Graded on a Curve:
Illinois Speed Press,
The Illinois Speed Press

Chicago’s Illinois Speed Press’ dual guitar attack has been said to have inspired Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington to form Lynyrd Skynyrd, and if true (I’ve read like five books on Skynyrd and never heard of ‘em) it’s their only lasting legacy.

Like me you’ve probably never heard of them unless you made the Midwest festival circuit at the tail end of the sixties, caught ‘em at the Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood (where they played regularly) or just happened to be watching the tube the time they played American Bandstand, which is too bad because on their 1969 eponymous debut they do a whole lot of top-notch axe jousting. They had a wild, dissonant streak too—the album’s opening track is proto-noise rock that probably led at least a few first-time listeners to take a ball-peen hammer to the platter.

When the Illinois Speed Express is remembered at all it’s because guitarist/vocalist and co-founder Paul Cotton stepped out of the band and into Jim Messina’s shoes in Poco in 1970, which I can’t help but think of as a classic case of downward mobility. But it made sense because by then Illinois Speed Express had gone the country rock route with 1970’s Duet, joining the legion of enlistees in the Sweetheart of the Rodeo revolution. Which was simple enough—you didn’t have to sign any enlistment papers, just trade in your paisley shirt and Beatles boots for a fringed buckskin jacket like the one David Crosby liked to ego around in and learn how to play pedal steel guitar. God those were awful times.

But on The Illinois Speed Press you won’t hear much country—just blues-based, R&B-tinged, heavy on the twin-guitar rock. Despite their name I seriously doubt the boys in the band were speed freaks, and when it came to velocity it was an open question as to whether they could beat their compatriots from the Sucker State REO Speedwagon in the 100-yard dash, but what they had in spades was a pair of top-notch guitarists. Their songs may not have been all that, but Cotton and fellow lead guitarist/vocalist Kal David knew how to rip it up and tear it up, assisted by Mike Anthony on organ and piano, Rob Lewine on bass, and Fred Page on drums.

Illinois Speed Express start things off with “Overture,” which is light years ahead of its time. It’s all dissonant fuzz-guitar and shouting set against a Sterno-stagger rhythm, and almost certainly gave the head honchos at Columbia Records both second thoughts and angina. “Get in the Wind” is a fuzz guitar blowout whose only problem is its vocals, which tend towards the anonymous heavy, as do the ones on the hard blues number “Hard Luck Story,” which finds redemption in its top-of-the-heap stinging guitars. “Here Today” is a pretty pastoral number with chiming electric piano, but so fey I’m surprised the burlier numbers on the LP didn’t frog-march it into the alley behind the studio and give it a good thrashing.

“Pay the Price” is a Chicago blues with more barbed wire guitar, a nice Anthony organ line and lots of blues belting, screaming and random chatter to say nothing of a great fuzz guitar takeout, and it’ll give you a good idea why Columbia Records saw fit to sign Illinois Speed Press in the first place. “P.N.S. (When you Come Around)” features some amiable acoustic strum, vocals that bring the more excitable David Crosby to mind, and a guitar solo that makes me think Dicky Betts at his melodic best. And it devolves into a lengthy guitar workout that pits Cotton against David and ends with ‘em crossing the finish line nose to nose.

“Be a Woman” is a brighter number with plenty of tasty guitar fills and coupled vocals and is as close to pop as Illinois Speed Press gets—what I like best about it is Cotton and David sound all excited like—you get a great “Uh!” and a “Come on!” or two, to say nothing of some just-dropped-a brick-on-my-foot screaming. “Sky Song” is a slow acoustic guitar pastoral with annoyingly heartfelt Stephen Stills-school vocals, but despite its bucolic feel it’s not just another product of its back-to-the-country times but a dig at Corporation Man, whose success in life can be judged by his having “a key to the washroom.”

“Beauty” isn’t what I’d call a promising title, but the song’s a neo-psychedelic rave-up and roughly seventy percent fiery guitar duel, with some “aaaahs” thrown in to let you know there are real live human beings behind the six-string razors. I’ll put this up there with the high-voltage one-upmanship frenemies Stephen Stills and Neil Young loved/hated to engage in, and Cotton and David do more of it on closer “Free Ride,” which is not to be confused with the Edgar Winter Group’s pink-eyed classic of the same name, but is pretty damn kick-ass in its own right.

Posterity hasn’t been kind to Illinois Speed Press, but posterity is a merciless bitch and has bad taste to boot—if it found a place in its fickle heart for Attila (albeit for all the wrong reasons) why not a band that produced some truly ferocious twin guitar music? And if Cotton (who passed in 2021) took a step up (if MOR country rock is your thing) with Poco, David (who died in August 2022) had a far stranger fate.

After passing through a succession of eminently forgettable bands (The Fabulous Rhinestones?) he became the voice of Sonny Eclipse, a singing alien audio-animatron at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. I’m too decent a fellow to disparage a guy for accepting what I’m assuming was a well-paying gig, but I doubt it was in Sonny Eclipse’s job description to wow the kiddies with far-freaking-out axe solos. Which is too bad. Kids need fuzz guitar more than they do milk during their formative years. And Sonny Eclipse was just the alien audio-animatron to give it to them.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+

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