The sound quality (converted from mp3) isn't much — one notch below a good soundboard recording — but I was struck once again by what a great rock and roll voice lead singer Peppi Marchello has: like Burton Cummings of the Guess Who, if Cummings had been an angry, disillusioned Italian street punk from New York, rather than a fey Canadian popster.
Peppi, like John Lennon in his early years, just puts it out there, and throat shredding be damned. Peppi can howl and yowl like the best rockabilly front man — the Stray Cats would have killed for this voice — then roar with defiance at one of his many perceived injustices (union busting bosses and record company executives are his favorite targets).
Sadly, the Good Rats are now, and have been for years, Peppi as the only original member, often with his sons as backing musicians. The twin guitar attack and early synergy are gone, and Peppi seems bitter at his band's many decades of non stardom.
Having said that, aging gracefully is not in the rock and roll job description. Someone better tell Keith Richards.
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