SLEAZEGRINDER (website)

Straight to the point. I'm such a busy man! These two twins of trash – "International Compilations Of Rock 'N' Roll Saviours" no less, and you best believe it! – are a condensed crawl through the slipstreams of the sewage and bilge blocking our drains, inboxes and mail-boxes out there. The Bourbon Records boys have got their hands dirty to bring you the best of what's out there. Sylvain Sylvain! The Flaming Sideburns doing Roky Erickson's "The Interpreter"!! The magnificently extant faultline staddling and faultless Deadhearts!!! The best (um, and worst) Sensacional Plasma tracks, Supersuckers, Dave Kusworth and Nikki Sudden (RIP) rarities!!!! A brilliant bubblegum go-going gone take on "We're Not Gonna Take It" courtesy of Thee Ultra Bimboos... and a version of Motorhead's "Hellraiser" by Livin' Sacrifice (who look coincidentally much like Girlschool) that is so Lita Ford 1988 without the pop-tart sheen and baby-oil that someone HAS to make another cheap biker chick film and have this on the soundtrack. Crystal Extasy should excite more than rabid Mike Monroe fans, who plays harp and sax on their "Black Roses", as it rewinds past his half-assed solo shit and stops the transcendental tube at the corner of Tooting Bec and Malibu Beach. OK, there's some sour milk off-cuts here (Zia Lindberg's "Fortunate Son" is a limp attempt that Pat Benatar woulda baulked at in 1983, and is maybe left to the most obsessed John Fogerty completists, if there are any) but, like, bourbon the drink, nothing's perfect, right? I know. I can take a left-turn at Antiproducts cartoon Sweet / Glitter Band glam pop too, but revel equally in the Steve Earle rough-cut country grunge of Gaby Savransky Actualities' "Good Luck", the Keef, Tyla and Darrel Bath sundown sambuca jam of "Flowers" by The Psyclones, and the stoner-slam-glam stomp of Cyber Jack's angry "Sugar Scales" that would cause the Backyard Babies to scurry back to their cribs.

Did I miss anyone out? I think so. As I say I'm a busy man. But I doff my ducktail to these dudes and bid you buy these limited releases and check out Baby Scream!!?! and their jaded Jacobites slit-eyed balladeering and the prime rib bar-room rock of The Love Injections and their "End Of The Line" which is everything Poison pathetically tried to be but instead could be The Crybabys...

...Cheers to Vol 3 chaps!

/ Stu Gibson