Lester Bangs tells the Black Oak Arkansas story in his own words:

"When Black Oak Arkansas' first album was released, I made the mistake of listening to it one time and writing a fulsomely imagistic review while under the influence of amphetamines, praising it to the skies. About two months later a very good friend called me up long distance and said: 'Well, Lester, I just bought the Black Oak Arkansas album on the basis of that review you wrote, and I just wanted to tell you that they suck!'"

Well, that irate friend wasn't me, but it might as well have been. The entire album contained only two good songs ("Hot 'N' Nasty" and "Singing The Blues"), one or two marginal cuts, and a pile of dreck.

With Keep The Faith, Black Oak Arkansas have turned right around and made an album that pretty well sums up rock and roll, strengths and weaknesses alike. The latter is mainly in the form of lead singer Jim Dandy, whose vocals have swelled so much in mannerism that the only way to describe them is to call them a sub-glottal bad Captain Beefheart imitation and leave it at that. On first hearing he is just absolutely, indescribably awful.

The strengths of this band win out, though, once the singing becomes just another component of the overall sound. Black Oak Arkansas have the distinction of being possibly the last punk psychedelic rock group in existence, exhibiting characteristics ranging from early Quicksilver to the legendary 13th Floor Elevators. The material on side two is particularly in this style, and the result is twenty minutes of excellent rock and roll. "White Headed Woman" and "We Live On Day To Day" kick things off at a high enough level to start with, but "Short Life Line" and "Don't Confuse What You Don't Know" are the highlights of Keep The Faith.

"Short Life Line" begins with a magnetic guitar line and doesn't let up for an instant, eventually leading into "Don't Confuse What You Don't Know." That song is a ringer for 1966 Quicksilver, complete with various permutations on the instantly-recognizable Am-F stock psychedelic rock & roll chord change, and a double-tempo fade-out to the song with Black Oak's guitarists yelling "Whoo! Whoo!" in the background. Whoo!

Side one of Keep The Faith is less impressive, probably because it emphasizes the monotony inherent to such music: it's all interchangeable noise. Still, none of the songs are bad, and "Fever In My Mind" and "The Big One's Still Coming" really cook.

The puzzling thing about this album is that it hasn't sold better. The reason, I suppose, lies in Keep The Faith's pseudo-religious, pseudo - sagacious, pretentious, hokey lyrics (unfortunately printed on the inside fold-out jacket). Well, that's still no reason anyone who listens to lyrics gets what he deserves. You should learn to screen out the bad ones and hear only the good ones. Especially when they're as moronic as they are here.

All in all, the second side of Keep The Faith has everything I love about the genre of loud, simplistic rock & roll: it's crass, brash, raunchy, energetic, and rocking. These guys are most definitely doing something right, and it'd be nice if they turned into a solid, consistent group. If Jim Dandy doesn't turn into a demented croaking bullfrog under the full moon one of these days, I just bet they will. (RS 109)

MIKE SAUNDERS