SHAKE CITY
Self titled

Featuring 12 balls to the wall rockers originally recorded in 1990 and ’91, “Shake City” is a prime example of how much great glam and sleaze rock was criminally overlooked when flannelette and nihilism replaced the excess of the hair metal days and we were all briefly seduced by the first wave of grunge.

That these crazily catchy tunes have sat gathering dust for 20 years begs the question – what else is out there waiting to be (re)discovered? Thanks must go to the lovely folks at Eonian Records for excavating this prime slab of sugar coated heavy rock from the days when hair was big, shirts were open to the waist, and rock boys were almost as pretty as their groupies!

Shake City featured Adam Shore on vocals – Warrant’s pre-Jani Lane singer - and Erik Turner’s cousin Michael Blair on guitar, and the Warrant connection doesn’t stop there. Shore contributes the bulk of the material, plus Lane wrote one track – the Warrant cover ‘Game Of War’; Turner co-authored two; and Kiss’s Tommy Thayer even has two co-writing credits.

Had they been on the scene just a year or two earlier, stompers ‘One Good Reason’, ‘Hot Love’ and the pop metal of ‘Lust & Love’ could have been up at the top of the charts nestled amongst your Poison, Warrant, Winger and Def Leppard hits. ‘Psychedelic Ride’ brings to mind the trippyness of classic Enuff Z’Nuff, and ‘Sweet Dreams’ is a Cheap Tricked-up slice of wonder.

The fact that there’s not a dud song here, that the band had the looks, an individual take on the hair metal genre, the attitude and enough melodic weight to sink Atlantis makes the disappearance of this album back in the day very very hard to fathom. That it has resurfaced and sounds so fresh and relevant and rocking is all you need to know – buy it for one of the finest slabs of rock you will hear this or any other year!

Shane Rockpit

www.myspace.com/shakecity11
www.eonianrecords.com

Thanks to Eonian Records for the CD