First of all, a disclaimer: I wrote the liner notes for these three reissues. I was paid a small fee but other than that, my sole interest in these albums is missionary. I’m ambivalent about Jesus; the Meters are my saviors. Any collection of New Orleans music without these three albums has a serious, gaping hole in it—sort of like the Bible without the New Testament. Cabbage Alley and Rejuvenation, in particular, are two of the greatest albums ever recorded and I’m talking about all albums—from Bach to the Beatles, from the Slits to the Rolling Stones to Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

When Allen Toussaint’s business partner Marshall Sehorn negotiated a recording contract for Toussaint (a very reluctant performer) and the Meters with Warner Brothers/Reprise in 1972, it was a major event in New Orleans. In 1972, the New Orleans music scene, as far as recording and releasing hit records, was stagnant. The days of Fats Domino were long gone. Kids in New Orleans, like kids everywhere else, were into long hair—not Professor Longhair. The subtle difference was that kids in New Orleans, because of the rather open format of the two leading radio stations (WNOE and WTIX), had grown up listening to Professor Longhair, interspersed with the Kinks, the Gentrys and Mitch Ryder. New Orleans kids, arguably, had the most sophisticated ears in America.

Previously, the Meters (keyboardist Art Neville, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, drummer Zigaboo Modeliste and bassist George Porter, Jr.—any other composition of members, regardless of what adjective is affixed to the name, is not the Meters) had recorded for the Josie label, which went bankrupt in 1971. Warner Brothers/Reprise, founded by Frank Sinatra and associates, was the hippest major label of its era—the home of Van Morrison, Ry Cooder and Essra Mohawk, the Fiona Apple of her day. Finally, it seemed as if the Meters were on the verge of Really Making It.

“We were really excited,” Leo Nocentelli recalls. “It was almost bittersweet. At that time, Reprise and Warner Brothers were in the embryonic stages. They really liked the Meters but didn’t have the staff together to go out and exploit the Meters like groups are being exploited today. Warner Brothers was basically pop-oriented. I think the Meters and Tower of Power were the first black groups that were ever on Warner Brothers. We were the pioneers.”

The beauty of the Meters, what made them such a creative force in rock music, was their simplicity. Funk, in its purest form, is music stripped-down to its thong panties. One of the most awesome funk performances I ever heard was a single woman vocalist on stage at Tipitina’s singing the phrase “We got the watermelon” over and over while beating on a Coke bottle with a drumstick. It was absolutely mesmerizing. Likewise, I imagine that if you confined Leo Nocentelli and George Porter, Jr., to a single guitar or bass string each and allowed Art Neville two chords on the organ and relegated Zigaboo Modeliste to the tambourine, the ensuing funk would destroy virtually any other musical contenders. On the other hand, as much as I admire George Clinton, I don’t think he’s funky. What he does is too busy. And he wasn’t raised in New Orleans. If you didn’t grow up in New Orleans, amidst the eternal ramshackle imperfection, attending rickety schools with urinals destroyed by cherry bombs, constantly eating red beans sullied with stringy remnants of pickled pork, marching down St. Charles Avenue whacking a bass drum and avoiding the piles of horseshit dropped by the mounts of Carnival’s pseudo-royalty, torturing lizards with a magnifying glass, licking nectar-cream snowballs, tormented by sadistic maiden aunts, perverted by bachelor uncles, indoctrinated by sinister nuns and living in shotgun houses where privacy is an unknown luxury, you will never be funky. There’s no sense in even trying.

The Meters, more than other band, were New Orleans. Warner Brothers didn’t quite understand this, as evidenced by the album cover for Cabbage Alley, which depicts a giant airbrushed cabbage floating in an anonymous urban alley, presumably in New York or some other foreign clime. The only kind of cabbage most New Orleanians have ever seen is the variety thrown from floats during a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Of course, the Warner Brothers art department redeemed themselves with the Rejuvenation cover, one of the greatest manifestations of funkiness ever created (by an unknown photographer): perched on a white brocade loveseat, wearing nothing but jeweled platforms, black pantyhose, a necklace of feathered roach-clips and a massive Afro, a startled beauty grasps 12 inches of Meters vinyl in one hand and a Hostess Twinkie in the other; on the baroque coffee table in the foreground are displayed a bottle of Ripple, a large slice of watermelon and two pink coconut-covered Hostess Snowballs. “When I saw that cover, I died—I didn’t know what to think,” was Leo Nocentelli’s reaction. “All of the items they had on the album cover were things that were supposed to rejuvenate you.” Finally, in 1975, with the release of Fire On the Bayou, the Meters got their own faces on the album cover. Except, because of the neo-psychedelic effect utilized for the photograph, their visages are barely distinguishable amidst the Spanish moss and palmettoes.

