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Editorial Reviews

Being funny ain't easy but it's damn near impossible to be funny while you're rocking. Acts that can tell a joke while they rock the house always get the shaft, just like how comedians rarely take home the Oscar -- and if they happen to do both well, they're pegged as novelty act, as if the success just happened to be a fluke, and if the Coasters, certainly the first and almost undeniably the best funny rock & roll band ever, proved anything, it's that they were no fluke. They racked up hit after hit in their peak in the late '50s and early '60, hits that defined the era and influenced countless musicians, not just paving way for humor in music, à la Frank Zappa, but illustrating just how much fun it is to play rock & roll. Just looking at Coasters covers speaks to their widespread impact: the Beatles played "Young Blood" and "Three Cool Cats" as they sweated away in the Cavern Club, the Searchers had a hit with "Poison Ivy," the Move mimicked "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," but the group's impact reached beyond the British Invasion, too, as the New York Dolls tapped into the furious energy for a blistering "Bad Detective" and, most improbably of all, echoes of the Coasters' "Girls Girls Girls" can be heard in the Beastie Boys' doo wop pastiche "Girls" -- perhaps not a direct connection, as it's hard to imagine the Beasties hauling out an old Coasters LP, but that just speaks to how pervasive their influence was: their aftershocks were felt miles from the epicenter.

That epicenter is documented on Rhino Handmade's There's a Riot Goin' On: The Coasters on Atco, a four-disc box set that contains all the key recordings from the group's peak (including sides by the Robins) and noteworthy tracks from the '60s, plus a disc's worth of rarities. If that title carries a threat of violence seemingly atypical for the guys who sang "Yakety Yak" and "Charlie Brown," it's not wrong either, as the Coasters were a rock & roll band with all the excitement and danger that implies. Sure, they were a vocal harmony group and they could conceivably be labeled as doo wop, but like all true greats, the Coasters don't quite sound like anybody else. They had close relations: their roots reached back to the Clovers, as the group's earliest incarnation as the Robins had a similarly loose interplay; they had cousins in fellow Atlantic R&B act the Drifters in how they livened up those very traditions into rock & roll; and their humor flowed like the Cadillacs (whose lead singer, Earl "Speedo" Carroll, later joined the Coasters), but the Coasters were far from a group harmonizing on a street corner. They were rough and tumble, they rocked and rolled, they sounded a bit like the adults they were, even when they sang to teachers. Like all greats -- and the Coasters are surely one of the great American bands, as this set proves -- the Coasters defied all easy labels and transcended categories, standing as something utterly unique, and this originality is what keeps their music fresh even as it uncannily captures the feeling of early rock & roll.

Indeed, many of the Coasters' biggest hits are about rebellion -- it's just that their rebellion is delivered with a smile and a wink, making things seem innocuous when they're often rallying cries. The message may be delivered with a nudge, but the music really rocks -- it's raucous, joyous, a celebration driven by the group's interplay and fueled by a set of remarkable songs, almost all written, produced, and arranged by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. In a way the Coasters were a group in the truest sense: it was a collective where the concept was greater than the individual members. Certainly, the never-ending permutations of the Coasters that popped up in the '60s and beyond -- some featuring no original members -- suggests that what the band was about was more important than who the band was, but there nevertheless was a golden age, captured on this set, where the singers (headed by Carl Gardner and Billy Guy, who were initially joined by Bobby Nunn and Leon Hughes, who were later replaced by Will "Dub" Jones and Cornell Gunter, with the latter being replaced by Carroll in 1962) blended with the backing musicians (including King Curtis playing riotous sax, guitarist Adolph Jacobs, and on some sessions, guitarist Barney Kessell) and Leiber & Stoller, all of which created the spirit of the band. Unlike the Drifters, the band had no breakout stars, not even when each of the Coasters had a moment in the spotlight on their 1960 sophomore effort, One by One, whose very title alludes to the attempt to make each of the members shine on their own. It was a pleasant collection of standards, but the appeal of the Coasters was always to hear the group jostle and joust, to spar, support, and spur each other on. That's what gave them some grit, and why it's hard to call them doo wop, as they were looser, wilder, more rock & roll than any doo wop group. Their drums beat hard, their guitars growled, and Billy Guy leaned into notes so hard, he bent them blue. It was music that sounded alive, even a bit dangerous, and that danger gave them a teen appeal Leiber & Stoller exploited, giving them such adolescent anthems as "Charlie Brown" and "Yakety Yak." Leiber & Stoller nailed this emerging teenage culture, capturing the vernacular and spinning tall tales out of TV movies ("Along Came Jones"). No wonder the Coasters signified early rock & roll in Happy Days and American Grafitti: these are songs about contemporary sounds, so they captured the time. But listening to the Coasters recordings en masse -- from the early Robins sides to the late '60s, with a disc of rarities added on -- shows why the Coasters shouldn't be dismissed as easy nostalgia: they captured what America was in the '50s and '60s.

The Coasters did sing to teenagers, but just like with Chuck Berry, there is no sense of pandering to their songs, but more importantly, the other songs show how the group arose from black culture. Set aside these teenage tunes and there are songs about gambling, cell-block riots, booze -- they even had a song called "Hey Sexy" long before such phrases were spoken in polite company. They were gaudy and goofy but grounded in some semblance of reality that gave them wider appeal at the time and make the records stand the test of time. Sure, they're dated but they're not antiquated: like the greatest recorded music, it's still electric, thrilling, and vital. Some might think that four discs of the Coasters might be too much -- then again, nobody is going to start listening to the Coasters on a set this size (a disc of the classics would be better). But the Coasters deserve a set this size, a set that's double the length of 50 Coastin' Classics and somehow twice as impressive, probably because it paints a fuller story, as the three main discs give the narrative of their career, slowing only when the second disc dips into standards, but the third disc chronicling such latter-day classics as "Shoppin' for Clothes," "Bad Blood," "Bad Detective," and "Saturday Night Fish Fry" is surprisingly strong, holding up to that first disc, which is wild, wooly fun. After those three discs are absorbed, that fourth filled with alternate takes is a treat to show that it took considerable work and skill to make records that sound so easy and fine. Their genius wasn't accidental; it was carefully planned, and on this great set, the Coasters shine in all their glory, standing as one of the indisputable greats of early rock & roll, standing alongside Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Elvis Presley himself as the core architects of rock & roll. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

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