Introduction

REHEATED (1988)
1) Looking For The Party; 2) Drifting; 3) I'm Watching You; 4) Bullfrog Blues; 5) Hucklebuck; 6) Mercury Blues; 7) Gunstreet Girl; 8) I Love To Rock & Roll; 9) So Fine (Betty Jean); 10) Take Me To The River; 11) Red Headed Woman; 12) Built For Comfort.
Yes, that is just the way it is: this late Eighties version of Canned Heat, much like Fleetwood Mac, retains only the rhythm section from its original incarnation — Fito de la Parra is on drums, and Larry Taylor is on bass. Completing the lineup is James Thornbury on slide guitar and harmonica, and, most importantly, Junior Watson on lead guitar. In case you don't know who that is, Junior is a professional «jump blues» guitarist — his preferred stylistics seems to be the early electric playing style of guys like T-Bone Walker, or, at best, the early white rock'n'roll entertainers like Bill Haley's Franny Beecher. Consequently, it is no surprise that most of this album sounds like one large 1940s / 1950s revival, strange as that might seem coming from 1988, and coming from a band that still willed to be billed as «Canned Heat».
With all objective reservations made, though, Reheated sounds cool. Like the late period Hite albums, this music is no longer trying to prove anything — all it does is provide you with a bit of retro-sounding entertainment. But it has a nice balance between clean, steady production and rawness / edginess of sound — you can tell that the production is sufficiently perfected for this music to have been recorded as early as it tries to sound, but there are no diagnostic features of the Eighties whatsoever — and both Thornbury and Watson know their idioms to perfection. Even if this is only a tribute to an epoch long gone by, it still makes sense to listen to such covers as Eddie Boyd's ʽDriftingʼ and re-recordings of ʽBullfrog Bluesʼ just to learn how it is possible to reintegrate the spirit of early electric blues into a modern blues record without it sounding too glossy, too serious, and too boring.
It does help that Junior Watson is an excellent guitarist, as seen best on the long, but all-the-way mesmerizing instrumental ʽHucklebuckʼ, where he entertains us with a seemingly endless barrage of jazz / blues / country / folk licks, pilfering from all over the place and sewing it all together quite seamlessly. I am a big fan of the T-Bone Walker style of soloing — a meticulous, accurate, and always humor-ful style of stringing notes together — and this is a cool modern way of up­grading it by speeding things up just a bit and diversifying the phrasing assortiment, without losing (well, maybe just a bit) the humor that goes along with it. It's not always that fun and lively on the vocal tracks (most of the vocals, by the way, are handled by Thornbury, who has a fairly neutral bluesy voice), but it's consistently listenable and enjoyable.
Not everything works: for instance, their rendition of Al Green's ʽTake Me To The Riverʼ is pointless — the song is primarily a vocal soul number, and Thornbury has neither the sinful se­ductiveness of Al himself, nor the paranoia quotient of a David Byrne; their stripping the song down to bare essentials only draws the attention ever closer to the vocals, and there it is quickly dissipated. The idea to take ʽGun Street Girlʼ from Tom Waits' Rain Dogs and trace it back to its boogie-woogie roots would be fun if its boogie-woogie roots weren't so obvious on the original: it was Tom's innovative approach to textures and melodic flow that made the song special, so it's a bit... banal, I guess, to make it un-special again. But still curious to a degree.
And I do have to admit that at least on the fast numbers, the Taylor / de la Parra rhythm section sounds very cool — Taylor has never been a genuine bass wizard, but the few styles of holding down the instrument that he does know, he masters to perfection, and something like ʽMercury Bluesʼ really gets all your inner rhythms going (I also love his «velvety» bass tone on the song, no idea how he gets it, though). I may not know what I'm talking about here, but it still seems as if the two were all set to prove that they could still carry the Canned Heat logo loud and proud, and now that they were no longer in the shadow of Wilson, Vestine, and Hite, they did their best to stress that they were Canned Heat, and as good as Junior Watson might be, he is still just passing through on this long, strange journey during which an old bassist and an old drummer encounter every second guitar player in the world for a one-night stand.
So it's not so much Reheated as Retrofitted, but that's okay — I'm not sure if «reheating» what­ever was left of the old band was at all possible, so retrofitting was probably the best solution there was. ʽHucklebuckʼ gets my thumbs up; the rest of the album does not (it probably makes more sense to just seek out the solo albums of Junior Watson if one is truly interested in his playing style), but, you know, for an album produced by two of the least remembered members of one of the least remembered Woodstock bands, this one's nearly a sudden masterpiece of an unexpected surprise.
