Cactology: The Cactus Collection

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Cactus

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Cactus was formed in 1970 by ex-Vanilla Fudge members Tim Bogert on bass and Carmine Appice on drums. Their original idea was to form a supergroup in the vein of Cream or Led Zeppelin. The group was supposed to be rounded out by Jeff Beck on guitar and Rod Stewart on vocals. The idea was put on ice after Beck was sidelined indefinitely as the result of a wreck and Rod Stewart elected to join the Faces with fellow Beck Group band mate Ronnie Wood. Instead Bogert and Appice tabbed Jim McCarty ex-Detroit Wheel and Buddy Miles Express guitarist to handle the frets. Another musician with Detroit ties Rusty Day ex-Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes handled vocals and harmonica. This line up remained intact until their 4th album, the part studio part live "'Ot 'N' Sweaty". This release featured Werner Fritzchings who replaced McCarty on guitar, Peter French ex-Atomic Rooster who replaced Day on vocals and Duane Hitchings who joined the band on keyboards. The band broke up after this release when Bogart and Appice finally hooked up with Jeff Beck for the "Beck Bogert and Appice." album (not represented here). The bands trademark sound was a devastating form of power boogie. Tim Bogert's bass playing remains the highlight of this group. His playing eventually became so complex it was like another lead instrument hastening Jim McCarty's departure. The remastered anthology contains two rarities, the unissued studio track "Rumblin' Man" and an unissued live version of their best known track, a cover of Mose Allison's "Parchman Farm" (also included here in its studio version). Other notable tracks include a sledgehammer covers of Howlin' Wolf's "Evil" and Willie Dixon's "You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover", and their own tunes like "One Way Or Another" and "Restrictions". I would actually rate this 4.5 due to the rarities but I was disappointed that two songs in particular were not included. The first track "Mean Night In Cleveland" is an autobiographical song about their pot smoking exploits on a plane to Cleveland (they were subsequently arrested when the plane landed). The other track is the live cut "Bedroom Mazurka" from the rare "Mar Y Sol" album which contained live tracks from that festival by the various artists who appeared there. The band at its peak reportedly were able to blow Ten Years After off the stage. If you like seventies era rock this is a rare treasure as all four of their original albums are out of print domestically. The liner notes like in most Rhino releases are also very informative. Power boogie indeed!

Question: What do you get when - after he's God-fool enough to want to hook up with one of the all-time calcified-spine rhythm sections of rock - Jeff Beck leaves said rhythm section in the lurch after a near-fatal automobile accident? Answer: You get a very different Cactus than the one bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice had in mind in the first place. (They first dreamed up the name after Beck invited the erstwhile Vanilla Fudge rhythm section to form a new band with him - and with Rod Stewart, at least until money differences supposedly split the two, shoving Stewart toward joining buddy Ron Wood in what was left of the original Small Faces.)

Exit Stewart and Beck, enter Rusty Day (vocals, harmonica) and former Detroit Wheel Jim McCarty (ok, quick - how many people who were there heard the name and first thought the Yardbirds' drummer of the same name had switched instruments) on guitar. And, whatever Cactus might have been in the planning turned out very different in the actuality. I can remember people describing the band as something along the line of Led Zeppelin on benzedrine, and it's not exactly inaccurate, considering Zeppelin trap-smasher John Bonham owed practically every degree of his sound and attack to Appice's thunderboomer style. Cactus was also as riff-happy as the early Zeppelin, but they lacked the British foursome's well-enough developed sense of dynamics. Cactus was about as subtle as a pileup on the New Jersey Turnpike and proud of it, which works if you have something deeper than just your basic bloozaboogie on which to stand - and they didn't.

Not all of it was exactly bad, but this lot's reputation for obstreperousness (not to mention one of the most forgettable lead singers of their time, though Day was an interesting enough harmonica blower occasionally) isn't entirely unjustified. Call them the Dave Kingmans of early-1970s hard rock - a textbook exercise in using power without larger purpose, except that Dave Kingman hit an awful lot more home runs than Cactus hit consistent recordings. ("Restrictions" was steadiest, most interesting, and least obstreperous of the original lineup's regulation-issue albums, not to mention the one Cactus album whose sound suggested something of what the band might have been had the original game plan with Stewart and Beck survived; it would be no shame if that album were to be reissued.)

This anthology, though, is workable enough for anyone who just has to have a sampling of Cactus in the home library. And, at least, it was sensible enough to include their most cheerfully berserk track, their rubber-room-insane version of "Parchman Farm," the Mose Allison song which had already been beaten practically to death - Cactus, effectively, puts the poor critter out of its misery, even if Jim McCarty is offering a pretty good reason as to why, when it came time to spin out that classic psychedelic-blues guitar lick that bridges "Devil With A Blue Dress" to "Good Golly Miss Molly" on that unforgettable Detroit Wheels single, the job was handed off to uncredited guest slinger Mike Bloomfield. McCarty didn't lack chops, but that is practically all his playing tells you. In due enough course, Day and McCarty bailed out and Bogert and Appice sallied forth for a little more. They recruited singer Pete French, guitarist Werner Fritzschings, and keyboard ace Duane Hitchings, and cranked out "'Ot and Sweaty," half live (and pretty snappy at that; this lineup wasn't even half as pretentious as their predecessor lineup and showed some surprising sensibilities) and half in the studio (comparatively lame, but we're not exactly talking about Led Zeppelin, here).

Then, Bogert and Appice bolted for an at-long-last union with Jeff Beck which ended up producing a fair amount of hype and re-anticipation. It also produced exactly the kind of album you would expect from a union triggered, in the first place, by the guitarist being impressed with the rhythm section on the absolute bottom of Vanilla Fudge's barrel (the legend had it that Beck got wise to Bogert and Appice while listening to "Near the Beginning"). The less said, the better, and even Jeff Beck knows it. French, Fritzschings and Hitchings, meanwhile, were actually fool enough to keep Cactus going anyway. The so-called New Cactus Band cut one album of the same name, which made an excellent Frisbee but that was about the extent of it. I still can't remember which happened first, the album hitting the cutout bins or the New Cactus Band drying up and blowing away forever.