J. GEILS HOWLIN’ AT THE MOON

Why is Peter Wolf running in circles around the darkened stage, before the J. Geils Band is announced and the spotlights focus in on him?

Most likely it’s because he’s nervous — but it does still provide a handy metaphor for the situation in which Wolf and Co. find themselves lately.

For four albums, each snowballing into something a little bigger than the last, the most common criticism levelled against the band was that it just continued, over and over and over again, to do the same thing. So they try something slightly different with Ladies Invited. And reaction from critic and consumer alike indicates that it’s the closest thing to a flop they’ve ever done.

So now they come up with Nightmares, strictly back in the jivin’ funk ’n’ flash groove, and it is arguably their best since Full House... the same, but better. Wolf has really come into his own as a singer. They’re as in demand as ever on the boogie circuit, yet in many respects they are right back where they started.

In Boston/Cambridge, where everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody who knows Peter Wolf, the story is that this is it, if this album isn’t a real monster, Peter’s gonna pack it in and the band will dissolve. They wanted to be rock and roll Stars: platinum records, not gold; selective tours of only the biggest halls, the whole bit. If that isn’t going to happen, well, Peter’s more interested in films at this point anyway. The attention focused on him since his marriage to Faye Dunaway has resulted in an increase in his beret size.

To which the reply is always: Horseshit, he doesn’t mean that. He’s just copping an attitude.

What’s most amazing is how quickly all this scuttlebutt is forgotten as soon as the band blasts into its first number. Because they really are as hot as ever, and it’s hard to believe that anyone who does the do as well as Peter does would be so disenchanted with doing it at all. c After all, this is Detroit — a J. Geils § stronghold, which is why they did their £ live album here and why they’re taping 3 here again tonight — and this crowd will o eat anything out of the palm of Wolfs hand any old time.

Or will it? Reaction is good, but not much better than there was for Mountain, the band which preceded J. Geils. About halfway through the set, they juke On into “Detroit Breakdown” and Wolf is at the very lip of the stage, down on his knees pounding away at the carpet, and the natives are barely restless.

Magic Dick finally breaks it wide open with “Whammer Jammer,” the old standby. Now they’re rushing the stage, the band responds with some spiffier choreography, and it really ain’t nothin’ but a house party from there on out. Young girls are crawling over the heads of the people pressed in front of them so they can get up on the stage. Once there, they do a complete Jekyll and Hyde, turning all calm and composed as the roadies lead them off. They walk down the stairs at the back of the stage, and then charge back towards the front to go through the whole routine again.

The encore is A1 Green’s “Love and Happiness” followed by (of course, of course) “Give It To Me,” stretched out to an unspeakable length by a thoroughly deflating conga exchange in the middle. But five minutes later the crowd is still screaming for more, and so there’s a second two-song encore. They made it — the J: Geils Band is back on top.

Or is it? This was the first time I’d seen them, and after so many ersatz theatrical presentations held together by perfunctory electric music, I was knocked out to see a bona fide, redblooded rock and roll show. But a couple weeks later, discussing the concert over pizza, 16-year-old Matt just can’t stop raving about Mountain’s histrionics, Leslie West’s guitar blitzkrieg and Corky Laing’s flaming drumsticks. And what of J. Qeils? “Nothing much,” Matt declares. “Same old same old.”