The Peckham Cowboys - Flog it

This isn't a new album, but as it was sorely overlooked when it was released and the band are about to return with their sophomore outing and a tour then it's deserving of a revisit.

So what's the deal?

Well The Peckham Cowboys are pretty much the definitive bad boy band in the classic rock and roll mould, and a bit more than that.
To be completely frank about it debauchery rarely sounded so intoxicatingly attractive to the ears.

Everything they do hangs by a thread, or their studio recordings would lead you to believe this.

You could imagine that wherever they go that there's a trail of wreckage left in their wake.

Broken dreams, broken hearts and broken bottles is currency in their world.

When you tick off a list of the bands who wear their rock and roll outlaw status on their sleeves for the world to see it's actually difficult to fit this band in with them.

The unintentional remit seems to be to take the template that they hammered out and use it as a launching pad to anarchic oblivion.

For some it may be a little too much, a little too dangerous.

If you want to get on board with them then there's no pretense that everything is going to be all right.

Flog it is an acid drenched, vodka shot to the eyeball at 3am. 

It's a shotgun butt to the head and a mind fuck of a trip through the fevered dreams of Hunter S Thompson, but only if Hunter was a black seventy year old blues man from Mississippi who had a sixteen year old girlfriend and a hard on for punk rock and burning shit down to the ground.

So yeah, pretty much the dogs bollocks really.

Duff McKagans's Loaded - The Taking

Duff was always the guy in Guns and Roses who embodied the punk spirit.
In a band that was in danger of overdosing on attitude his cup runneth over with the damn stuff.
It was the same deal in Velvet Revolver.
So it's no surprise that when he does step forward into the spotlight that he carries that attitude over into his take on how rock music should be played.
Whether it's a track that is drenched in the sweat and abandon of the pit, or one that reaches out to fill stadiums there's a common thread that runs through it all, and that common thread is Duff himself.
Not a bad thing for an artist to be able to do. To stamp that personal seal of recognition on whatever they create.
The glory days of rock music may well be in the past, but music is cyclical, and if Duff continues to release albums of this standard then he will be in a prime position to reap the rewards when it comes back around again.
Nothing shady about this at all.
Good solid rockin' for the masses and well worth investing in if your tastes lean towards harder edged party time rock and roll.