CD REVIEWS April, 2007.
(note: I'm too tired to do all the record label links. Just google 'em.)
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The Giant Robots
Too Young to Know Better Too Hard To Care
Voodoo Rhythm Records

The Giant Robots are French-speaking Hillbillies from Lausanne, Switzerland. Their third record “Too Young to Know Better Too Hard To Care” was released after the band took a one-year break so vocalist/guitarist “Michael” could go surfing. Beach Blanket Bingo games aside, TGR are clearly down with The Ventures. And, like Tokyo’s mythical Surf Coasters, they also worship at the Alter of Dick Dale. To cultivate their French-Mod Surfer Sound Michael straps on a vintage Fender and then blows it through a ‘63 Fender Vibroverb amp. He also supports selling your wife in order to buy a guitar. Michael is a man with his priorities precisely in the right place.

“Basswoman” (or Julia) blasts her vintage Hofner Bass through an old-school Ampeg one speaker amp. “Stephanie” rawks a classic 60’s Farfisa Organ (Floyd and Zep both used Farfisa’s). The few tracks that are performed in their native French tongue are as hot as the English ones. “My New Datsun” is about driving fast in a Japanese car. “Tell Me What to Do” reminds me of Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)” but done up the way Shonen Knife and The Sonics did it.

Thanks Switzerland! This totally makes up for Urban Junior and Turbotraktor (and most of “Burning Sound Volume 1” for that matter). Garage/Surf/Rock from Switzerland?

Droite Foutue.

- DJC

Wires On Fire
Wires On Fire
Buddyhead

This aptly titled LA (have a pause for a ponder or two) quartet of stomach-stapling crazies musta escaped from some quarantine and now reside in and around the exquisite margins of claustrophobia willingly marred by the madness of the asylums of the streets. Marrying a cold-blooded killer’s inconsideration for collateral with the strangled insanity of trench warfare battle tactics they choke corpse-interfering choruses with bibulous bar-stool aural buggerings. Caustic guitars catapult you down waste disposal chutes of wary wonder, sardonically assuage your agonies with drip-drying AOR melodies then shower you with Death Valley sand that scrapes your scalp. Sorta like Sonic Youth serenading Big Black’s drum machine in a free-form freak-out while you’re fed dance drugs then forced to stare at Medusa before Iggy in Funhouse days desires you. Adopted sons of a dysfunctional family in a film directed by Rob Zombie who turn loose in character, kill him and install Nick Cave in his stead, then give him a haircut with an assassin’s garrotte, thus becoming the house band for a season of documentaries on afflictions beyond science-fiction. As difficult to love as The Birthday Party but as easily digested as the bitter pill they may be an antidote to.   

Stoner rock for the stir crazy anthems for agitated agoraphobics, they graciously have a whole lot more than a nifty set of out-there song titles (such as the psycho-psych of the deviously, ingeniously titled Dusty Bibles Lead To Dirty Lives and rockabilly lobotomy Cooked Cattle) and, like the desert skirting their hometown, far more beneath the surface than initial doubts that can accompany such crafted incoherence.

- Stu Gibson  

Paul Collins Beat
Flying High
Get Hip Recordings

The term “Power Pop” confuses me. I don’t know to like it or hate it. Does it help that  Mr. Slit Skirts himself, Pete Townshend might have coined the phrase “Power Pop”? (Have you read his blog?). Well, maybe. Besides, The Who have always been good to me so what the hell.

Recorded in Madrid, “Flying High” makes a Dirty-Dozen collective plush recordings for Paul Collins, drummer and songwriter for bands like The Plimsouls, the short-lived (but very excellent) The Nerves (download “Get Me High”. It’s 4:20 somewhere) and The Beat. Their label, Get Hip, is also home to Seattle’s DT’s, who just released their second record with Get Hip, “Filthy Habits”. A very bad-ass record.

The Plimsouls “A Million Miles Away” might be one of the best Power Pop songs ever.  Consider that and then know that Paul Collins also wrote “Walking Out On Love”. There’s a tons of The Beat on YouTube (when Paul was rockin’ the Joey Ramone-esque hair) and iTunes. And seriously, go back and listen to some late 90’s Nerves. It’s good stuff.

