I was a big, big fan of Shark Island back in the day – man that first major label record is a classic and the song ‘Paris Calling’ was all of my mixtapes! But after Epic failed miserably to promote the record the band drifted apart and I started to dig backwards!
I never managed to find any copies of the first indie album ‘Altar Ego’ from 1981 (Let me know if you can part with one) but I did score a reasonably priced Red cover version of their second 1986 Indie ‘S’Cool Bus’ as well as a stack of demos that were ridiculously good. This year ‘S’Cool Bus’ is being re-released by Deko with a couple of bonus tracks and I was interested to here what they had done with the album originally produced by the legendary Rick Derringer.
S’Cool Bus you see is just a little ‘unhinged’ including as it does the frightening faithful, ‘horns and all’ version of Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York New York (produced with the assistance of Bill Gazzari after they became the House Band at Gazzari’s).
Opening with ‘Deja Vu’ there’s a real familiar sound for fans of the major label debut and Black sounds great, it’s a nice chunky mix even if the keys at times feel just tad too prominent, but for a record of this vintage it’s clear why they were such a live draw and attracted the attention of the majors. ‘Sex Drive’ that follows has a Billy Idol-like sneer about it, but it’s ‘Excess Marks the Spot’ feels like the one that got away, a great song even if the chorus is a little clumsy it has that cool bass driven breakdown.
‘Here Comes Trouble’ is another solid rocker and the cowbell fed ‘Puss N Boots’ is a nice mid-tempo ditty but really only standard Strip fair (and not a cover of the New York Dolls classic that might have been more interesting). Side two of my original album opens with ‘Read My Lips’ a much slower song that builds nicely pushing out to almost six minutes, it was one of my favourites upon first listen and it still stands up nicely now. It is hotly perused by ‘Automatic Girls’ another solid rocker that just seems to run out of ideas and the aforementioned and ‘completely at odds with everything else’ cover of Kander and Ebb’s Frank Sinatra theme song ‘New York, New York’. All I can say is that if that floats your boat that’s fine.
‘Palace of Pleasure’ the rather commercial fan favourite closes out the original release and it’s another that underlines why Shark Island got the attention they did even if it does sound like the most dated song now in 2022.
This re-release adds two additional tracks – a rather nice live cover of ‘Bang a Gong’ the T-Rex classic the rest of the world knows as ‘Get It On’ (A studio version of which was the B-Side of the band’s second single ‘Hey’) and a studio version of ‘I’m Electric’ (Original Studio Mix)’ which is presumably the 1983 single mix (?) – it kinda reminds me of Billy Squier.
Whilst its great to hear this gem again, I’ll be honest it has dated, though for me there’s still enough magic to make it a worthwhile addition to your collection. Personally with the inclusion of third single A-Side ‘I’m Electric’ I’d have loved to have had ‘Kid Sister’ (the first single) and ‘Hey’ the second but I guess you can’t have everything!
7.5/10