Live. Homebelly Groove

Spin Doctors: “Live. Homebelly Groove” (Epic)

There’s a rather romantic and uninformed rumour doing the rounds that the Spin Doctors have no image. Be wary of such simplified balderdash. Any band who look and sound so much like a replica of the heavy funk rock of the hungover and complacent early Seventies have to be treated with the utmost suspicion.The truth is that even first time round this kind of music was cynically out of time. In fact it has never had anything to do with any real time except that of the collective psyche of a group of music business magnates.

If you think this is to overstate things then ask yourselves how familiar you are with the real innovators of funk-rock, like Sly and the Family Stone, who in a racially different context created songs that did pack a political punch and vibrancy.

Or, are you, for example, familiar with the late Eighties hard funk band Defunct who ploughed the same area as Spin Doctors but without the latter’s meandering and loose indulgence. Why are the Spin Doctors so big when Defunct are almost unknown? Could it be because Defunct are a Black/Brown/Black band whereas Spin Doctors are predominantly pale-skinned?

The lie to which early ‘Seventies rock and the Spin Doctors once more give credence is that human beings are still kind of alright and don’t need to change their perspective all that much. (Whereas, the truth is that humans need a complete overhauling.) Consequently, the music compliments rather than counterpoints, it fits in comfortably with the scheme of things rather than jarring against the nerves and striking oppositional poses and noises.

Not even the inclusion of a couple of the singles ‘What Time Is It?’ and the inescapably misogynistic ‘Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong’, nor the couple of tracks that do attempt to do something different and relevant such as ‘Refrigerator Car’ and ‘Yo Mama’s A Pajama’ can convince me that Homebelly Groove and its creators are anything more than an unhealthy form of escapism in a time which more than any other calls for something more challenging than the Spin Doctors have offered so far.

• Patrick Brennan