The 1981 Listening Post - Madcats - Streetgame

 Reviewed by Rob Slater

Released: January 7 1981 Madcats Streetgame Genre: Canadian Rock Rating: 2.75 out of 5 Highlights: Summer In The City Street Game - Nice start. Ah, that Canadian sound. Vocally, sounds kinda like Warren Zevon. Call It Quits - Not a bad song. Some nice harmonies. The second singer has a mellower, higher voice. Sounds like somebody I can't think of right now. On the second listening (kind of just skipping through the songs) I think it's better than I thought it was. Long Distance Callin' - Nice. Almost R&B. Really repetitious lyrics, though. Ooh, an incidental note. :-) Save Me - Decent song. I think the drummer is actually pretty good. And so is the guitarist. Probably they're all pretty good, but I don't like much of the keyboard sound and choices. Young Man's World - Pretty sure they stole the intro from Manfred Mann's Blinded by the Light. They're trying to be tricky and chang time signatures temporarily. It almost works. These guys are the Canadian Styx. Most of their songs, sadly, are copying Styx's earlier stuff, which in my opinion wasn't as good. And too much Dennis DeYoung and not enough of John Young's guitar. More You Than Me - Yup, Styx. Brown Baggin' - Okay, this song is the best so far. A 50s honky tonk piano song, well, only for a little bit. But I really find that I don't like the synth stuff from the '80s. I'm assuming the title is some sort of sexual reference. Execution - Well executed. :-) The guitar work is really nice, and the song works really well until the second break. But it doesn't totally kill the song. I Like It - I don't especially. But it's better than about half the stuff we've heard so far. Actually it's pretty good, but I wouldn't put it on a playlist. Damn it, there comes the synth after doing perfectly fine on the piano. If I had a quarter for every time they said, "I like it," I could probably buy a six pack of beer, and drown my sorrows from the worst of these songs. Summer in the City - Requisite '80s cover. What's the point? Actually, I know the point - it's a better song than all the ones they wrote themselves. And finally a song where the synth organ actually sounds pretty good and appropriate. They do a nice job on this. Not very original, but listenable. Harder Rock than the original. A highlight. Can't help but think their better songs, at least the ones that stuck with me, are on side 2.