“Rock and Roll Shoes” is pure Rick Nielsen Electric Guitar, right from the heart.  Sadly, “Flying High” quickly turns into an excessively moody piece of work. I’m not ashamed to like me some power pop but “Flying High” so quickly digresses into indulgent epilogue that I’m left thirsty and sleepy. Like after a night of chasing Vicodin with Vodka. Of course, after “Flying High” I went back and listened to Collin’s previous catalog.  And I recommend you do too. “Flying High” has some highlights, but listening to the whole record is not one of them. Even the skills of guitarist Octavio Vinck can’t save this record. After that I’m seriously wondering if the CD case might have been laced with Vicodin.

If it is, then by all means, buy this record. If not, skip the Vicodin and listen to The Nerves.

- DJC

Motherboar
Raise the Death Toll
Witch Trial Records

Badass Boston boogie comin’ at ya full boar (sic), so cock your fist or fist your cock ‘cause it’s kill or be killed when Motherboar sets acid to tongue and cranks out unearthly volts of cinder block rock that hits your ass like prison sex. In fact, I’d say if Motherboar were from somewhere like Norway or Florida, instead of ol’ Mass, then it’d be hard not to peg ‘em as death metal demons, but as it is they’ve got red blood pumping through their seething veins, rife with adrenaline, PBR, and motor oil. Kind of the beautiful mess you’d end up with if you spent your summers growing up listening to Motorhead, Clutch, Ironlung and Wino, kicking chickens, and picking things out of your beard. It’s nasty, Jack, so get with the Motherboar.

 - Jeff Warren

jesu
Conqueror
Hydrahead

If the words ‘Gorgeously hypnotic’, ‘celestial ambience, underwater phantasms and slow-rolling nebulae’’, kaleidoscopic rapture’ and ‘no sonic boundaries’ make your head swim and heart swell then really you should go and buy something else, like Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription, not this slumbering pile of dope-head drool n’ dribble that is so slovenly it’d ask a sloth to skin-up for it. Towellin torpor trowelled from under next door’s fence while they have a party for My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr, only they got the stalks not the seeds. That they have a song called ‘weightless and horizontal’ says it all, without you even needing to endure its ten minute languish in the limitless halls of languor. Dangerous, in that it’ll make you plead for undefined un-anesthetized surgery.

- Stu Gibson

Thee Merry Widows
Revenge Served Cold
People Like You

Hellbilly harlots a go go led by burlesquer Miss Eva von Slut, these mirthfully widowed dames tear up the tarot and torment the boys of San Fang-cisco with an all too apparent ability to turn testes to trifle with a sultry stare and sullen stroke of their precious cask-aged for 17 centuries Gretsches. All the requisite psychobilly totems spill out their Revamp bags - and slippery hints of hip-cracking dominatrixity can only turn a key in the ignition - but for all the blood-curdling, bollock-baiting cocktail bar mariachi of ‘Girl Assassins’ and ‘Revenge’, bad-girl cow-boogie of ‘Black Widow’ and sulphuric surf of ‘All Of Them Witches’ there’s body parts missing, like their corpses need tampering with once the crime scene’s been secured. If not entirely charmed into a coquettish, clumsy, knee-knocking keg of powder set to burst by this troupe of lost girls, this casket sure as Bela Lugosi’s dead ain’t for the charnel house just yet.

 - Stu Gibson

The Night Terrors
Cobras
Big Neck Records

Milwaukee’s The Mistreaters are the Balls. I know, you were just thinking the same thing right? Well, sweet. Since we’re on the same page and all, let’s discuss a close relation to The Mistreaters, The Night Terrors.

So, here I am on my knees. Compelled by the sound of Tony Sagger every time he opens his mouth. You gotta get your hands on the Sagger “Skull Rider” EP. I’m sure Sleazegrinder will tell you the same thing. Vocally, Sagger could be Lemmy K’s evil brother. And fuck you…sure it’s possible; there could totally be a more evil version of Lemmy. Besides, the Real Lemmy is busy playing with Slim Jim Phantom right now (touring now as The Head Cat. Matter of Factly, they are playing here in Seattle tonight. I might be there right now for all you know. Hoping for 30 seconds with Lemmy so I can ask him “Blonde or Red”? Knowing the answer, but pushing my luck anyway. I got Ambition).

