat Meets the Street

If Bobby & The Midnites' debut album represented a half-hearted attempt to go pop on the part of Grateful Dead guitarist/singer Bob Weir, Where The Beat Meets The Street, The Midnites' second and final album, saw the group going for mid-'80s radio acceptance with a vengeance. As he had in his '70s group, Kingfish, Weir began to take a backseat in his own band, leaving most of the singing up to Bobby Cochran and bringing in a host of outside songwriters. Jeff Baxter provided a sharp production sound keyed to Billy Cobham's driving drums, and what you got was, as one song put it, "Rock In The '80s," a set of frisky toe-tappers that concerned themselves mostly with the magical world of rock & roll. What can Deadheads have made of this, especially at a time when the mother group seemed to have given up making its own records? Actually, probably only a few of them (or anyone else, for that matter) got to hear this album, which sank without a trace after four weeks at the bottom of the charts, followed by the demise of the group itself. ~ William Ruhlmann|