O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Arthur Lee Takes Charge of Love Fest

In 1967, Love’s “Seven and Seven Is” was almost more than a transistor radio could contain. It still stands as one of the greatest two minutes, 15 seconds of relentless, rampaging rock ever recorded, and back then it was all a three-inch speaker could do just to keep from melting when it came on.

And those lyrics that Love leader Arthur Lee was singing! Even in those psychedelic-glazed times, they were a bit beyond the pale:

If I don’t start crying it’s because that I have got no eyes .

My Bible’s in the fireplace and my dog lies hypnotized . . .

Colorful though that was, any reading up on the man could lead one to believe that such conditions simply were business as usual around the Lee household.

Underrated then and scarcely accorded its due since, Lee’s music was some of the most adventurous of that adventurous era, bursting with ideas, energy and feeling. But those were trippy times, and by most accounts, Lee’s was one of those minds that went tripping and never came back.

As recently as last year, during a Coach House appearance, Lee appeared to be still on the casualty list, delivering a woozy, incoherent set that could scarcely even be regarded as a performance, being more the sort of monologue bartenders have to listen to all day.

Returning to the club Sunday on a bill where he again was paired (as he had been last year) with fellow ‘60s Sunset Strip kings Spirit, Lee was remarkably changed.

That is not to say that he wasn’t ambling though the audience early in the evening, tumbler in hand, his breath a genuine fire hazard.

And, yes, between songs in his set, his rambling discourses still made him seem like Soupy Sales on acid--clowning, nearly stumbling, alternately joking with the audience and petulantly complaining that they didn’t understand him. When one person in the audience grew impatient during a Lee digression on what toys he’d had as a child, the singer remonstrated: “This is your history, fool!”

But when he sang, backed by a spunky young band, Lee was downright majestic. One might almost suspect him of being the Frank Fontaine of his generation: On Jackie Gleason’s ‘60s TV variety show Fontaine played Crazy Guggenheim, a dufus tongue-tied drunkard who would turn around and sing like an angel.

Throughout the hourlong show Lee gave the impression that at any instant he could as easily land on his keister as on the right note. But that only added an edgy immediacy to the performance, and he indeed did land on the right notes with a voice that alternately roared like a rock wildcat and soared heavenward.

In a black cowboy shirt and blue jeans, he opened the show with high stakes, kicking off with the flamenco-tinged, nakedly emotional 1967 hit “Alone Again Or.”

Only one of the set’s 13 songs--the catchy punk-velocity new “Girl on Fire”--was less than 20 years old, but there was no hint of nostalgia. A young quartet from Los Angeles called Baby Lemonade backed Lee and played with a raucous passion, though it was sufficiently reined-in to navigate the varied byways of Lee’s muse.

We got the lysergic haze of “Orange Skies,” the romanticism of “Andmoreagain,” an especially rampaging “Seven and Seven Is” and Lee’s moody song from 1966 about heroin addiction, “Signed D.C.” For good measure, Love’s pummeling rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “My Little Red Book” also was thrown in.

Though the group clearly was devoted to Lee’s music, they seemed to have less patience for the man himself, looking bored and loudly tuning during his digressions. When Lee began exchanging expletives with yet another member of the audience, the band cut him short by plunging into a blistering version of “Your Mind and We Belong Together.” Lee joined in, channeling his anger into a raging vocal.

The edge that Lee’s set had was nearly missing from Spirit’s--a shame, because at some points in its performance Spirit recaptured some aspects of its own ‘60s glory. That glory had been something to behold.

Led by Randy California’s questing, soulful guitar work (by the time he was 18, California had melded such disparate influences as Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery into a remarkably original and potent guitar style), the quintet had freely mixed rock, jazz and other sources in vivid and vital musical excursions.

Since the early ‘70s, Spirit has been pretty much California’s show, with only drummer Ed Cassidy (California’s bald-pated stepfather) remaining on the drums. Now 71, Cassidy is most likely the oldest musician in rock, and he’s still a kick, keeping a powerful beat while spicing the band’s jams with unexpected accents.

Often over the past two decades, California (not unlike Lee) seemed to be performing in a murk of his own. But Sunday’s set was one of his most focused in years as he, Cassidy and keyboard player Scott Monahan (who also held down the bass line and harmony vocals) hit a tight groove, from which California sometimes took some moderately questing solos.

The shortcomings were that the material was mostly songs that Spirit has been running into the ground for years--including “Fresh Garbage,” “Mr. Skin,” “Nature’s Way” and Hendrix’s “Red House”--and the jams lacked much element of the unexpected.