Capricorn has made its smartest move in the Wet Willie band's young career by putting the group on a stage in front of an audience and turning the doggone tape machines on. The band's first live album—long overdue—is the truest representation yet of what Wet Willie really sounds like; it will do nothing to dissuade those who already know the group, and it will likely win Wet Willie a whole new group of converts.

A "wet willie," by the way, is the regional reference to the old high-school trick of dousing one's finger in one's mouth and inserting it into the ear of one's companion: Lead singer Jimmy Hall calls the band's material "greasy music for your ear," and that's as accurate as he needs to get. Wet Willie plays what is rapidly becoming Southern club music—visceral, blues-influenced - but - not- dominated, glove-tight and raunchy stuff upon which the burgeoning Southeastern rock night club business is virtually predicated. What distinguishes Wet Willie from the spate of Southern bands now scrambling for record contracts is that club music handled wrongly can deteriorate into secondary importance, supporting the party spirit instead of generating it. Wet Willie never allows that to happen: It's a party all right, but by God, it's Wet Willie's party.

The group has nothing profound to say lyrically: no cosmic revelation, no messages of importance for their Brothersn-Sisters. They aren't angry at anything, or even a little bit depressed. Wet Willie feels good, and when it is playing well—as it was when this set was recorded at the Warehouse in New Orleans—it projects a type of regionalism that embraces rather than excludes a sort of rock & roll Southern hospitality. The style is down-home and quite, quite powerful, drawing as it does from an unlikely fusion of Baptist choir, local punk band and symphony orchestra experiences. Wet Willie is intrinsically a live band as well; two Capricorn albums have put down the notes, all right, but haven't come close to defining the group's stimulation and exuberance at having somebody to play for. The band's relationship to its audience is crucial in understanding it, much as it was for the early Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and this is why Drippin' Wet is such an important album for them—not because it presents applause and reaction, but because the very existence of an audience is making the band play as hard as it can.

The set consists of several regional covers (including a frenzied reading of Arthur Crudup's "It's All Right" and a pounding version of Taj Mahal's "She Caught the Katie") and some original material. Wet Willie uses Otis Redding's too-much-ignored "Shout Bamalama" as its signature, racing a little too fast with it here but still keeping the song's bottled excitement under control. The classic boogie woogie tune "No Good Woman Blues" is augmented with solid harp work by Hall and Leon Russell's "I'd Rather Be Blind" hints at the high harmonies commanded by bassist Jack Hall and keyboard man John Anthony.

But it is two longer tunes, both original, that show more than anything else what Wet Willie's all about. "Red Hot Chicken," an instrumental tribute to Macon's Le Carrousel Restaurant, opens with a two-bar guitar welcome, then a rather trite rhythm line led by Hall on bass. When this gives way to Anthony on piano, though, the tune is on its own, gradually building into an absolutely infectious Dixie-Latin percussion section by drummer Lewis Ross. I have not seen the audience that could sit still for "Red Hot Chicken," and this is the definitive recorded version. "Macon Hambone Blues" is structured around the slow blues conventions: a showoff piece for guitarist Ricky Hirsch complete with piano trilling, the loping bass line, etc. The band takes this charge and plays with it for a while, then picks it up and piles on, louder and more excitedly, until Hall screams out the terrific final verse and ten minutes have gone by without your knowing it.

Wet Willie doesn't promise anything but a good time, and the album is loose in a distinctively Southern way. Wet Willie proves, though, that there is no reason to equate "looseness" with sloppiness. They are probably the finest Southern club band (and that shouldn't suggest a copy band) around; if you've seen them you know what I mean, but if this record doesn't get you off your ass you are clearly three days dead, and what are you doing reading a magazine? (RS 136)

TOM DUPREE