Most cover bands don't get much respect, but Minneapolis' Hypstrz were one band who turned their lack of original material into a virtue. In 1976, when punk rock was just beginning to stagger to its feet and the garage rock revival was a few years down the road, the Hypstrz were playing classic rock & roll and R&B tunes from the likes of the Chocolate Watch Band, the Small Faces, the 13th Floor Elevators, Syndicate of Sound, and Wilson Pickett and making them roar like a big block Dodge with a full tank of high test. While leaders Ernest Batson and Bill Batson occasionally wrote an original number, they seemed to work under the (not unreasonable) theory that most of the best tunes were already out there, and they played 'em without a hint of nostalgia -- the Hypstrz weren't an oldies band or Nehru- and fuzztone-obsessed garage archivists, but guys who dug great rock & roll, and were determined to keep one particular strain of it alive and kicking (with the emphasis on "kicking"). In April 1979, the Hypstrz recorded a weekend's worth of shows at the Minneapolis rock club Jay's Longhorn, and a few months later four songs from those shows appeared on a 7" EP, while another 15 tunes were released on the 1981 album Hypstrization. Now, those 19 performances have been released on CD with 15 other tracks recorded that same weekend as Live at the Longhorn, and the result is 79 minutes of high-energy rock & roll, played with heart, soul, joy, and fierce attitude; maybe the guys in the band only wrote four of the 37 songs crammed onto this disc, but anyone who digs music that's tough, passionate, and muscular will listen to this music and wish he was standing in front of the stage, beverage in hand and shaking it out. Three songs from a 2004 performance by the latest lineup of the Hypstrz fill out the package, and prove the Batson brothers can still kick out the jams a quarter-century after the rest of the set was recorded. If every "bar band" were as good as the Hypstrz, maybe there wouldn't be a need for acts any bigger; at very least, it's hard to imagine most other bands delivering as much fun as there is to be had on Live at the Longhorn.
Many thanx!
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