The Quireboys / Spike

In the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s there was a dearth of genuine rock and roll with the exception of a very few ‘Bad Boys’ and possibly the baddest of them all were The Quireboys.
Ronnie Wood had joined the Strolling Bones, Rod Stewart was a fluffed up poodle with a penchant for sad anthems and gay disco and if you wanted to rock out to a bund of junkies with drainpipe legs and pasty faces The Quireboys were the best game in town.

This release contains a compilation of their first two albums coupled with the best of their live albums and, separately, Spike’s solo album.

Anyone who ever wrote a review of the Quireboys talked about their similarity to The Stones or the Faces and its all true – they had the swagger, the raunch and the aggression but they also had a streak of snotty punkiness that the other two bands didn’t have and they are probably the real progenitors of bands like the Towers of London. Frankly they were a magnificent, sloppy, bedraggled and glammed up mess who happened to rock like the very devil and didn't care qho got hurt.

Spike’s album ‘Gods Hotel’ has more musicality than the Quireboys albums and probably deserves far more plaudits than it usually gets.
It is darker and has a much more American feel but the playing is powerful and the sound when it was released in 2000 was far denser and more sombre than most listeners could handle. It was about time that it was reissued and sounds as good today as it ever did.
One listen to ‘Skin’ or ‘Mercy of Murder’ should convince and there are 16 tracks of similar vicious quality.