Gaye Bykers on Acid is one of the all time great band names and the fact that we know these four polite grebe Noddys are in fact Heterosexual Moped Boys on Cheap Speed only makes it the more awesome. The problem, as the patchy 'Drill Your Own Hole' LP emphasises, was that the band seem always to be groping towards a sound as magnificently surreal as their name - a chopped up, drug-fuggered, homo-erotic, Neanderthal electra glide. Choose a name like The Sundays, and people will NEVER be disappointed. They got close with the epic cover of the hippy song from Star Trek. Have they gone the whole way yet or will they continue with this titillating foreplay? The single (HOT THING/RAD DUDE) has plastered on it's cover a fun-string bedecked teen bedroom nightmare shot in which were strewn such ultra-hip cultural artifacts as Joyce's 'Ulysses' and Martin Millar's 'Lux The Poet'. Inside was a track that started-off with a Sam 69 killer riff and screamed on to sing the praises of a "Rad Dude". It's easily the best thing on the album. We get shagging anthems, golf anthems, shagging anthems, drug anthems, shagging anthems, anti-nuke anthems, shagging anthems, and shagging anthems. Sometimes the guitars jar nastily and GBOA REALLY motor. Sometimes Mary is lost beneath a clutter of Big Audio Dynamite-type white boy rap doggerel as on the track "M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)". Just as I was about to note how curious it is that the Bykers are at the weakest when dealing with 'social issues', they hit back with "Ill" and "Harmonious Murder", both of which are tight and righteous right-on hippy whines about man's inhumanity to Muffer Erf, I think, and both of which are the Bykers at their solid rocking best. Not the stuff my GBOA dreams are made of for sure but it sounds like they've been listening to something other than Edgar Broughton on 78 rpm, and that must be a good thing. They still lack the knack of crafting a pop tune probably because, despite the many rude and varied samples, they feel a little bit shy about blatant theft. In America, they take this band very seriously. In the real world they are inches away from a similar fate.

RATING- 7/10
-STEVEN WELLS

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