Mickey & the Soul Generation

It had to happen. Music completists—in this case, Josh “DJ Shadow” Davis of Davis—with dwindling subjects on whom to lavish the marginalia-obsessed, boxed-set treatment, arrive at an act that nobody’s heard of. Not that Iron Leg is a boxed set; San Antonio-based Mickey & the Soul Generation only recorded enough material for this two-CD set (and the second disc, of mostly dubious live demos, is only six cuts deep). That said, there’s an album worth of fine late-1960s/early-1970s super-heavy funk here, from the distorto-bass thump of the title track to the jigsaw-puzzle groove of “The Whatzit” or the Sun Ra-esque synth-spaciness of “UFO” As with many a great jam band, numerous cuts don’t really kick in until midway through, when the players are warmed up. Then, it’s easier to understand why Davis, in his fanboyishly moving liner notes, calls Mickey and company his “favorite funk band.”