Listening to the album at this remove from the original time, it's tempting to throw the garage label out the window and tar it all with the New Wave brush. This would be a mistake. Granted the ubiquity of the dreaded synthesizer might lead one astray, but the thing to keep in mind is the overwhelming desire of the time to be modern, at all costs. And what could have been more modern to the 1980 mind than that staple of cheesy Sci-Fi flick soundtracks, the synthesizer. Technology has recently made them relatively affordable AND small enough to be easily portable. Practical, in other words - much more so than the temperamental Farfisa organ, the keyboard of choice for first-gen. Garage bands. Also, as I believe I mentioned earlier, it was a time of sonic experimentation, a time when the boundaries of what was cutting edge and what was merely bleeding were not yet well defined. Remember, Talking Heads, Television and The Ramones had all advanced under the banner of Punk, so things were still relatively wide open.

Tracks 1 and 8 belong to The Fleshtones, arguably the most recognizably garage band of the setand, honestly, the only band involved in the project that I'd heard before. The opening track, "Shadow-Line", is so angular in its attack that it almost sounds as if it might be a tiny bit Devo influenced. There is a sense of the replication of the sound of machinery, anyway. Once the chorus kicks in, though, we're squarely in garage territory, rather than the factory floor. The harmonica at the end seals the deal. "F-F-Fascination" is even more rooted in the classic garage sound, perhaps more so than any of the other tracks appearing on this disc. That harmonica from the first track is all over this one, and the call-and-response vocals add to the "authenticity", if I may use so loaded a word. Their work here follows the trend of the disc - what was Side Two on the original album comes off better than Side One.

The Revelons took the number two and number nine slots. "Red Hot Woman" hearkens back even further than the days of the garage, back to when rockabilly stalked the earth. It's a stripped down homage of sorts to Billy Lee Riley, he of "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll" and (oddly enough) "Red Hot", which were essentially the same great song. It chugs a long on a 4/4 beat, with minimal Chuck Berry riffing under yelping vocals in the style of Mr. Riley. And then there's the 83-second-long, one-note guitar "solo". 83 seconds may not seem like very long, but it's a fucking eternity in the middle of a song that only runs 3:11 itself. It's simultaneously hypnotic and annoying. Their second track, "Cindy" has more of a garage tang to it, with the extra added bonus of being much less derivative. The "1, 2, 3, 4, love" vocal hook will stick with you for awhile.