We're An American Band: A Journey Through The USA Hard Rock Scene 1967-1973 Clamshell Box

Rock & roll went through a massive transition in its first decade-and-a-half, much more so than in the time that has since passed. Its fair to peg the public acceptance of rock & roll with the success of Chuck Berrys "Maybellene" in 1955, and ten years later, rock gained a greater level of sophistication and literacy, with the dawn of the psychedelic age in sight, and after that, all bets were off. Once psychedelia became the order of the day, rock bands sought new ways to and add a trippier edge to their music, and it didnt take long for someone to come up with a simple, brilliantly effective trick – turn up your amps to ten, stretch out your tunes, beef up the low end, and start hitting everything hard. By 1968, bands like Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf, and Vanilla Fudge had pioneered the grubby majesty of hard rock (in turn leading to its demonic sibling, heavy metal), and parents across America were suddenly very sorry they thought the Rolling Stones were as obnoxious as things could get. As hard rock codified itself over the next several years, hundreds of bands were building big, powerful music out of an increasingly diverse range of ingredients, and the British Cherry Red label has fashioned an entertaining and well-curated study of the first era of American hard rock with the 2023 box set Were an American Band: A Journey Through the USA Hard Rock Scene 1967-1973. A careful spin of this three-disc, 62-track behemoth makes clear the main precursors to hard rock were the expanded vistas of psychedelia (the semi-poetic lyric style common to early psych informs a large portion of the tracks here) and the moody sneer of citified blues (one of the sets more remarkable tracks is Muddy Waters amusing cover of the Rolling Stones "Lets Spend the Night Together" from his 1968 psych/metal hybrid Electric Mud), as well as the delinquent shrug of the noisier strains of garage rock. There are plenty of familiar names on board (the MC5, the Stooges, Alice Cooper, ZZ Top, Blue Oyster Cult), some stars in waiting (Fuse would evolve into Cheap Trick; Nazz, with a young Todd Rundgren; and Dust, with Marc Bell on drums before he turned into Marky Ramone), some worthy cult favorites (Sir Lord Baltimore, who sound even more proto-metal than Blue Cheer, and Texas psych outliers the Bubble Puppy and Cold Sun), and plenty of utter unknowns whose brief moments of sonic thunder are celebrated at last (solid, previously unreleased tracks from Sudden Death, the Sound Barrier, Gold, and B.F. Trike). Theres plenty of good, greasy fun to be had in Were an American Band, and if youre the sort who turns up the car stereo when "Born to Be Wild" comes on, youll revel in this; its high time this era got a Nuggets of its own, and this is it. ~ Mark Deming