If there ever was an album worth of a PLAY LOUD! sticker, it could have been one of the first three Flamin' Groovies albums. Think Rolling Stones circa '65-68, add some wild rockabilly and pump them full of adrenaline and you'll get an idea how they sounded. Yet they all flopped - a clear case of wrong time (late 60's-early 70's) wrong place (hippy San Francisco). It wasn't until they toured England together with The Ramones in '76 that they were hailed as the keepers of the original rock'n'roll flame, but at that point their lead singer/screamer Roy Loney had left the band, and with him most of the edge was gone: that version of The Groovies took a more melodic, Beatles-inspired, approach. After leaving the band on '71, Roy resurfaced with other bands and sporadic albums, always flying under the radar. As evidenced by this effort, his staying on the edge of the music business, had nothing to do with a lack of skill or inspiration: his voice hasn't lost any of its power and the 12 original songs here display his compositional skill in a variety of styles: from his familiar Stonesey rock (opener "Baby du Jour" and closer "Hey Now") and rawdy rockabilly ("Big Time Love", the 80-second "Raw Deal") to less explored sounds like the spaghetti western "Big Fat Nada" and atmospheric psychedelia of "Subterranean Waterfalls". Other high points include the jangly folk rock of "The Great Divide" and garage dynamite "Don't Like Nothin'", the latter heavy on fuzz guitar and vocal sneer. "Danger Waves" is a short surf rocker, "Hamlet's Brother, Happy" a whimsical slice of Anglophile pop, "Miss Val Dupree" a ? And The Mysterians-like farfisa garage rocker and "Looking for the Body" a rockabilly-ish tune seen through the prism of an English pub/punk rock band. The musicians include some talented players like Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows/REM), Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman) and Mark Pickerel (Screaming Trees), and the outcome is a record of timeless and classy rock'n'roll, which once again failed to win the appreciation of the masses. What do they know, right?
**** for Baby du Jour, The Great Divide, Big Fat Nada, Raw Deal, Don't Like Nothin'
*** for Big Time Love, Danger Waves, Subterranean Waterfalls, Hamlet's Brother Happy, Miss Val Dupree, Looking for the Body, Hey Now
Roy Loney & The Longshots "Baby Du Jour"
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