Here's the second effort from North Carolina's best melodic rock export of the 70's and 80's Nantucket. This is a damned fine album, considering I've recently scored a handful of old vinyl, including a few Nantucket albums. It's far better in my opinion than 1980's 'Long Way To The Top'. The songs here are out and out rockers, reminding me of other rabble rousing outfits like The Rockets, or Bob Seger And The Silver Bullet Band on overdrive.

'Gimme Your Love' is the opening track, and sets the tone well. Great punchy mid-tempo rock with a chant-a-long chorus. Excellent start! 'I Live For Your Love' measures up admirably to a band like MPG for instance, especially those jangly pianos, though the sax through the middle quickly dispels that comparison. There's quite a bit of pent-up energy on these songs. Listening to efforts like 'Hey Hey Blondie' and the aptly named 'Wide Awake' makes you want to get up and jig all round the house! They don't give up there either. The track 'Your Place Or Mine' is an example of their good-time boogie, infectious as hell, and great live too no doubt. By comparison 'Just The Devils Way' would seem to be an adventurous workout: slightly drawn out, with some keyboard/synth dabbles through the middle. 'Is It Wrong To Rock n Roll' after a weak start, finishes off with a hiss and a flurry.

The only disappointment for me is the totally uninteresting 'Don't Hang Up'. Not a touch on the other great tunes onboard here. Sorry chaps.. I did hang up! One gets the impression that the Nantucket boys had fun putting this album together, judging by the sound and the goofy covershots. A surprisingly good effort as far as I'm concerned. Fans of the band will be pleased to know that three of these songs ended up on the 1991 live effort 'Still Live After All These Years'. - George Thatcher

'Long Way To The Top' is Nantucket's third album, having released their debut and 'Your Face Or Mine' the prior two years. They are coming at you very much in a radio rock direction, with a bit more variety in their approach (piano, sax etc), sounding more rounded out than the one-dimesnional approach of some of their contemporaries of that same era. In vocalist Larry 'The L Factor' Uzzell, they have a singer who straddles the fence between Steven Tyler and Tommy Keifer (Cinderella), but in a rough-house sort of way. The producer is Tom Allom, who has obviously added his weight behind the band, without over-producing it.

As for the songs, well they're a mixed bag, styles that is, and not the lack of quality. The album opener is the aptly titled AC/DC standard 'It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)'. Not a wise move to open an album I think, despite the fact it's dedicated to Bon Scott in the liner notes, but hey.. they did it anyway. Second up is 'Living With You', which is a good party time rocker. Light and refreshing. The quirkiness of 'Time Bomb' doesn't do anything for me I'm afraid, but they do improve things with a better effort on '50 More'. I definitely liked 'Media Darlin' and 'Tell Me (Doctor Rhythm Method)', both great cranky guitar workouts, whlist 'Rugburn' also a guitar based track has choruses akin to Airborne's material. Side two's material ventures more into the AOR/melodic rock arena, with keyboards coming to the fore. Tracks like 'Too Much Wrong In The Past', 'Over And Over Again' and 'Turn The Radio On' all hark back to classic Michael Stanley era radio rock, though not in the same class.

Not exactly first division material we're dealing with here, but there are enough moments of intrigue to generate some interest among the older melodic rock collectors out there. I've never seen or heard of any of their original Epic studio albums being made available in CD format, though there was a reunion album released in 1994, of which the details escape me. Anyone with an update please let us know - George Thatcher