Fastway
Bad Bad Girls

"Bad Bad Girls" is a quintessential product of the British "Hard&Heavy" with an American flair from the late eighties, loud but light, following the path paved by bands like Kiss and Motley Crue; this is unmistakably foreshadowed by the two "mysterious" babes, scantily dressed, on the cover. For those who appreciate forays into so-called pop metal or melodic hard rock, this is, in my opinion, one of the best-executed works in the genre.

Fastway was formed in 1982 by musicians who had resigned from other, established groups: Motorhead's guitarist (and notorious drinker) Eddie Clarke, known as "Fast," had teamed up with U.F.O.'s bassist (and renowned stoner) Pete Way, hence the band's name. The two then recruited former Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley (a distinguished skin beater, akin to John Bonham) and chose the unknown Irish singer Dave King, a talented redhead with an intensely bluesy timbre. Way had to withdraw immediately due to intractable contractual issues, but the band's name outlived him, and with a new bassist, the quartet released three or four albums of heavy seventies rock-blues in Zeppelin's style during the eighties, receiving flattering responses even in terms of sales.

Irreconcilable musical differences then led King to leave, taking with him the other two musicians and leaving Fast Eddie with only the band's name. At this point, a new partner emerged in the form of singer, guitarist, and composer Lea Hart, a musician with a different background from Clarke, and especially different from those who had just packed up… more in tune with the eighties and pop metal, thus with a much less bluesy and more pop voice and compositional vein, always within the context of amplifiers kept strictly at maximum volume. After completing the lineup with a supporting rhythm section, the new Fastway released a pair of albums, of which this is the last, before succumbing like everyone else to the tsunami of grunge and breaking up definitively.

The album begins and ends blandly, with the first and last two tracks purely Kissofili and lacking personality, but there is a central sequence of seven tracks, increasingly engaging, fast, compact, and catchy as they progress, that more than justifies owning this work. Hart's vocal style, composed of few, repeated chorus phrases that are increasingly frantically shouted, combines with Clarke's peculiar guitar swells (due to the amplification used in that phase of his career, consisting of the Rockman guitar preamps patented by Boston leader Tom Scholz, which were all the rage among industry insiders at the time…) and, in my opinion, it works very well.

This sequence starts mid-tempo from the third track "All Shook Up" and ends with the ninth "Cut Loose" which at that point travels like an arrow at one hundred eighty beats per minute, and it should be listened to in one go: music as mainstream as it gets, but genuinely butt-shaking, with its inevitably stiff and explosive eighties rhythm (by the way, the drummer's curious stage name is Riff Raff, I think taken from an Ac-Dc song and anyway meaning rabble), Hart's streetwise and stubborn voice, the overall simplicity for once well funneled into honest rock, epidermal and garish but likable and compelling.