Mud

It seems strange to see the output of Mickie Most's RAK label finally being taken seriously by record labels as well as collectors, 30-plus years after the imprint established itself as the epitome of disposable pop tunes. Yet EMI's ongoing As, Bs & Rarities series offers nothing less than the same thorough treatment that any other, more hallowed, label could expect. The format is essentially the same throughout: a gathering up of every RAK single (A-sides and B-sides) released by a given band, with the remainder of the CD filled with choice outtakes and oddities – an approach that the average Mud fan will relish. This is not the first time around for the bulk of the band's As and Bs – the German Repertoire label long ago created a masterful two-CD set around the same theme. But they still missed one B-side, 1973's "Do You Love Me," which now makes its CD debut here, and besides, two CDs of Mud can be a daunting prospect for the average consumer.

Mud's debut album is one of those records that truly sums up a time and a place – in this instance, England in 1974, as glam rock flirted increasingly gregariously with a similarly ongoing rock & roll revival. It was a period, after all, in which Bill Haley returned to the Top 20, Showaddywaddy was threatening to dominate it, and Mud itself had been launching some remarkably convincing Elvis impersonations into the upper echelons of the chart. Mud's producers and songwriters, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, certainly encouraged their charges' retro pretensions, conceiving both Mud Rock and its successor, Mud Rock, Vol. 2, as all-out party albums, with the band the greatest jukebox in the land.

U.K. band enjoyed some success in the 1970s with their uncomplicated blend of pop and rockabilly. Mention the name Mud to most Americans – even those neck-deep in the '70s revival – and the likely result will be a blank stare. In England, however, between 1974 and 1976, Mud was one of the hottest rock & roll acts there was, charting a series of monster hit singles and recording a pair of delightful oldies-oriented albums. They were never a profoundly philosophical band, and never pretended to be. The group played music to have a good time, and merely asked that others join in, which millions of Brits did for a few years.

This 7T's two-fer combines two albums Mud released at the tail-end of their career – 1978's Rock On and 1979's As You Like It, adding a couple of bonus tracks for good measure. Mud's prime didn't last long, and these two records definitely arrived outside of it, just as the glitter fad was winding down, much to the blissful ignorance of Mud, who tried to carry on as if nothing had changed. This is the most painful on Rock On, where the oldies covers – "Walk Right Back," "Cut Across Shorty" – are silly and anemic, where they're paired with oddities like the mock-reggae of "Slow Talking Boy," a spangly overhaul of "Drift Away," and the turgid ballad "Too Much of Nothing."

In 1975 Mud decided they didn't need to be puppets of the highly successful songwriters/producers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman any longer. While the duo had written all the band's hits like "Tiger Feet" and "Dynamite," the group had been penning their own B-sides and felt they could strike out on their own without striking out. Their first self-penned single "L'L'Lucy" was a hit reaching number ten and the album Use Your Imagination reached number 33. Not exactly smashes, but enough to keep the band in the spotlight. The album was a bit of a departure from their previous records which were loaded with covers of rock classics and seemed nothing more than placeholders between Chinn/Chapman singles.

Off the Rak: The Singles 1975-1979 collects all of the singles released by the British glitter/glam rock outfit for Private Stock and RCA Records after their split from Rak. Fans looking for early classics like "Tiger Feet," "Cat Crept In," "Dyna-Mite," and "Rocket" may be disappointed (2005's Rak anthology A's B's & Rarities would complement this set nicely), but the late-'70s were kind to Mud, producing enough quality material like "Show Me You're a Woman," "Shake It Down," "L'L'Lucy," and "Lean on Me" to warrant such a thorough overview. Despite coming off as a single-disc version of 2004's two-disc Time and Again: The Private Stock Collection, Off the Rak dutifully serves up the goods, trimming much of the fat from previous explorations.

The follow-up to 1975's Use Your Imagination, It's Better Than Working caught Mud continuing to pursue the twin directions laid out by their most recent hits – one eye on a distinctly Showaddywaddy-shaped brand of rock & roll revivalism, and the other firmly grasping the soft rock softball that had served former stablemates Smokey so well. Neither was it an altogether desultory decision – "Night on the Tiles" handed the band one more in the long sequence of hit singles that had sustained them since 1973, while a taste of Mud's eye for the unusual was delivered by an unlikely cover of Alex Harvey's "Vambo Rools." "Beating Round the Bush" and the amusingly titled "Blagging Boogie Blues," too, captured more than a soupçon of the quartet's early endearing goofiness, rendering It's Better Than Working a stronger album than might have been expected – even if it still can't hold a candle to a decent, career-length hits collection.

Mud (now Mud II) are an English glam rock band, formed in February 1966. Their earlier success came in a pop and then glam rock style, while later hits were influenced by 1950s rock and roll, and are best remembered for their hit singles "Tiger Feet", which was the UK's best-selling single of 1974, and "Lonely This Christmas" which reached Christmas number 1 in December 1974. After signing to Rak Records and teaming up with songwriters/producers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, the band had fourteen UK Top 20 hits between 1973 and 1976, including three number ones.

U.K. band enjoyed some success in the 1970s with their uncomplicated blend of pop and rockabilly. Mention the name Mud to most Americans – even those neck-deep in the '70s revival – and the likely result will be a blank stare. In England, however, between 1974 and 1976, Mud was one of the hottest rock & roll acts there was, charting a series of monster hit singles and recording a pair of delightful oldies-oriented albums. They were never a profoundly philosophical band, and never pretended to be. The group played music to have a good time, and merely asked that others join in, which millions of Brits did for a few years.

With their second album, Rio Grande Mud, ZZ Top uses the sound they sketched out on their debut as a blueprint, yet they tweak it in slight but important ways. The first difference is the heavier, more powerful sound, turning the boogie guitars into a locomotive force. There are slight production flares that date this as a 1972 record, but for the most part, this is a straight-ahead, dirty blues-rock difference. Essentially like the first album, then. That's where the second difference comes in – they have a much better set of songs this time around, highlighted by the swaggering shuffle "Just Got Paid," the pile-driving boogie "Bar-B-Q," the slide guitar workout "Apologies to Pearly," and two Dusty Hill-sung numbers, "Francine" and "Chevrolet." There are still a couple of tracks that don't quite gel and their fuzz-blues still can sound a little one-dimensional at times, but Rio Grande Mud is the first flowering of ZZ Top as a great, down-n-dirty blooze rock band.