INTERNAL COMBUSTION (1994)
1) I Used To Be Bad; 2) John Lee Hooker Boogie; 3) Remember Woodstock; 4) (You'll Have To) Come And Get It; 5) The Heat In Me Is Up; 6) It's Hot; 7) Vision Of You; 8) Nothing At All; 9) 24 Hours; 10) Gamblin' Woman; 11) I Might Be Tempted.
It's nothing short of amazing that this LP sounds like a fairly cohesive piece of blues-rock product, considering that it is apparently spliced together from at least three different sessions — four tracks still feature Junior Watson on lead guitar, but two feature Vestine, and four more feature Harvey Mandel (and, as far as I remember, Mandel and Vestine never really work together). The rhythm section remains the same (although on a few of the tracks Larry Taylor is replaced by Ron Shumake for some reason), and James Thornbury is still in place as the new band's chief singer, harmonica, and rhythm guitar player. Additionally, Ira Ingber is playing second (third?) guitar through­out, and Ronnie Baron is credited for some piano on the opening tracks... whew. And who of them exactly was formally a member of Canned Heat at the time when the new album came out in 1994? That's, like, a good billion dollar question.
But the music here is mostly good, if unexceptional. With Junior Watson's presence much re­duced and new guitarist Ira Ingber's much increased, the sound is no longer as defiantly retro as it was on Reheated — this here sounds like Chicago blues and Chicago-blues-derived blues-rock in the modern era, with a more polished guitar sound and an overall glossier style of production. This does not outcancel the good-time vibe and the occasional attempt to throw in an original riff or two, and Ira Ingber turns out to be a talented songwriter — at least two out of three songs that he co-writes here with Gary Tigerman are relative standouts (ʽVision Of Youʼ is a funky-swampy rocker with some subtle menace to it, and ʽI Might Be Temptedʼ has a snake-like little riff con­necting its simple boogie verses that simply refuses to go away). On my personal scale of expe­rience, this is all slightly above the average «modern blues-rock record» — there's a bit of the old nostalgic Heat vibe, a bit of modern talent, a bit of diversity, but not enough by way of any inter­esting new collective personality for the band.
The nostalgia vibe is pumped to the max on ʽRemember Woodstockʼ, a track that diligently mimicks the original atmosphere of ʽOn The Road Againʼ, right down to featuring the drummer on vocals — and, surprise surprise, he seems to be sporting the same kiddie falsetto as the late Alan Wilson! But it almost works, unless you begin to pay serious attention to the worthlessly predictable lyrics ("Remember Woodstock, it made history as we know..." etc.): at least that atmosphere is recaptured flawlessly, and Vestine gets in the best solo on the album. And then, of course, Fito contributes ʽJohn Lee Hooker Boogieʼ, with a bit of Hooker himself sampled on the opening segment, and yes, you asked for it — the ʽBoogie Chillunʼ line is back, after all these years, although it's been slightly straightened out and masked with a scraping, broken-up riff. Again, Vestine takes the lead here, and for a short while, it's like we're really all the way back in 1968 (except that Mr. Thornbury on vocals ain't no Bob Hite).
As for the generic stuff (lots and lots of melodically predictable Chicago blues covers and re­writes), it's okay — they still have some humor and irreverence to go along with it, so it doesn't sound nearly as bad as when a Sheryl Crow or a Robert Cray take over the blueskeeping duties. Nothing to write home about, but the rhythm section is sufficiently sharp and forceful to get you toe-tappin', and that's about as much as you could ask at the moment. I am a little disappointed in the quality of Mandel's soloing — technically impeccable as usual, and he still has a good selec­tion of nasty guitar tones at his disposal, but never even once does he properly go crazy on the instrumental breaks; I'd say Vestine, who only has two leads on the record, has him solidly beat quality-wise, if not quantity-wise. Then again, Vestine had always been the true soul of the band (along with Wilson), so that should hardly be a surprise.
BLUES BAND (1997)
1) Stranger; 2) Quiet Woman; 3) Iron Horse; 4) Jr.'s Shuffle; 5) Creole Queen; 6) Keep It To Yourself; 7) Boogie Music; 8) Goin' Up The Country; 9) See These Tears; 10) One Kind Favour; 11) Oh Baby; 12) Gorgo Boogie.
We're going to speed up a bit with these ever-closer-to-our-days reviews, considering that with each new album, there's less and less Canned Heat and more and more stereotypical modern blues rock playing — the kind that sounds great together with some pulled pork and gumbo in B. B. King's Blues Club on a relaxed New York weekend, but has little use in anybody's record col­lection, apart from the most diligent blues aficionados. And I'm just saying that only because I have seen a few positively glowing accounts of these post-Canned Heat incarnations — as if, you know, these guys not merely managed to pull it together, but actually succeeded in putting a new, outstanding angle on traditional material. Well — no, not that I've really noticed.
On this 1997 Europe-only release, the band's triple guitar lineup consists of Vestine, Junior Watson, and relative newcomer Robert Lucas, who seemingly takes over the duties of James Thornbury, including lead vocals (which are quite similar to Thornbury's) and some of the song­writing, uh, I mean, song-doctoring (as usual, the «originals» are just slight melodic and lyrical modifications of traditional blues numbers). Larry Taylor remains attached to acoustic bass, and Gregg Kage replaces Ron Shumake on electric.
Again, the main lowlights are those cases where they try to re-record old Heat classics — in this instance, ʽBoogie Musicʼ, done very closely, but predictably inferior-ly, to the original, and, in a moment of bizarre, totally uncalled for blasphemy, a version of ʽGoin' Up The Countryʼ done as a generic acoustic blues with gruff vocals. The only two reasons why anybody paid any attention to the song in the first place were Alan Wilson's falsetto and the flute playing, and now that both of these are gone, it's a good exercise in humility — that is, making something very ordinary out of something quite extraordinary.
Other than that, the rocking numbers are predictably pulled off without a hitch: I think that ʽStrangerʼ, opening the album on a riff copped from ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ, features all three lead guitarists, with Lucas playing the slide, Junior Watson playing the first, «softer», solo, and Vestine on the second, «harsher» one, but I may be totally wrong about that — in any case, the track alternates between three very different styles of playing, two bluesier ones and one rockier one, and that makes it a standout. Unfortunately, the only other standout is the final instrumental ʽGorgo Boogieʼ, an overdriven fuzzy vamp with minimal rhythm support — spotlighting Robert Lucas doing flamenco hand-picks in a rather unique style and making that guitar sound like a highly drunk police siren taking on a life of its own.
Actually, Robert Lucas is a very good guitarist — not that Canned Heat ever hired any bad ones — and if you manage to let down your «who the hell listens to generic blues-rock in the 1990s, let alone the 2010s?» safeguard, every track here is nice and cool. But if you don't, you don't, and that's okay, too. The saddest news of all is that this happened to be the last album to feature any­thing by Henry Vestine — the last really-mattering musician of the classic Heat lineup passed away on October 20, 1997. Said to be heart failure, but I'm pretty sure drugs must have had something to do with this, too. Every member of Canned Heat is supposed to die from drugs, it's, like, in the Scriptures out there somewhere.
BOOGIE 2000 (2000)
1) Wait And See; 2) Last Man; 3) World Of Make Believe; 4) Dark Clouds; 5) Searchin' For My Baby; 6) I Got Loaded; 7) Too Much Giddyup; 8) She Split; 9) 2000 Reasons (Y2K Blues); 10) Road To Rio; 11) Can I Come Home?; 12) I'm So Tired.
If you only want one reliable taster of what it was like to call yourself «Canned Heat» after every­body who ever made a difference in the original band had passed away, you might just as well go along with Boogie 2000. It's just such a nice little record — nothing particularly special, nothing whatsoever to make you raise an eyebrow, but it's just done so damn well, I couldn't really think of where to begin to voice any specific complaints.
Sure, just as always, it's just straightahead blues and blues-rock, with not a single original melody in sight. They can write «Music by A. de la Parra and friends» for all they like, but we know, don't we, that ʽLast Manʼ is simply ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ with new lyrics, and that ʽToo Much Giddyupʼ rides the blues train of ʽMilk Cow Bluesʼ, and that ʽ2000 Reasons (Y2K Blues)ʼ is just a mix of ʽSweet Home Chicagoʼ with ʽDust My Broomʼ, and the list goes on. There's no new music written here — period, end of story. But above and beyond that, this particular lineup of late period Canned Heat, reduced to a hardcore quartet of de la Parra, Taylor, Kage on bass and Lucas on guitar, gives arguably the tightest, leanest, and most energetic show of blues-rock fun, grit, and (a little) nostalgia that could ever be expected.