Marketing problems aside, the music to be found on these three albums is incredible (and incredibly familiar to anyone who’s spent much time in New Orleans). The Meters realized that a strictly-instrumental group wasn’t going to cut it so commencing with Cabbage Alley, vocals became part of the plan. Art handled the ballads and Zigaboo sang on the funkier numbers. An abiding mystery of New Orleans music is why Art Neville has never completed a solo album of his own vocalizations. In my estimation, he is the finest singer in the entire Neville clan. Skip the cover of Neil Young’s “Birds” and head directly to “Do The Dirt,” “Lonesome And Unwanted People” (Leo’s lyric masterpiece: “There are people using drugs, popping pills, trying to get prescriptions filled, stealing money, stealing cars, and they don’t believe in Santa Claus!”) and “Cabbage Alley” (a “lifted” version of Professor Longhair’s “Hey Now Baby” with “unofficial” Meter Cyril Neville on backing vocals). Art never resorts to vocal gymnastics—he simply evokes cool.

With Rejuvenation, the Meters delivered their definitive work: a perfect album, the only perfect New Orleans album ever recorded. I can’t imagine life in New Orleans during the ’70s without this album. Everywhere you went in those days, Rejuvenation was blaring. The’70s were the slow death of racial segregation, suburban kids moving Uptown (myself included), acid, marijuana, Dixie Beer, very casual sex, Rejuvenation and the Meters performing at the 501 Club (before it was Tipitina’s and when the Klan still held meetings in the back room; the proprietor once told me that if I wanted to continue staging dances at the place, I couldn’t book the Meters because the Klan objected—“Nobody’s gonna dance to a white band,” I told him).

Rejuvenation’s perfect songs include “People Say,” “Just Kissed My Baby” (that’s Little Feat founder Lowell George on slide guitar), Zigaboo’s comical “Jungle Man,” “Hey Pocky A-Way” (based on Dr. John’s “Shoo Fly Marches On,” recorded with the Meters the year before), “It Ain’t No Use” and “Africa,” an anthem every bit as culturally perceptive as the songs of Bob Marley. Two bonus tracks are featured on Sundazed’s release: the shorter, single versions of “People Say” and “Hey Pocky A-Way.” Note that Art tosses in the phrase “Fire On The Bayou” during “Hey Pocky A-Way,” slyly hyping the Meters’ next release before it even existed. Totally psychic or what?

Art was psychic about a few other things, too. In 1975, the Meters embarked upon a tour as the Rolling Stones’ opening act and as Art said at the time: “Heads went to swelling up.” Cyril was added to the group as percussionist/vocalist. The germ of the modern Neville Brothers Band was fertilized. Fire On The Bayou lacks the determined cohesion of the first two Warner Brothers albums and heads in various of directions, several of them wrongheaded dead ends. The title track is as funkily volatile as anything the Meters ever cut but “Talkin’ ’Bout New Orleans” is a bit too Chamber of Commerce-y for my anti-tourism tastes and “They All Ask’d For You” is total corn, although I dig the reference to “boiled wieners and tomato paste”—yum! “Middle Of The Road” is Leo’s jazzy homage to Barney Kessel and Kenny Burrell. “Liar” is a middling middle-of-the-road re-make of Russ Ballard’s Caucasian radio hit. “Running Fast,” I guess, was inspired by the fitness craze and is here offered in its original slightly-over-one-minute version and another rendition twice as long. And what possessed Art to do a new version of “Mardi Gras Mambo,” a song he first recorded in 1954 as a member of the Hawkettes? Wardell Quezergue’s horns are unnecessary, the electric piano is all wrong—only Zigaboo’s authoritative drumming is worthwhile. And how could the Meters claim they wrote this song, which was composed by Lou Welsch and Frankie Adams, and first recorded by Jody Levens, a white country singer? Funny funky business indeed!

After this, the Meters began to incinerate. There were famous fights and feuds. Some of these wounds have never healed. Having lost faith in many things, I still worship the Meters. I never tire of listening to their music. I light candles and pray to St. Art, St. Leo, St. Zigaboo and St. George. I thank them for favors granted and beseech them to, somehow, ditch their other musical efforts and reunite as New Orleans’ Greatest Band. Then we can all go back to the One True Church of Funk.