The Real Kids - Outta Place / All Kindsa Jerks Live

After catching the Real Kids at the Atlanta Mess Around this year, I've had to pull out their records and give 'em another spin cuz it's all good stuff! This New Rose CD combines a couple of vinyl records with the Kids line-up of Felice, Alpo (bass), Billy Cole (guitar) and Bobby Morin (drums).

Beginning with the studio cuts, we get huge, almost Slade-esque chords, rapid-fire drums and patented Real Kids harmonies for "Can't Talk To That Girl". "No Place Fast" is a mid-tempo 60's garage rocker, complete with keys, "Senseless" is a frantic piece of melodic punk rock, "It's Been Real" is a fast-paced, almost Beatles-ish 12-string riff-rocker, and they revive Mitch Ryder's "I'd Rather Go To Jail" as an insanely frenetic live piece of wildness. They dial it back just slightly for the fun pop anthem "Every Day is Saturday" and the piano-pop of "Small Town" they put their own spin on the Everly Brothers' "Problems" before winding up with the title track, a swingin', organ-fueled bit of Kinks-ian rock'n'roll.

The live records leads off with "Outta Place" and "No Place Fast" ("from our new record on New Rose"), and then the terrificly frenzied revolving-riff-pop-rocker, "What She Don't Know". "Common at Noon" gets a pretty revved up reading, "Do The Boob" and "My Baby's Book" rock, they blast through "Can't Talk to That Girl" (with Billy providing some killer slide work), "Bad to Worse" is apparently a (then) new one that sounds just as good as their classics, and "She's Got Everything" raves so fast that Felice can barely spit out the words. Eddie Cochran's 50's rocker "My Way" gets the Kids' treatment and they close with, of course, their anthem "All Kindsa Girls", again with the pedal to the metal - this flies past! They do the breakdown from the single and get the audience to sing along and Felice adds an extra solo - coolness!

More great Real Kids rock'n'roll - get it!