Up to No Good | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 1990 | |||
Studio | 16th Avenue Sound and Emerald Studios (Nashville, TN); The Bennett House and The Castle (Franklin, TN). | |||
Genre | Rock, hard rock | |||
Length | 43:23 | |||
Label | MCA | |||
Producer | Peter Wolf, Robert White Johnson, Taylor Rhodes | |||
Peter Wolf chronology | ||||
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Up to No Good is the third solo album by the American musician Peter Wolf, released in 1990 on MCA Records. [1] [2]
The album was produced by Wolf, Robert White Johnson, and Taylor Rhodes. [3] "Never Let It Go" is about the car crash that killed Wolf's high school girlfriend. [4]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
Calgary Herald | C− [5] |
Robert Christgau | [6] |
Los Angeles Times | [2] |
Ottawa Citizen | [7] |
(The New) Rolling Stone Album Guide | [8] |
The Calgary Herald missed "the juvenile appeal that Wolf lucked into just before he and his J. Geils Band buddies went their separate ways." [5] The Toronto Star wrote that "it's a charming record, a lively and knowledgeable tome that finds its ground somewhere between the Detroit and Philadelphia schools of soul, while standing firm on a harder rock footing." [9]
The Ottawa Citizen labeled some of the songs "classic primal funk with a conscience." [7] The Globe and Mail dismissed the album as "just one more attempt to capitalize on the appealing, but somewhat limited, rockaboogie sound Geils and company milked throughout the seventies." [10]
All songs written by Peter Wolf, Taylor Rhodes and Robert White Johnson, unless noted otherwise.
Technical personnel
Year | Chart | Position |
---|---|---|
1990 | The Billboard 200 [11] | 111 |
The J. Geils Band was an American rock band formed in 1967, in Worcester, Massachusetts, under the leadership of guitarist John "J." Geils. The original band members included vocalist Peter Wolf, harmonica and saxophone player Richard "Magic Dick" Salwitz, drummer Stephen Bladd, vocalist/keyboardist Seth Justman, and bassist Danny Klein. Wolf and Justman served as principal songwriters. The band played R&B-influenced blues rock during the 1970s and soon achieved commercial success before moving toward a more mainstream radio-friendly sound in the early 1980s, which brought the band to its commercial peak. They performed a mix of cover songs of classic blues and R&B songs, along with original compositions written primarily by Wolf and Justman, as well as some group compositions written under the pseudonymous name Juke Joint Jimmy, representing compositions credited to the entire band as a whole. After Wolf left the band in 1983 to pursue a solo career, the band released one more album in 1984 with Justman on lead vocals, before breaking up in 1985. Beginning in 1999, the band had several reunions prior to the death of its namesake, J. Geils, on April 11, 2017.
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