Bad Taste Barbies
Bad Taste Barbies
Self-Released

I don’t know if this six-song offering from Britain’s Bad Taste Barbies is an ugly, low-rent, tin can glam rock demo or a transmission from Planet Trash that’s been intercepted and cleverly repackaged for distribution throughout the global drag community, but any cartoon character who likes to suckle at the heaving bosom of all things fabulously fetish will go gaga for the sugarcoated proto-punk and lipstick sleaze-pop found here. Responsible for this mascara mess are a quad of means and queens – known individually as Crystal Grenade, Kurt Dirt, P. Baby Fontaine, and Stu Gibson (yep, he’s back and stranger than ever) – who beat the hell out of decent decorum with steel stilettos and cat claw riffs.

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Wig Wam
Non Stop Rock’N'Roll
Frontiers Records

Remember when I reviewed the new Crazy Lixx album awhile back and went on about how their music fueled a lot of my wild nights when I was single and careless? Yeah, well you can throw Norway’s Wig Wam right into that magical mix too because I cranked the hell out of their first two albums, Hard to be a Rock’N'Roller…in Kiev and Wig Wamania during those days, like I wasn’t ever going to make it back home. The usual stand-outs for getting the party going were “Daredevil Heat” or “A Rock’N'Roll Girl Like You” or “Car-Lyle” and before you knew it I was actually reaching for a can of hairspray and some eyeliner. It’s been four years since Wig Wamania (the catchy choruses are still ringing in my ears) and I have no idea what the band’s been up to since then, but if I had to guess I’d say they were probably living large in Japan, where hair metal trumps all, soaking in their Eurovision* fame, getting fat on adulation, and writing more insanely catchy choruses for their new album, Non Stop Rock’N'Roll.

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