from the LP No Rest for the Wicked, Montross Records, 1976
As much as society is inclined to worship the champions of any given pursuit (music, writing, acting, sports, etc…), one has to wonder just how many prodigious individuals, perhaps some with talents even eclipsing the stars we know, have been denied ultimate success and, thus, fallen by the wayside; scientifically speaking, the firm probability is that there are exponentially more human beings with equal (or paramount) skills who never get the acclaim, and those precious few that make it are near assuredly not the “greatest of all time”, strictly speaking anyways. Bored yet? That was a long (baked) way to say: Iowa guitarist Billy Lee Janey & his power trio deserve more props than they get. I briefly lived in Indiana back in the ‘90s, and I had a weed connection in a town called Kokomo that had me driving over there (in a borrowed car which I should have treated better) about once a month to re-up, and the guy’s uncle was a HUGE Truth & Janey fan; apparently, he’d worked the stage at a joint in Bloomington back in the day where these guys played a few shows in the mid ‘70s, and it left such an imprint on him that he never tired of re-telling us the same bone-headed tales of endless Thai stick and stacks of Marshall amps. The Midwest is a tough place to make it big, even though it’s their population that has largely floated the perpetual touring of classic rock and metal bands over the years, the fact is: you often gotta move to one coast or the other to improve your chances, something these talented young men never got around to. These riffs are massive man, bigger than King Kong, and countless more are found scattered throughout this entire album, their sole full-length offering and a true testament to the real working ‘70s rock underground.
from the LP No Rest for the Wicked, Montross Records, 1976
