San Francisco got most of the attention, but if there is one city that has been most consistent at producing fine rock & roll bands, it must be Los Angeles. The Byrds, Love, the Doors, Clear Light–each in its own way the cream of the renaissance, each reflective in a special fashion of a highly refined understanding of music both as sound and sensibility. Some of them were atrocious outside the studio, but all of them used that studio with an assurance more "organic" bands north and east never quite learned, and no matter how much they dabbled in the artsy inflations of the period none of them ever lost their instincts as American adolescents and jive jammers.

Crabby Appleton are a vibrant young group that comes straight from the L.A. tradition without sounding that much like any of their predecessors in the town, and seem to have picked up all the strengths of those forebears with amazing rapidity, without falling into any of their mannered cul-desacs. Both their first album and Rotten to the Core have brilliant, biting productions, arrangements and studio expertise I'm tempted to call perfect, and yet they never succumb to artificiality or gimmickry.

The reason for that is that Crabby Appleton, for all their professionalism, are American kids first and musicians second. All their knowledge and technique are subjected to the purpose of expressing their feelings as part of Southern California youth culture with a minimum of pretension. They've been influenced by the Everly Brothers, the mid-Sixties British sound, a bit of psychedelia and recently the Band, the Dead and Neil Young, but it comes out sounding totally original, personal without being mawkish, at precisely that point where all the cliches about cruising for burgers apply with indigenous authenticity.

The force driving all this–writing, singing and playing lead guitar–is Mike Fennelly. He's the one in the middle holding the flower in the picture on the back, and he's got all the authority of a John Fogerty, if Fogerty came from the suburbs and wasn't afraid to express those roots by crooning not of swamps but of "Volkswagen Sandy, she's my Mustang Sally/Lives way out in San Fernando Valley/Gonna drive my hot rod right/Up her alley!" Or ingenuous enough to pen lines like: "Cops running naked through a field of grass/Bustin' each other, and they're covered with hash/Lookin' for me, but I was gone in a flash/Lookin' for love ..."

But maybe that very ingenuousness is what keeps this group so cohesive, so blessedly free of ego conflicts. Because if there is one thing this album is, it's tight. Tight enough to take some of the most influential styles around today, and do their progenitors one better. "Paper to Write On" is everything the Dead ever tried to do with country music, and Fennelly can sing, too. "Makes No Difference" is a mournful ballad with all the majesty of the Band at their best, and the passion of Neil Young but none of his pained self-indulgence. And "Smokin' in the Morning" takes off on a great Leon Russellish piano boogie, but soars and lopes with a youthful fervor and joy that grey eminence hasn't displayed lately.

The best of Crabby Appleton, though, lies in those songs where any possible influences have been digested and their very own crisp, pungent sound hits with unmistakable impact. "Lucy" is one of the classic singles of the age a masterpiece of deep bass rumblings and high wailing vocal as searing as the Rascals used to be. Their new single is "Tomorrow's a New Day," which doesn't have quite as much raw power but is faster and flashier and as certain hit material as their initial "Go Back." Ditto "It's So Hard" and "You Make Me Hot"–passion and humor, unpredictable rhythms that are jangly one minute and thunderous the next, fuzz and steel guitars and tasty keyboards midway between Penniman and jazz, youth and freedom and consistent invention that shows no sign of letting up and promises that each successive album will have evolved as surely into new surprises as this one has from their first. This, folks, is what it's all about. (RS 98)

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