Style: glam rock
Label: Columbia
Year: 1988
Home: n/a
Members: Dean Davidson ~ rhythm guitar/vocals
Billy Childs ~ bass/b. vocals
Michael Kelly Smith ~ guitar/b. vocals
John Dee ~ drums/b. vocals
Additional: David Gibbins ~ keyboards
The bombastic edge & vacant love songs of Kiss meets the 80's glam of Cinderella ... from whom they borrowed a guitarist, an image & even were assisted in getting a record contract ... BF grabbed the spotlight big time with their self-titled debut, via the single "Long Way To Love", before soon hitting a musical ceiling & collapsing into obscurity with a second single, "Girlschool", & follow-up albums. If you can get beyond the whiny almost falsetto vocals that out highs Ratt's Stephen Pearcy & out costume early Motley Crue - though Crue remake far more make-up'd - BF's debut is a glam rock gem that doesn't worry about rootsy rock, power metal, big social statements or anything that isn't pure glam entertainment drawing on the foundation set a decade earlier by David Bowie, T-Rex, Gary Glitter, Suzy Quatro & countless others. It's full of shallow & overly cliched love songs typical of the 80's, with countless guitar solos & riffs to match, & an anthemic flavor reminiscent of Kiss. Actually, Kiss is much closer than not as when BF drop the tenor singing they sound surprisingly like Paul Stanley (i.e. "Save The Weak", "Fun In Texas"). These are the highlights of the album by far & if the band had been marketed differently could have saved BF from a early death. The weak spots of the album can all be blamed on weak lyrics which do little to help the music have any sense of individualism. "Girlschool", the second single which failed to ignite the charts, has an almost Spinal Tap chorus while "Kick 'N' Fight" drags its heals far more than it kicks & "Rock Revolution" needs a name change as its about as successful as George W. Bush finding weapons of mass destruction. "Don't Hide" isn't bad but is a Ratt knock-off & their not always the best band to be lyrically inspired by. Strange enough on the next album BF would pull out of the Cinderella shadow for a rootsier sound but the bad lyrics would continue to plague the result. BF, for all their playing skills, built around themselves a pretty small mold that held the best of 80's glam but at the same time showed it's restrictiveness very quickly. Somehow Motley Crue, Twisted Sister & other glam-esque bands were able to break the mold as while the image was glam the music had better street credentials. Sometimes it's amazing how shallow & cliché rock music can be lyrically, but then "Blue Suede Shoes" isn't really much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment