Maximillian

Let’s start with the basics: Mojack Maximillian may be the greatest rock and roll name you’ve never heard. It’s his surname that serves as the moniker for this New York City-based power trio that cut its first and only album in 1969 for ABC Records. Comparisons to Jimi Hendrix are inevitable—a young, black guitarist heading up a three-man band heavily steeped in late ‘60s psychedelic acid rock—but that’s neither entirely accurate nor completely fair. There are a handful of riff-based rockers, of course, including “Kickin’ 9 to 5,” “The Road Rat,” “The Name of the Game” and “New Lover,” but Maximillian on the whole is just as much rooted in soul and funk as it is in the hard rock pyrotechnics that Hendrix pursued. The lyrics aren’t great (“she left a scar in my memory/she put a cut deep within my little brain/the scar still shows/I feel the pain”) and the vocals are even worse (singing in tune doesn’t appear to be a priority for these guys), but it’s probably not a stretch to suggest that Maximillian belongs on the same family tree that links Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone. Incidentally, it would appear great names run in the Maxmillian family: Mojack’s brother, Moby, is the band’s bass player.