Crazy Squeeze, please!

It's been a couple of years since I last posted on the world famous Crazy Squeeze, and the glam/punk supergroup has since turned out a debut single and self titled LP to deafening acclaim. You may have heard the details on Entertainment Tonight. Girls screamed, men raged in envy, and there was unprecedented mayhem in dive bars and hair salons up and down the left coast. Rampant dancing in the streets spurred severe legal measures on the part of irate Hollywood officials. A Rolling Stone cover shoot was unfortunately scrapped due to the antics of a temperamental giraffe. After many months spent waiting with bated breath and writing strongly worded letters to the powers that be, we finally get the band's second single. Brought to you by intercontinental label titans Rapid Pulse and No Front Teeth Records, it further propels The Crazy Squeeze into the thick of the "best band in the world" conversation.

LP track "Younger Girl" sounds so much like The Boys that I had to double check 16 times to make sure it actually wasn't The Boys. This is the stuff, man: glammy, super poppy punk rock n' roll lamenting every rock heartthrob's most perplexing moral dilemma ("What can you do/With a girl like that?"). This one will have you shaking your ass in no time flat, and that chorus is dangerously contagious. No doubt Johnny Witmer is a living legend of punk rock, but I don't think I truly realized just how good of a guitar player he was until I heard him in this band. And even within our tiny little slice of the underground, Frankie Delmane is a criminally underrated songwriter. It's simply unfair that the man doesn't own a mansion or at least have a sandwich named after him.

Not content to just emulate The Boys, The Crazy Squeeze went so far as to cover the classic "Terminal Love" on the B-side. Honest John Plain approved so highly that he actually went in and played lead guitar on this track! This rendition is faithful to the original but far from a straight copy. They've given the chorus a bit of an extra bite, and I dig what they've done with the harmonies. File this one under, "I love the original, and I love the cover". This is not the same version that appeared on the band's CD, so prepare to pay up if you're a Crazy Squeeze completist!

All in all, this is everything a great rock n' roll single should be. You get a stone cold smash hit, a B-side you'll actually want to listen to, and cover art suitable for framing. Five bucks no longer gets you a six pack or a decent adult magazine, but it will land you this hot slab of wax. Pop on over to Underground Medicine for ordering info. If you don't love this record, you're crazy. Pun intended.


-L.R.

https://www.facebook.com/thecrazysqueeze
http://www.undergroundmedicine.com/rapidweb/
http://www.nofrontteeth.co.uk/