SOMETIMES THE FRONTPERSON for a band will pull some crazy stuff. Some light themselves on fire. Others jump up on a table. Some even hump audience members' legs like horny dogs.

Eric Shea of Parchman Farm did something at Cafe du Nord I've never seen before, and I really liked it. As a song that sounded just enough like a metal-ish version of War's "Lowrider" was beginning, Shea jumped into the crowd while hitting a cowbell. That was awesome. The only way it could have been more awesome would be if he had been dressed as a wizard. I don't know why, but I really wanted Shea to be wearing a peaked wizard hat and a cloak with long, drooping sleeves. The other thing was that he sang in a manner I would call "feelin' it" – as in "dude sang some feelin'-it vocals." "Feelin'-it vocals" is a term I believe Shea coined himself, and he would be glad to hear me say it. Basically, if you can sing the phrase "boss man" at the top of your white lungs and get away with it, you're special. Not that Shea ever sang "boss man," to my knowledge, but he could have. He actually said way better stuff, like, "When there's a stool in the pool, it's time to drain it, fool / Let me hear you say yeah," or something like that.

He and the other members of Parchman Farm – drummer Chris LeBreche, bass player Carson Binks, and guitarist Allyson Baker – may also be the only people who understand what I mean when I say Shea sings like Burton Cummings of the Guess Who, in the raddest way. If there's some way to understand this – that the Guess Who were cool at all – you have to try and understand. Shea sings like the most feelin'-it version of Cummings ever. Imagine the Guess Who kicking ass at some outdoor festival in 1974 or something and you've been on a steady diet of Jack Daniels and cocaine for seven days straight and you're wicked high and also you just fucking killed somebody. These are the days after acid rock and before hard rock turned into shiny AOR – that in-between era when Blue Cheer's and Deep Purple's influence could still be felt in the average bar band. Imagine the Guess Who slamming through some crazy 22-minute version of "No Time" and Cummings is screaming his goddamn chest hair off. Every song Parchman Farm play is like that but with way better guitar riffs – with Leaf Hound guitar riffs. Leaf Hound are this long-lost heavy rock '70s band that only put out one record: the brilliantly titled Growers of Mushroom.

So this is what you get with Parchman Farm: first, there's a burnin' guitar riff, not MC5-y either, which is nice – these riffs are simpler than that. Parchman Farm are more FM radio than that. Then the bass drops in, and the drummer starts to whale on his kit. This is where Shea comes careening in, in total '70s freak-out style, righteously dissing '80s worshippers, cocaine haircuts, and bad record collections.

There are a number of bands playing '70s-derived hard rock today. I just heard this band called Silvertide from Philly, and they sound kind of like the Black Crowes. A year or so ago I was attacked by the Grand Funk-ness of a band called Pearls and Brass. And last year everybody got fooled by the Darkness. But fuck the Darkness and joke-rock bands like them. The thing about Parchman Farm and these other bands I've mentioned is that they're playing this music because they want to rock and be loud. Not because they thought the '70s were so funny and cool. Fuck that.

It's not like Parchman are aping '70s sounds here. What we have is an extension of what the old bands were doing, as if they were building on the Yardbirds. You can try and start your own language, but you have to use something as a base. So there will always be people who hear this and say "it's retro" or whatever, but that's just lazy. Parchman Farm have done their homework. For people who love it loud and want it heavy. Parchman Farm play Nov. 12, Cafe du Nord, S.F. (415) 861-5016. (Mike McGuirk)