Guess Who - Shakin' All Over / Hey Ho / It's Time (Reissue) (1965-66/2003)

MetalBefore the Guess Who became one of the top album rock acts of the '70s, they were a darn good British Invasion-influenced garage band. This set features the three records they made in the mid-'60s: Shakin' All Over, Hey Ho (What You Do to Me), and It's Time for the small Canadian label Quality. Most of the songs on the set are Beatles-inspired but not derivative. Chad Allan and Randy Bachman wrote strong melodies, and the band usually sounds inspired and full of verve. They would have been a fun band to see live, sure to have the kids on the dancefloor. Apart from the Beatles, the band jumps around, hitting all kinds of sounds like rockabilly ("Tuff E Nuff"), surf ("Made in England"), blue-eyed soul ("Hey Ho," "Hurting Each Other"), Motown ("Could This Be Love"), and pop balladry ("Turn Around and Walk Away"). Their version of "Shakin' All Over" is just as good as Johnny Kidd's original, by the way. The third album, It's Time, is the most successful as the band welcomed Burton Cummings into the band and toughened up their sound considerably, drawing more from garage rock than the British Invasion. Cummings' voice adds a new element of a commanding vocal presence on barnburning rockers like "Alright" and "Gonna Search" and moody ballads like "Seven Long Years" and "Clock on the Wall." Bachman wrote some great songs for the record too like the chiming folk-rocker "And She's Mine" and the wonderfully aching "One Day." This record alone makes the set worth purchasing for garage rock aficionados. That you can get all three records together makes it even better. It is a toss up between this and Sundazed's great Shakin' All Over collection. That one probably wins out due to the presence of two unreleased tracks and their fine cover of Buffalo Springfield's "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong." Still, you can't go wrong with either.