The Animals

The Animals were perhaps the best band to come out of the first marauding wave of the British Invasion, and Retrospective shows why. Their strengths were the raw seditious twist they put on American blues and RnB with covers of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" and the cautionary tale of "House of the Rising Sun," which shook with all the pain and rage that Eric Burdon could ring out of his tremendous voice. Their ability to adapt and their creation of a soundtrack for the burgeoning Youthquake with the esoteric psychedelica and coded drug references of "Sky Pilot" and "San Francisco Nights" didn't hurt, either.

I've never been entranced enough by Eric Burdon to decide whether he was clueless clod or sneaky smart, but for sure he's one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's nostalgia entries. Whatever happened in the '60s, he was there to soak it up and emote it back in his pitch-challenged, Negro-worshipping bray--Denmark Street pop, Brill Building pop, copyright hustlers' blues. His undiscriminating enthusiasm plus a ruthlessly professional band helps the stuff go down, most remarkably the hippie trilogy he (co)wrote himself: "San Franciscan Nights," "Monterey," and the dumbfounding "Sky Pilot," a depiction of an American serviceman so dense or opaque it's visionary. "A Girl Named Sandoz," on the other hand, is a bad trip. (Grade - )