Most of us are familiar with the J. Geils Band from their radio hits in the early 80’s, including: “Love Stinks” (which reached #38 in 1980), “Freeze-Frame” (which reached #4 in the Billboard Top 200 in 1981), and “Centerfold” (which reached #1 in the United States in early 1982). What you may not know is that the band got its start in WAY back in 1968, in Worcester, Massachusetts, under the leadership of guitarist John “J.” Geils and was originally more a blues/rock band.  That original band included vocalist Peter Wolf, harmonica player Richard “Magic Dick” Salwitz, drummer Stephen Bladd, vocalist/keyboardist Seth Justman and bassist Danny Klein, with Wolf and Justman serving as principal songwriters.  In the early 70’s the band played R&B-influenced blues rock but did not achieve commercial success until the early 80’s when it producing more “mainstream and radio-friendly” songs. Which was better? Hard to say; without the commercial success of the later songs, would anyone outside of New England remember these guys? At least they become popular enough that someone considered saving this old video for you to see today!

We managed to find a very early video of the band from 1972, when they performed at the Orpheum Theater. Here’s more how that video came about from the YouTube description:

The Most Rockin J Geils Band concert at Boston’s Orpheum Theater – 3 Sony AVC 3200 B&W cameras and an SEG 1 – terrible technology but driving music – They asked George Wardwell if we could record this – Charles Phillips, Andrika Donovan operated cameras and I switched. Peter Gowan and Barry Ober engineered sound – there’s a one inch master somewhere, but this clip is from the 1/2″ transfered by video guru Paul Beck – levels are wild, someday we’ll edit & fix – but 4 now, watch Peter pummel Magic Dick – this rocks!

Once again, with videos this old, the quality’s not great, but you do get a great sense of what The J. Geils Band was like in person! Here they are, in 1972 singing “Floyd’s Hotel” and “Hard Driving Man.” The latter is from their self-titled first album, the former was from their second album, The Morning After.

For comparison, we have a LIVE performance from 1980 of the band performing “Love Stinks” at something called Pink Pop.