Teaze

Hailing from Windsor, Ontario, close enough to sniff the pungent fumes of Detroit's legendary rock breeding grounds across the river, Teaze appeared primed to follow in the wake of '70s rockers like Kiss, Ted Nugent, and other purveyors of good-time, no-frills (kabuki-style makeup notwithstanding) heavy rock. While the band's moniker, and even its pretty-boy image, to a lesser extent, suggested latent glam rock influences, Teaze's music was altogether stripped of fey artifice for much of this modest but powerful debut. To wit, fierce bar brawlers "Flames Keep Growing" and "Come on Hold On" featured extended instrumental passages indicative of their sweaty birth on countless small club stages, and while other, Spartanly appointed riff rockers like "Rockin with the Music" and "Hot to Trot" proved rather frugal on inventiveness and rich in harmless clichés, their undisguised Saturday night excitement only made them easier to love. Even the aforementioned glam rock nuances that crept into softer fare such as "Boys Night Out" and "Dirty Sweet Loving" promised bad-boy behavior à la Mott the Hoople, rather than the risqué androgyny of a Bowie or New York Dolls, and outright misfires were confined to "Believe in Rock n Roll" (which merely gave a harder rock slap to Bachman-Turner Overdrive's harmless boogie) and the half-ballad "Open My Eyes," with its unusual lack of energy and barely veiled religious connotations. All of which made most everyone's first glimpse of Teaze quite promising, overall, except for the absence of a bona fide smash hit, so it was truly unfortunate that subsequent albums would see the band diluting its sound in search of that elusive mainstream appeal — to no avail.