There's just something about the way they crash-boom-bang into the album with ʽWait And Seeʼ, a Fats Domino number with a guest flautist and a guest saxophonist, the former bringing on inescapable echoes of ʽGoing Up The Countryʼ and the latter laying on a good New Orleanian vibe. The rhythm section is tight as a tick, Lucas gives a soulfully humorous vocal performance, and Skip Taylor's production delineates and emphasizes each instrument to perfection. It's like a textbook case of how to treat a cover song if you lack imagination, but compensate for this with verve and dedication. The only thing that is missing is a great lead guitar part — but this comes with the next track, where, on ʽLast Manʼ, Lucas throws his slide playing talents into the pot: the solos here are even more fluent, ecstatic, and note-perfect than on the previous album, putting the man (almost) on the level of... Dickey Betts, for instance — he'd be a good competitive addition to The Great Southern at least, if not necessarily to the Allmans.
Another bit of saving grace is the ongoing diversity. They have a bit of comic blues (Har­rison Nelson's ʽI Got Loadedʼ), a bit of real old school jump blues (ʽShe Splitʼ), a soul cover (ʽSear­chin' For My Babyʼ), an odd jump into Latin territory (ʽWorld Of Make Believeʼ), and at least one track with more of a ZZ Top-style Texan rock sound (ʽRoad To Rioʼ, where you almost expect Billy Gibbons to crop up at any moment). No, no baroque pop or death metal, but let us not be pushing it — these guys would be the first to admit they're happy with clinging to a for­mula, yet even within that formula, there's plenty of ground to cover, and they are not interested in merely doing one stereotypical 12-bar tune after another. Instead, they're laying down all the stereotypes, and having their way with each of them.
I guess the record peters out a little near the end: instead of the slow, harmonica-heavy ʽI'm So Tiredʼ, they should have had another kick-ass rocker to wind things down on the same exuberant note on which they started it (and ʽI'm So Tiredʼ doesn't even sound all that tired!). Also, I am not at all fond of Greg Kage's singing voice — next to Lucas', it's kinda colorless in comparison, and detracts from the overall enjoyment of such powerful tunes as ʽToo Much Giddyupʼ (which is still heavily recommendable because of more top-notch sliding from Lucas). But there can only be so much nitpicking about an honest, no-bull record like this, one that essentially hits all the right spots. It might not be raising any false illusions about the future vitality of blues-rock, but it does make a good case for why people are still making blues-rock records after all these years. So, a modest, but honest thumbs up here.

FRIENDS IN THE CAN (2003)
1) Same Old Games; 2) Bad Trouble; 3) Black Coffee; 4) Getaway; 5) It Don't Matter; 6) Let's Work Together; 7) 1,2,3 Here We Go Again; 8) That Fat Cat; 9) Home To You; 10) Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive; 11) Little Wheel.
Okay, let's see who these guys were in 2003... Fito on drums, ensuring the «right» to be called Canned Heat; Greg Kage still on bass, as well as lead vocals and songwriting for one track (ʽThat Fat Catʼ — an anti-capitalist rant that does not work too well when the proletarian protagonist introduces himself as "a fine-lovin' bitch-chasin' hound dog"); Dallas Hodge and John Paulus on guitars; Stanley Behrens on wind instruments and harmonica. Any of these names ring a bell? Only to remind us that Robert Lucas is out of the band, and since he was pretty much the best thing to happen to the post-Wilson, post-Hite Heat ever, this means that we're quite inevitably back to square one. In fact, you can tell that from the title: the minute you begin subscribing to the «...And Friends» ideology, it's as if you've officially put yourself on the barroom circuit, re­gardless of whether you have already been cruising it surreptitiously or not.
And who are the friends, by the way? The eerie thing about the list on the back cover is that some of these people were already dead in 2003 — like John Lee Hooker (died 2001), or Heat's own Henry Vestine (died 1997). Others are not so much friends as legitimate past members (Harvey Mandel on a re-recording of ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ; Robert Lucas on... another re-recording of ʽLet's Work Togetherʼ, appended as a bonus track — was this a sort of «let's get all of Canned Heat's guitarists to re-record one song for us» game?), and a few members of John Lee Hooker's band. This is sort of ridiculous — surely they still had at least one or two friends left in the big leagues? Where's Eric Clapton with ʽFurther On Down The Roadʼ? Where's Buddy Guy with ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ? This is more like Old Ghosts And Sidemen In The Can.
Anyway, musically this is indeed a big letdown from the tightness of Boogie 2000: a mish-mash selection from several different sessions that had no reason to be released, since most of it con­sists of very basic, very perfunctory blues-rock — professional, but never exciting. Only three tracks stand out: the aforementioned ʽThat Fat Catʼ, mainly because of the hilariously bad lyrics; ʽNever Get Out Of These Blues Aliveʼ, with Taj Mahal on guitar (the coolest moment comes at the end, when the band stays around to jam a little bit and they overdub a piece of an interview with John Lee Hooker where he uses his deepest bass rumble to share a few memories about how great it was for him to be backed by Canned Heat in the old days — a bit creepy); and ʽLittle Wheelʼ, from an older session with John Lee Hooker himself on vocals and Henry Vestine on lead guitar — rougher sounding, almost lo-fi quality, but ten times as passionate as almost everything on the rest of the album (I think it was 1989, when Hooker was making his own «...and friends» album, The Healer).
