PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC - 1969

PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC
"PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC"
1969
SONY MUSIC DISTRIBUTION

       1   Bluesbuster  (Allen)  2:55
       2   Death Row #172  (Allen, Cook, Hill)  3:59
       3   Miss Lucy  (Allen)  2:28
       4   My Women  (Allen, Marshall)  5:38
       5   She's Long and She's Tall  (Hooker)  6:20
       6   PG&E Suite: The Young Rabbits/Constitutional Strand/Fat Tom/Boy Wonder [medley]   (Block, Henderson, Marshall, Schwartz)   16:41
       7   Redneck  (South)  3:32

Stanley Abernathy - Trumpet
 Jerry Aiello - Organ
 Charlie Allen - Vocals
 Brent Black - Bass
 The Blackberries - Vocals (bckgr)
 Brent Block - Guitar (Bass)
 Bud Brisbois - Trumpet
 D.A. Brisbois - Trumpet
 Frank Cook - Drums
 Wilton Felder - Sax (Tenor)
 Alfred Galleros - Tenor (Vocal)
 Virgil Gonsalves - Bass (Vocal)
 Wayne Henderson - Trombone
 Freddie Hill - Trumpet
 John Hill - Keyboards
 Joe Lala - Conga, Timbales
 Tom Marshall - Guitar, Guitar (Rhythm)
 Frank Petricca - Bass
 Glenn Schwartz - Guitar
 Ken Utterback - Guitar
 Ron Woods - Drums

REVIEW
by Richie Unterberger
On most of their second album, Pacific Gas & Electric play soul-rock with some dash and verve, though the songwriting isn't up to the level of musicianship or Charlie Allen's genuinely soulful vocals. Pacific Gas & Electric are really a band that would be better served by a selective compilation than any of their individual LPs, and strong candidates for such an anthology would include "Death Row #172" and "Bluesbuster," which are a little like early Blood, Sweat & Tears with more blues-rock and less bluster. Some of the other songs are closer to average period blues-rock workouts, like "Miss Lucy" and the live cover of John Lee Hooker's "She's Long and She's Tall," though the group original "My Women" finds them getting into a slow blues-funk groove with graceful style. The four-part, 17-minute "PG&E Suite" is typical of the highs and lows of many such psychedelic rock experiments of the late '60s, starting off promisingly with the cinematic jazz-rock instrumental "The Young Rabbits." But it runs off the rails with too much drum soloing, and the momentum utterly drains when the suite peters out into poor white-boy blues that's obviously trying to be drolly humorous, yet ends up being painfully lame. The closing blues-soul-rock stomper "Redneck" restores the energy level somewhat, but it's an erratic record on the whole, as would be its follow-up, 1970's Are You Ready.

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