Kevin Mistreater (of Dusty Medical Records and the aforementioned Mistreaters), plays his guitar like prison shank on skin. Lucky for you and me, The Night Terrors are not currently in prison but playing some really good rock coated with Milwaukee’s finest gutter-sludge. Not to be outdone by it’s excellent rock scene, Milwaukee is also he King of Cheap Beer. Old Milwaukee makes for a really good Red Beer Sleazy Reader. Almost as good as PBR. You won’t drink me later, but I’m still right.

As I often speak of drinking, “Caught me Looking” is a nasty jam about the labors of drinking. It throttles between choruses of “It gets me thinking, I wanna die. It get me thinking, I want a surprise.” Or like I heard the second chorus: “You get me drinking. I get high. And I want a Surprise”. The Night Terrors are my kind of people.

At any rate, The Night Terrors can’t be the beer can kings of Milwaukee Rock and The Boogeymen…okay, maybe they can. Just listen to this record. Evil, Rock and Beer look really good together.

Look at me.

- DJC

Point One
Unlucky Stars
Adrenaline

I didn’t even think people made this kind of music anymore. You know, the nu-rock schlock that’s so 1997? The kind of music played by dudes with eyeliner and spiked hair? The shit you end up with when you watch too many Evanesence and Finger Eleven videos on MTV, or when you try to sound like Helmet and Nine Inch Nails at the same time, and all you’re left with is a boring mess of industrial opera rock with some dude up front imploring every facet of the whining to screaming and back again vocal range? Didn’t we learn anything from the second Brides of Destruction album (or the first one for that matter)? I mean, we’re not gonna settle for lines like “I breathe you in/You’re my oxygen” are we? Thank your lucky stars I filtered this one out for you.

- Jeff Warren

Turku Romantic Movement
Rock Rhythm And Revolution
Fading Ways Finland

Usually a band that give the revolution and generation slogans as easily as Ozzy gives the hand-horn sign should be siphoned off into shark-haggis. A band who also start with a clinically clean guitar jangle and keyboard arpeggios that are so close to The Killers and, Holy Mary mother of God, Feeder, should be quarantined, castrated and hawked around Chinatown in a case of gonzo-psychiatry. Curiously then, that the song called, with clear-headed sincerity, ‘The Classic’ is a magic carpet ride ‘neath a Northern Lights sweep of epic euphoria, of the same stadium-slaying sub-sector that Manic Street Preachers managed to muster with ‘Everything Must Go’, proves a kiss-of-death cousin to any pusillanimous suppositions of cash-in sell-out striving for someone else’s cocktail-stained coat-tails. It simply glides grandiloquently, glacially, glassy-eyed and classy past on its glimmering astral sleigh. An icy melancholy prevails, tinged with giddy neons of nostalgia yet blanketed with a sense of Aladdin Sane’s alienation and Suede’s early, louche, haughty grandiosity, not least the improbably-titled ballad ‘Sonic Redemption’, which knocks you two steps from any move by being a soggy semolina piano ballad. The guitars audibly get lower throughout ‘The Pigs (Of Gadara)’ as it shakes off a Only Ones slumber poetry-party, ‘Techno Revolution’ (featuring Eduardo Martinez of Flaming Sideburns) shuttles around inner space and sanctums like Glucifer’s ‘Basement Apes’ and ‘Animals’ rips open it’s velvet shirt and reveals once and for all the beating, rippling heart that inside. All that and I almost forgot to mention that the last track ‘Provocation’ has a riff remarkably like MC Hammer’s ‘You Can’t Touch This’.

- Stu Gibson

Stinking Lizaveta
Scream of the Iron Iconoclast
At a Loss

The Brothers Papadopoulos are back, with the always fierce and foxy Cheshire Agusta backing them up, for a fifth instalment of their monolithic jazz doom. The music on Scream of the Iron Iconoclast is pretty much as the name suggests, which means you’re looking up the word ‘iconoclast’ right now just to figure out what’s going on here. Well, stick with me, Jack, because all you really need to know is that we’re talking about destruction – of forms, ideas, beliefs, and brain matter – which is SL’s bread and butter. This trio has built a career out of attacking their instruments like steel wool to a rusty pipe and letting you wallow in the din, and this is just one more go-round of their hunkering, incalculable, putrid yet clean metal/stoner/jazz fusion. Of course, there’s no actual screaming on this record, but it’s definitely implied musically, and you may be driven to the edge of some cold mountain top, wailing like a bloodshot baboon after a few spins of this one, but that’s just the sign of a winning formula, isn’t it? So dig the beards and the chick and the madness and the destruction. Oh, the beautiful destruction.

- Jeff Warren

The Turbo A.C.’s
Live to Win
Bitzcore Records

My Old Man got to open “Live to Win” by The Turbo A.C’s first. After removing the disk from the jewel case, he stops in exactly the way any red-blooded man would to gaze at a photograph of a mostly nude woman…okay, make that three, mostly-nude women. Playing cards, in fishnets and heels (which you would have to purchase to see now, wouldn’t you?). Then he says:

“This has to be the best CD release ever. End of review. Now get in bed.”

Cherrybomb Note: You can get a whole deck full of the girls if you want ‘em. And I’m pretty sure you want ‘em.

So then, two hours later, “Live to Win” finally gets plugged into my busy box for an official listen. “Maybe I’m not supposed to be doing this…it’s bad…it’s wrong”.

Okay boys, get me off…again.

Ten years later, and after a few line-up changes, we finally got release number six from the NYC based Voodoo-Surf rock band, the Turbo A.C.’s

Although I am popular (or hated) for comparisons, “Genuine” has the same earwig guitar jam served up by the Foo Fighters on “I’ll Stick Around”. Quickly, “Live to Win” kicks me riff-happy to Sunday. Matter of fact, I don’t think I have been this switched on since L.A. Guns. And that’s way too long if you can do math. If not, well, I understand. Like you, numbers just make me angry and want to slug random strangers.  Although “Live to Win” was recorded in NY, it also imported some fine Sunset Boulevard swagger to go along with it’s gritty, Escape from New York sound. It even smelled like Pam Anderson when I got it (don’t ask me to describe that in more words than Rock/Sex/Fish). “Overdrive” includes an excellent mid-stream Bongo solo kicked out to the tune of “Wipeout”. Now, to win extra Cherrybomb points (you can redeem them for loads of great sex, I mean stuff…okay sex, but no kissing…) listen to The Briefs (who toured briefly with TAC) and Zeke. TAC’s most recent label, Bitzcore, regularly releases vinyl. And you gotta love that.

If I can wear it, great. If I can play it AND screw to it, I love it.

- DJC

The Scientists
Sedition
ATP

“Six strings in one song…” Kim Salmon about guitarist Tony Thewlis after ‘Backwards Man’

That these Australian earthquake-surfers swamp-slop-swiggers reformed last year at Mudhoney’s behest for their day hosting the All Tomorrow’s Parties event, in a kind of swamp rock Morrissey and New York Dolls pucker-up, should say a lot to the uninitiated. That this first proper live recording will sizzle your insides like melting crisp packets should say a lot more. Pounding, metropolic machine rhythms map out sprawling expanses of urban-industrial dead-end meltdown with tyre-slashing Link Wray guitars that stage-dive into sheet metal with a systematic insistence like pistons powered by John Lee Hooker’s stomp board put through Motorhead’s PA system. Their stubbornly rudimentary yet regimented approach, like blues subsumed in lava as new landmasses form, grinds like The Stooges ‘Funhouse’ ghostdancing on a precipice while Suicide drive a steamroller towards it. Thusly, comparisons to The Birthday Party, paltry and uninvited they may but be, are an inevitable result. Yet The Scientists, by their very name, are (slightly) more considered and, well, scientific, so whilst their metallic combine harvester chomping (just listen to the guitar sound, especially on the obnoxious wheatfield-wilting ‘We Had Love’) reflects deadened reflexes of social squalor and citizen drained they still capture a timeless essence caught somewhere between being stranded in the broiling, barren wastes that enclose their Perth homeland and being on the cusp witnessing the morass of natures’ forces forging new foundations – the odd moments of reflection have cinematic shades of Green On Red penning apocalyptic scripts about waters muddied with lung-sucking firestorm squalls of frenetic feedback fatalism. Mordant Detroit beats for the disaffected and disavowed sucked into a vacuum of indigestible drones like a comet on their endless cycle collecting the wasted and waylaid…Inciting, igniting and exciting. Maybe not as sexy as The Cramps but an essential pit-stop for any devotees of monstrous repetito-rockin’ that rolls like a logging disaster and the boulder-bulldozin’ blues of Jon Spencer, Spacemen 3 or Australia’s current educated derelicts The Drones. Stu Gibson

Electric Mary
The Definition of Insanity
Irustu Records

You see, Electric Mary (whose name is lifted from studio manager Mary Campbell of Electric Lady Studios, Jimi Hendrix’s old digs) is really quite ballsy and somewhat heavy and righteous with their arena-sized riffs. Yet, there’s something about Mary (sorry, I had to) and The Definition of Insanity that doesn’t sit quite well with me. It’s got this whole Velvet Revolver type of  corporate rock vibe going on, which is really quite a shame because they can, at times, sound like Buckcherry, The Ga*Ga*s, Hurricane Party, or even The Golden Gods, especially on the track “Let Me Out.” I don’t know, man. All I know is that it’s mirrored shades, faded bells, empty bottles, and a muscle car full of potential. It won’t be your favourite, but you’ll dig it enough.

Chip Hanna and The Berlin Three
Chip Hanna and The Berlin Three
People Like You

US Bombardier of the drum stool Hanna rips it up a right rare treat here, taking the strum-seat centre-stage with members of Mad Sin (including the excellent mini-gun to the minute twanging of Tex Morton) in a series of frantic cross-border chases and gallant getaways. Much of the album shakes like a honky-tonk being hitched up and hauled out on the back of a 1930s trailer-truck down dirty back roads, racing to the level-crossing in an attempt to beat the steam-engine bearing down like in the old movie clips. Raised in rural Louisiana with a ma that sang on country radio this is a heartfelt hootenanny not a mere dribblingly derivative homage. Charting chequered flags and false starts from the road-addled truck-stop story so far ‘Wouldn’t Change A Thing’, childhood memories ‘Just A Cowboy’ or ‘True Believers’ testifying to friends and family this is full-tilt psycho-blue grass sang by the shadow Steve Earle left behind on crack alley. In a sort of alternate, demented, ‘Train A Comin’, the reflective ode to home ‘Louisiana’, ‘Honky Tonk Girl’ and tongue in tequila-quaffing cheek ‘Drinkin’ State Of Mind’ suggests as strongly as Wray ‘n’ Nephew rum that this cranked-up teeth chomping cow-punkery of the Hank 111 variety is one knee-jerking, jack-knifing, jig ‘n’ jamboreel jag that shouldn’t be left like family reunions. Let’s hope he finds another day in Deutschland sometime soon.

-Stu Gibson

Tunnel Of Love
Rockin’Rollin’ Bitches
Big Neck Records

Tunnel of Love really hits you from behind with Rockin’ Rollin’ Bitches. Vocalist Andy MacBain bears an eerie resemblance to David Johansen. A Cro-Magnon Johansen. That just beat a blow up doll into submission. And then he decides she needs it up the ass. After looking at TOL’s website, I can’t help but think of early shirt-less Bathory sans the Viking weapons and leather.

So, if there were bands in the day of Vikings, Tunnel of Love was Led Zep.  Mixed and recorded with a 4 Track, the fuzz is turned up past 11 all the way to “Fuck Yeah” on this one. Listening to TOL is like getting thrown into a pit full of rabid wild animals armed with a Strat and drum sticks. And all you got to protect yourself is some ear-goggles and a bottle of Jagermeister.

“Down in Hell” is a surprisingly upbeat rip at, well, Hell. Don’t know for sure but TOL might be Satan’s next house band if they keep this up. Follow that one up with “Ride Jesus Ride” and that’s some malevolent music to my ears. And while I’m talking about the good things to come for these Rockin’ Rollin’ Bitches, I’m sure if we ALL chip in we can get the boys in TOL some shirts. Maybe we could even squeeze a few bucks out for a stool for Makoto. But, I’m pretty sure he enjoys beating the shit out of his kit while standing.

Holy crap…this record is crazy.

I would kill to see some photos of the “recording session” that gave us Rockin’ Rollin’ Bitches. Seriously, this record clubbed me right over the fucking head and dragged me off into the bushes. Like TOL, I never really cared for subtlety.

Tunnel of Love are doing their own thing. Well, that and a completely insane cover of  Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. Let’s face it, there’s nothing sane about this record.

Except the fact that you don’t have it yet, Jack-O. And you need to.

- DJC

The Fucking Champs
VI
Drag City

Despite a name suggestive of a naughty surf band cutting class to frolic in sun-kissed sandpits simultaneously skipping soundcheck this San Franciscan trio pull off their collage of instrumental metal soundscapes, before hammering it on to somewhere paradoxically inappropriate, like the dark side of the moon. Where they could easily come across as a karaoke tape for a bring your own neuroses and non-existent angst meeting this, thankfully, is a veritable classic metal riff riot, not a lame exercise in one man and his Van Halen fantasy, despite the odd Bill and Ted Wyld Stallyns moment and the overwhelming urge it induces to wave your left arm about like Bruce Dickinson frantically trying to wipe the James Hetfield frown from his brow that Kerry King has just stamped there. Navigating the swollen notes and labyrinth of glacier engulfing chords that are pinched, nipped and tucked, if not castrated with the calculating calm of a psychopath settling down to a post-slaughter gander at the Evening Post’s cryptic crossword can be gruelling but as clever clever goes this meticulous and complex case of cinematic road rage weathers the rip-tides well. Like mathematicians on a graffiti spree daubing an avalanche of ridiculous algebra equations onto terraces and tenements to attempt to convey how they manage to play cool instrumentals that aren’t surf.

- Stu Gibson

Hellbats
Unleashed ‘N’ Alive
Kicking Records

As if this thick, French gust of horror rock wasn’t dark and heavy enough already, it got a whole lot more so with the death of original Hellbats bassist, Nico. So this album, I guess, and all the battles with demons contained therein, are dedicated to him. And to you too, if you like livin’ in the sewers of Demented City and stomping on the heads of the purple octopi in the murky waters, that is. The Hellbats kind of remind me of one of my old favourites, Damn 13 (or anything Adam “Doom” Sewell is releasing on Stereo Dynamite these days), but mostly they come screaming out of the caves like some wicked crossover mix of DRI and the Turbo AC’s, leaving behind a vapour trail of psycho- and horrorbilly. This is pure scum, really, a wreck of an album, so pray to the bad moon rising, pull out your B-movie collection, and be weird for as long as you can. Nico would probably want it that way.

- Jeff Warren

The Electric Prunes
Too Much To Dream – Original Group Recordings: Reprise 1966-1967Rhino / Reprise 

As one of the kaleidoscope of bands catapulted from the catherine wheel that got its knickers and much else in a twist across the States in the wake of the British Invasion of the early to mid sixties, The Electric Prunes are rightly immortal for their stomping garage split-screen classics ‘I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) and ‘Get Me To The World On Time’, that coulda thrown the Stones right out of time. Notable also for their colourful, ex / idi-otic moniker alongside Strawberry Alarm Clock, Moby Grape and The Chocolate Watch Band, they, like those and other Nuggets bands, had much more to offer than being a mere footnote, however Yeti-sized that foot might actually be in their case. Maybe they don’t stretch out to the cortex-crumpling extent of The 13^th Floor Elevators but easily to The Seeds level. Where the first album suffers from the material forced on them by their producer, it’s the second album - ‘Underground’ - which really sets the scene. Openly admitting their debt to the Stones ‘Aftermath’ in sound and substance (see ‘Long Day’s Flight’) there’s also a lot of ‘Between The Buttons’ amidst these bug-eyed swirlers of daisy-examining whimsy, turf-torching tremolo and sci-fi ragas that could communicate with ET such is their stripping open of the seam of inner space strength. ‘Antique Doll’ and ‘I’ evoke ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ and it’s childlike yet perceptively cerebral aura; the jaunty country-rock on ‘It’s Not Fair’ predates The Byrds ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’ milestone; ‘Big City’ (heads up Spacemen 3 completists) is an exquisite surf-pop sunset stroll while they can always turn the other cloak and emit a slightly sinister air, as on the Charlie in The Clockwork Chocolate Orange Factory ‘Hideaway’ or ‘Wind-Up Toys’.

Finding themselves fatally cast adrift after their producers cast session musicians for the third and fourth albums this pleasingly packaged set (almost a Rhino trademark) full of alternate takes and non-album singles (such as the blistering balls-out blues rumble that would make Humble Pie devour themselves of ‘Everybody Knows (You’re Not In Love)’) is finally the quintessential collection of these unfortunately, quintessential examples of music business bullshit, and both a testament and a testimonial for what was and could’ve been.

- Stu Gibson