Philadelphia has a lot to answer for. Sure, Philly's given us the Liberty Bell and the world's finest cheese steaks, but it's also the only city on earth to boast a gigantic statue of Sylvester Stallone on government property. Worse yet, after a glorious two-decade reign as the East Coast capital of soul music, Philly has produced little in the way of lasting musical value. Between 1979 and 1989, the City of Brotherly Love went from being the city of Gamble and Huff to the home of the Hooters, Cinderella and Britny Fox. Sure, Philly had Schooly D to call its own, but even hard-edged raps like "Smoke Some Kill" couldn't make up for the wretched presence of Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers.

It didn't look a whole lot better for Philly in the early Nineties, when the interminable ululations of Boyz II Men seemed to be the city's only viable export. There have been glimmers of hope during the past five years, however; since 1995, the Roots have done much to reconnect hip-hop with the city's soul and funk foundation. And now there's another band of soul warriors who are making the Philly streets safe again for real music. They call themselves the Delta 72, brothers and sisters, and they definitely mean business.

"There's a million unsung soul heroes from Philadelphia, like Fantastic Johnny C or Dyke and the Blazers," says Gregg Foreman, the Delta 72's voluminously sideburned vocalist and guitarist. "All those guys just tore it up, and their music has become the fuel for our fire." It's a fire that burns brightly all the way through 000 (pronounced "Triple-Zero"), the quartet's roof-raising new record for Touch and Go. Take the funky breakdowns of early-Seventies James Brown, the skull-splitting guitar attack of the early Stooges, and the clavinets-and-claret decadence of It's Only Rock and Roll-era Stones, and you'll get a general idea of where tracks like "Are You Ready?", "Incident @ 23rd" and "Great Paper Chase No. 1" are coming from. Or, as "I Feel Fine" aptly puts it, "If you wanna get up, get up/If you wanna say yeah, say yeah."

"We like to call it 'punk-soul music,'" says Foreman of the Delta 72 sound. "It's definitely rock, but it's not blazing-guitar-solo music, or cock-rock, you know? We have such a love and affinity for soul music, and by the time the soul runs through you, it turns into something else. If Pete Townshend hadn't been listening to Booker T & the MGs, there'd be no early Who. And if there was no early Who, there'd be no MC5."

Formed in Washington, D.C., in 1995, the Delta 72 began life as a blues-based garage band not entirely dissimilar to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Their first two albums, 1996's The R&B of Membership and 1997's The Soul of a New Machine, offered their share of organ-driven catharses, and did an admirable job of capturing the band's astounding live energy, but offered little in the way of memorable songs. But several personnel changes (organist Mark Boyce, drummer Jason Kourkounis and bassist Bruse Russell Reckhan round out the lineup) and one move to Philadelphia later, the Delta 72 have finally coughed up a truly great record.

"The other records are fine," says Foreman, "but we're finally scratching the surface of what we want to do. We spent a long time learning the groove, and now we're trying to write songs on top of that groove. I love every song on the record; none of it's filler, and every single track has a funky breakdown in it. I think "I Feel Fine" could be a radio song -- it's way catchier than anything Matchbox 20 is doing!"

An ardent student of music history, Foreman is troubled by the current state of rock & roll. "Where is rock music, right now?" he laments. "I don't know if it exists, to tell you the truth. There's like four girls on MTV that look exactly like Britney Spears, and I can't tell 'em apart! They all have nice voices, and I'm sure they're all really sweet people, but nobody's going to be listening to those records in ten years. It'll be like what happened to Tiffany, you know?

"The only things happening that are at all like what we're doing are Beck or the Black Crowes. We're not campy like Beck, but we do have a sense of humor; and we're not hippie-retro like the Crowes, but we draw upon a lot of the same influences, like Humble Pie and the Stones. I'd love to tour with either of them; I think their audiences would definitely get where we're coming from."

The Delta 72 may record for an indie label, but, make no mistake about it, they're all about taking their music to as many people as possible. "I just don't want to end up like another Alex Chilton," Foreman says. "I don't want to want to be sixty years old, playing a small bar and doing Big Star songs for a few college kids. I want people to hear the music, and that's what it's about for me. I live it and I breathe it, and I don't know how to do anything else."

DAN EPSTEIN
(April 5, 2000)