Nightwork

Bitten badly by the disco bug when their self-titled debut album was left to founder with the rest of that genre, Network bounced back with a sophomore set that left nobody in doubt of where they wanted to fall. "We're Only Into Rock'n'Roll," the opening cut, might be the conceptual mirror image of Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music," but it's also an ass-kicking rocker, driven by a Richie C guitar that doesn't give up — not on this track, or any other. A vocal chord-straining romp through the oldie "Halfway to Paradise" will make you take note of the band's harmonic genius, at the same time as it catapults the modern listener's ears forward in years to that point, almost a decade after Nightwork was released, when every hair metal band had a favorite cover to massacre. This is prescient stuff, and make no mistake… you won't be the only listener who hears the opening moments of "Beautiful Lady" and thinks Aerosmith has just walked into the room. In fact, Network's only real failure was the fact that, image-wise, they did nothing to suggest that they were any better, or any worse, than all the other gangs of skinny dudes with Afros and ‘staches, who bared their chests in the name of disco superstardom. Because they were way beyond that by then.