Southern Culture On The Skids   Countrypolitan Favorites YepRoc – Yep 2124 Oh Lonesome Me - Muswell Hillbilly - Funnel of Love - Wolverton Mountain - Rose Garden - Let's Invite Them Over - Te Ni Nee Ni Nu - Tombstone Shadow - Have You Seen Her Face - No Longer a Sweetheart of Mine - Engine Engine #9 - Fight Fire - Tobacco Road - Happy Jack In the mid 90’s, Web Wilder made a cover album called “Town and Country” with songs made famous by country men like Waylon Jennings and Buck Owens and songs from the British invasion like Small Faces’ “My mind‘s Eyes” and King Size Taylor’s “Short On Love”. Released one year after the raw “Doublewide And Live”, SCOTS's “Countrypolitan Favorites” is built upon the same pattern. The band cover with equal pleasure The Who’s Happy Jack (with a celtic twist), the Kink’s Muswell Hillbilly or Slim Harpo “Te Ni Nee Ni Nu” and The Byrds’ “have You Seen Her Face”. But the trio is never where you expect them, turning a country song into a rock or changing a British beat into a bluegrass tune. One of the band’s main inspiration, Creedence Clearwater Revival, is well represented with Fight Fire from the Gollywogs days (available on the nuggets comp), Tombstone Shadow (almost with bluegrass harmonies) and you find that specific Fogerty’s guitar groove on the Nashville Teens’ “Tobacco Road”. Another good and rather unexpected surprise is a cover of T-Rex Life is a Gas, the improbable but perfectly done wedding of George Jones and Tammy Wynette with Marc Bolan. On the country side Roger Miller’s “Engine Engine Number 9” is quite close to the original but Miller (Rick) has added a surf guitar solo in the middle. Another country tune, Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me” is also rocked up. But the real revelation of this platter is Mary Huff’s vocal performance. She already proved she could sing on previous albums but you find her here on super form with Funnel of Love and her duet on Let’s Invite Them Over. And with Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden” she simply steals the show. With “Countrypolitan Favorites”, SCOTS proved you could do a masterpiece with an all cover album and release here one of their strongest and best effort. Fred "Virgil" Turgis         Girlfight Sympathy For The Record Industry SFTRI 266CD Girlfight - Whole Lotta Things - El Mysterioso - Twistin' On A Red Hot Spike - Hey Chuck Berry - Wheels Girlfight is a 6 track mini cd/10" released in 1993 made of 2 instrumentals and 4 vocals numbers with a lot of blues influences in it. The title track is a solid garage rocker with excellent guitar parts and screams from Mary Huff. Whole Lotta Things has a Diddley beat with a bit of country twang added to make good measure. Bo Diddley's influence is also present on "Hey Chuck Berry" which is a reved up version of the melody of "Hey Bo Diddley" that chases into the Cramps territories with wild guitar and larsen. "El Mysterioso", is an instrumental with screamin sax that would make the perfect soundtrack for a film noir or a spy movie that'd take place in a strip club. "Twistin' (On a Red Hot SPike) is a very dark number that almost sounds like an early Cure song in places (listen to the guitar). The EP ends with a very loose cover of The String-A-Longs' Wheels recorded "on a cassette deck in a garage somewhere in Orange". Fred "Virgil" Turgis