With artwork that displays the Hanoi fondness for all things Japanese, the first Nasty solo outing offers a straight ahead rock track that picks up the odd reference from Hanoi, but is more middle-of-the-road than anything that was released in their lifetime. Nonetheless, fine display of songwriting that deserved more coverage than it received at the time. All other tracks on the single were featured on the subsequent album 'Beautiful Disaster.
The main track from the album of the same name is a mid-paced rock song that could have climbed the charts with another vocalist, but unfortunately Nasty doesn't express his lyrics with enough passion to convince. Apart from the title track, hardly worth buying unless you're a die-hard Nasty or Hanoi fan. The cover version of Johnny Thunders 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory' and 'Devil Calling' and 'TCP' were recorded on a Sony Walkman at a London Marquee gig, and this shows in the sound quality. Enough said?
With fellow Hanoi member Sam Yaffa on bass, this album finds the artist formerly known as Nasty Suicide continuing what Cheap and Nasty started, but without the need for 'outlaw' lyrics that can't possibly ring true when you're nearing 40 years old!
'Past Is Gone' and 'Vinegar Blood' are fairly adequate rockers with a hint of country that could easily be leftovers from Cheap and Nasty. Even so, it's ironic that Hanoi's groundwork helped Guns n' Roses find success, and now artists like Ryan Adams earn platitudes with a blend of 'Rolling Stones' country-rock that had been peddled for ten years or more by the man who called himself Nasty.
'Seven Days', written by Bob Dylan, displays an influence that Hanoi would probably have shied away from, but is nonetheless turned into a cracking rock tune. 'Mountain' and 'Reality' give further proof that whatever pharmacy gained, the rock world lost. This final album from Jans Stenfors is distanced enough from Hanoi not to repeat his former glories, but remains an interesting sideline on which to speculate where Hanoi might have been if Razzle had lived and the band had continued.
Nasty dispensing drugs? . . . now there's a controversial idea if ever I heard one . . . ?