Greatest, Vol. 2

Less than three years into a U.K. chart career that ultimately survived for a decade, Showaddywaddy's first hits collection served up a staggering nine hits — staggering, because even at the height of the glam scene's flirtation with vintage rock & roll, who would ever have predicted such success for such a bunch of unrepentant Teddy boys? Hindsight insists, and the future would prove, that this is Showaddywaddy at its best. The sequence of smashes that opened with "Hey Rock & Roll" in May 1974 and peaked with the chart-topping "Under the Moon of Love" in November 1976 saw the band swinging precociously between breathtakingly authentic originals and ferociously individual covers. Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat" (a number seven hit in September 1975) and Eddie Cochran's "Three Steps to Heaven" (a number two hit two months later) both blaze with a fever that is unquestionably a child of the glam rock age, but was sired by the sound of the '50s regardless. Elsewhere, Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang" is rewired for orchestral flourishes and an almost frantic tempo, while "Johnny Remember Me," one of the most potently spooky love and death songs ever exhumed, is rendered with such theatrical flair that one can only regret that the band never made a video for it. There are a couple of weak links — both "Rock & Roll Lady" and "Sweet Music," the group's second and fourth hits respectively, capture Showaddywaddy somewhere between its initial wide-eyed exuberance and later studied confidence and are further hamstringed by the absence of a decent tune. In between times, however, the band scored one of the finest festive records of the age, the grin-like-an-imbecile frolic of "Hey Mr. Christmas," while one simply cannot praise the rockabilly doo wop of "Under the Moon of Love" too highly. There are other Showaddywaddy hits collections, and most are far more comprehensive than this one. But completeness isn't always a virtue — sometimes you just want a band at its most blindingly brilliant. Here 'tis.