Of course, one or two tracks are hardly enough to make a recommendation, so just stay away unless only for completism' sake — focus your efforts on locating Boogie 2000 instead, if you want decent proof of blues-rock not yet being completely dead at the turn of the millennium. These Friends In The Can are quite a sorry lot in comparison: not exactly thumbs-down worthy, since everything is kept clean and professional, but instantly forgettable.

CHRISTMAS ALBUM (2007)
1) Deck The Halls; 2) The Christmas Song; 3) Christmas Blues; 4) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town; 5) I Won't Be Home For Christmas; 6) Christmas Boogie; 7) Santa Claus Is Back In Town; 8) Jingle Bells; 9) Christmas Blues; 10) Boogie Boy (Little Drummer Boy); 11) Christmas Blues (live).
And so we end (or at least I really hope so) this long, strange journey — on our strangest note yet, as the final flourish of Canned Heat in the recording business seems to have been this special Christmas album, just exactly the kind of thing that billions of Canned Heat fans around the world had been fighting for ever since, way back when, Bob Hite did a joint number with Alvin and the Chipmunks that forever changed the course of humanity. That number (ʽThe Christmas Songʼ), already available as a bonus track on the CD release of Future Blues, is reproduced here in all its glory, as well as an old version of ʽChristmas Bluesʼ from around the same time, mixed in with a bunch of completely new recordings so that you all may see Canned Heat just the way they are: «protecting the old ways from being abused».
At least they have Robert Lucas back in the band, playing, singing, and having one last good time before expiring from a drug overdose about one year later — another solid Canned Heat tradition, you might say, but the irony is certainly mixed with sadness, since of all things that happened to this headless band since 1980, Robert Lucas was arguably the very best one. It is only because of him that one or two tracks on this Christmas Album approach the overall fun level of Boogie 2000, even if in terms of singing Christmas carols he isn't exactly a prime time Santa Claus; but in terms of playing, he can effortlessly transform ʽDeck The Hallsʼ and ʽJingle Bellsʼ into up­lifting jazz-blues grooves that replace the generic party spirit with genuine appreciation of a good musical spirit.
I mean, what could be the point of a classic blues-rock band doing a Christmas album? Only if the Christmas songs suit the tastes of a seasoned blues-rocker, and I'm pretty sure that seasoned blues-rockers with wide-reaching tastes will be all too happy to have a record like this for a sound­track to their Christmas dinner. Be it the completely instrumental ʽSanta Claus Is Coming To Townʼ, with a pretty-clean guitar solo (one third jazz, one third folk, and one third... surf?), or the reworking of the classic Heat / Hooker / ZZ Top ʽBoogie Chillenʼ line as ʽChristmas Boogieʼ (which almost explicitly suggests that Christmas might be the best time of the year for some wild carnal fantasies and Holy Spirit-assisted procreation activities), or the album-closing third version of ʽChristmas Bluesʼ, recorded in front of a live audience with special guest Eric Clapton on guitar, it's all part of a harmless fun send-up of the predictable Christmas spirit.
One lonesome odd surprise on the record is the band's reinterpretation of ʽLittle Drummer Boyʼ: although the song is retitled as ʽBoogie Boyʼ, it is not at all a boogie, but rather an «art-folk» mood piece with echo-laden guitars and a «deep rumble» effect on vocals that preach the virtues and efficiencies of The Boogie. It's a mildly hypnotic piece that contrasts sharply with the general upbeat tone of the record and, in the light of both Lucas' death the following year and the fact that we have not seen a new Canned Heat album since then, could be interpreted as an unintentional musical testament to the greatest force that kept the band afloat and kicking for such a ridiculous­ly long time — indeed, you could say that all this time they were the dutiful keepers of the boogie flame, and if there was one thing at which they truly excelled on the precious A-level, it was how to generate genuine sonic heat around that bearly one-chord vamp. And even if this record is merely a last minute curio / trifle, it is still somewhat reassuring to see them loyally sticking to that spirit even at Christmastime — with The Bear himself rising out of the grave to join his younger colleagues in one last celebration of The Boogie...

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART