Sweet - Give Us a Wink

Sweet was always a weird band for me to categorize, were they hard rock, were they glam, were they just a Chinnichap bubble gum act? I mean these were the guys who rocked my world as a kid with "Ballroom Blitz" and melted my face with "Fox on the Run" both from the North American version of Desolation Boulevard on Capitol Records. Much later I heard "Little Willy" and couldn't reconcile that this was the same band. It was written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn names I'd later associate with an awful lot of really questionable glam tinged rock, and some face melting goodness. They were the kings of bubble gum glam but they were so much more than that. However, let's be honest "Little Willy" is just a head scratcher, but "Ballroom Blitz" was sheer wonderfulness, and the stuff with Suzi Quatro was wicked. To me, they were a hard rock act, I had no idea what glam was a kid. Music was either good or it wasn't.

By 1976 the lads in Sweet were looking to step out from behind the shadow the Chinnichap machine. They'd made inroads to being their own band on their previous album where the second side of Desolation Boulevard included "Fox on the Run" and "Sweet F.A." was written by the band, and when Give Us a Wink dropped in 1976 all of the songs were written and produced by the band.

Now as a kid I didn't have any of their albums. It's not like I didn't want to have my own copy of Desolation Boulevard it just didn't happen ... there were a lot of albums I wanted. I also never saw the point of collecting 45s. I can count on one hand the number of singles I've purchased over the years. I had "Bohemian Rhapsody" / "I'm in Love with My Car" by Queen, and "Action" by Sweet ... I have no memory of the B side, but I do know that the single version is different than what is on Give Us a Wink. Which was pretty normal as often the single version and album version were different ... which could suck if you don't like the album version. Thankfully, the track is all killer and "Action" remains one of those songs that is over the top awesomeness.

I've been listening to the album for most of the day, sometimes intently listening, other times just having it on while I work in the basement. The songs are a great blend of glam and hard rock with the nut squeezing high octave gang vocals that are practically inhuman ... the boys learned a thing or two during their time with Chapman and Chinn.

This was the classic line up:

Andy Scott – guitars, vocals, celli, synthesizers, voice bag
Steve Priest – bass, vocals, celli
Brian Connolly – lead vocals, string machine
Mick Tucker – percussion, vocals, celli, phased gong

I actually had to look up "celli" as I had no idea what it was. Apparently it's like a cello but not. Yeah, you're welcome. I also have no idea wtf a voice bag is either - maybe it was like a talk box, but like bagpipes?

I will say that their decision to speed up the lead guitar work on "White Mice" was kind of irritating, and unfortunate as Andy Scott is a decent player and it just made the song sound cheap and silly. However the closing track on side one "The Healer" more than makes up for it with a mid tempo groove that is a little proggy and a wee bit funky but still has that Sweet snarl delivered by Brian Connolly who had one of rocks great voices.

Side two opens with an obvious reworking of "Fox on the Run" with "The Lies in Your Eyes" that also has an inverted riff that may or may not have been inspired by The Stones "Satisfaction" who knows, after a while things all sort of run together.

"Lady Starlight" was a non album single, and included on the Capitol release. Apparently it was originally released as a B side to "Fox on the Run" a couple of years earlier when it was first recorded. I'm not complaining, I like it although it was a B side for a reason. The band was stretching things out here and there as well exercising their musical muscles and showing off their chops. They were trying to grow as a band.

Sweet always seemed like a band on cusp of greatness, and while Give Us a Wink added to their song cannon with the exceptional "Action" they just never really seemed to take things to that next level. They were a band that always seemed rooted to a point in time, and despite their best efforts they just couldn't change with the times.

Honestly, I liked them just the way they were.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the 90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984 my (dearly departed, and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read just go back and skim it, I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off and on again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasurers I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home.Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in the band? Of course I had a radio - it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about $35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. Sunny Days was a great song, I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later when I got my first record player the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited classics, among them Sunny Days and other golden nuggets that...

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