Don’t Stay Up Too Late.

The Four Tops, Keeper Of The Castle

File Between: Marvin Gaye and The O’Jays

Comments: Several of Motown’s signature Sixties acts had been set loose by this point, and were finding other homes less monolithically insistent on chart material. The Four Tops released this record (one of two they made this year) on Dunhill, a subsidiary of ABC, which might indicate a move towards easy listening (or “adult contemporary,” in later trade lingo), but which sounds more or less just like Philly-lite. It’s not just a hit machine, either: the one hit from the record, “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)” isn’t necessarily a stronger cut than several others. The late Levi Stubbs is in fine form here, though he doesn’t have anything as meaty as a Holland-Dozier-Holland song to sink his teeth into (or as worthy a soundscaping as the Funk Brothers with Norman Whitfield on the knobs), in some ways his performances come through more clearly and righteously when the rest of the elements are so thin. And he’s not the only singer in the place: although when someone else takes a lead, it only points out how great Stubbs is. The songs gesture towards social commentary and up-with-people philosophizing, and the production toys with futurism, without ever losing sight of the Four Tops’ primary mandate of making music by which to get it on.

A Keeper? It’s merely as okay a record as the sleeve’s half-assed commercial-illustration artwork would seem to predict, but the Four Tops never made a bad record.

Vinyl Rip: Turn On The Light Of Your Love

ZZ Top, Rio Grande Mud

File Between: John Lee Hooker and Thin Lizzy

Comments: The quintessential Texas boogie band were still working out an identity on this record — Gibbons and Hill don’t even sport their trademark beards on the cover art — but their chooglin’ rhythm is pretty much locked in from the opening track. I have a lot more patience with rock bands that I can read as tied to a local identity than with aspirational stadium-fillers, so even though there’s nothing groundbreaking or earthshattering on this record, I can still dig its unhurried groove. They sound like what they are: a Texas bar band whose Delta swamp rhythms have hardened on the dry Texas prairie into something as much tejano as blues, and rock & roll in the immortal motorcycles-n-sunglasses sense above all else. Gibbons goes for some guitar pyrotechnics and extended songwriting deep on side two, but for the most part they stick to the ass-moving formula that, with a few more years under their belt, would turn them into all-time rock & roll icons.

A Keeper? Maybe it’s a function of how little straight-up rock I’ve been consuming lately, but this sounded great to me.

Vinyl Rip: Francine

Alice Cooper, School’s Out

File Between: The Stooges and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Comments: The title track has long been my favorite Alice Cooper song, but I was surprised to find that it didn’t overshadow the rest of the album. I may not be, strictly speaking, the key demographic for Alice Cooper’s music, but I think I appreciate his show-biz inclinations more than the hard-rock fans who tend to claim him as one of their own more frequently. By breaking up their matey hard rock with smoky lounge tunes, Bernstein/Sondheim covers, and the ash-end of psychedelia, the band makes a record that doesn’t quite cohere into the concept album about high school hormones it wants to be, but which wouldn’t in fact be all that bad as the basis for a musical. Although compared to another famous concept album about adolescence that came out around the same time, School’s Out is far more recognizable and relatable, I find, than Quadrophenia, even down to its less-grandiose ambitions. These are the kids Springsteen will be singing about in “Glory Days.” They never went on to either change the world or drown in the ocean. Alice Cooper himself is now doing evenings on the local album-rock station, son of the faceless Phoenix suburbs to the end.

A Keeper? It’s more fun to think about than to listen to, but it’s not at all bad to listen to.

Vinyl Rip: Blue Turk