Waysted – Vices

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Review by Brian McGowan

Cherry Red Records

In 1983, after an enduring love affair with UFO, a brief flirtation with Ozzy, and a frustrated liaison with Fastway, bass player extraordinaire Pete Way founded Waysted. Now remastered and reissued by Cherry Red Records, Vices is the band’s debut, with Scot, Fin Muir on vocals, Paul Raymond (UFO) and Ronnie Kayfield on guitar, and Frank Noon on drums. And it’s a blast.

Paralleling the rise of Glamrock and Hair Metal, it was an album that tried to bridge the gap between the honest hard rock of the seventies and the burgeoning bandana rock of the early eighties, accidently creating sleaze rock in the process. It roams the cellars and basements of the down’n’dirty denizens of subterranean hard rock, feeling its way through smoky, sweaty rooms, howling and wailing in among the cranked up electric guitars and thudding drums. Mick Glossop’s unpolished production lets the raw, unadulterated hard rock do the talking, in a shrill, gravel gurgling voice. Kayfield is clearly the driving force, pushing the music along with simple, spare riffs or embellishing it with clanging guitar motifs and wiry axe work. The first three tracks, the strutting ‘Love Loaded’, the dark and downbeat ‘Women In Chains’ and the jangling, pacy ‘Sleazy’ are the picks. That said, ’Night Of The Wolf’, full of smouldering atmospherics and NWOBHM energy, and ’Right From The Start’, a bluesy, Faces like manifestation of post seventies hard rock don’t come far behind.

While putting this reissue together, the label discovered half a dozen remixes, done at Maison Rouge Studios, giving the songs much more of a seventies’ hard rock feel. These “previously unreleased” versions have been added to the original album as bonus tracks, and are a genuine ‘find‘, worth hearing in their own right. Surprisingly, given its provenance and critical acclaim, Vices failed to gain traction in Europe or the US. Listen and wonder.

Waysted Vices 20137 out of 10

Track listing:

  1. Love Loaded
  2. Women In Chains
  3. Sleazy
  4. Night Of The Wolf
  5. Toy With The Passion
  6. Right From the Start
  7. Hot Love
  8. All Belongs To You
  9. Somebody To Love (Jefferson Airplane cover)

Bonus Tracks – All Maison Rouge Mixes

  1. Love Loaded
  2. Sleazy
  3. Night Of The Wolf
  4. Right From The Start
  5. All Belongs To You
  6. Somebody To Love

 

3 COMMENTS

  1. Grace Slick’s retired hasn’t she? Think there was a feature in Classic Rock magazine on the Jefferson’s or maybe just on her within the last year.

  2. Why doesn’t somebody cover “White Rabbit”? Now there was a song…
    What’s Grace Slick doing now I wonder?

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