A's, B's & Rarities

Album Review

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 — a treatment that Suzi Quatro has long demanded. Listeners could hardly be surprised, after all, as hits collection after hits collection has descended from the skies, to be faced with one more go-round for "Can the Can," "48 Crash," "Daytona Demon," et al. — but it is easy to overlook the fact that scarcely any of the same singles' B-sides have ever been collected together. Indeed, no less than seven of the 20 tracks here, B-sides one and all, are making their debut on CD, while four previously unreleased numbers come together to create the first truly essential Quatro document in years. In keeping with the remainder of the series, the album concentrates on Quatro's earliest years, the first half of the 1970s, during which she could do little wrong. Beginning with three songs recorded at the 1972 session that produced her 1972 debut 45, "Rolling Stone," including the archived outtake "Ain't Got No Home," the album then marches through Quatro's next seven singles, through to 1975's "Your Mamma Won't Like Me." An eighth, 1977's "Tear Me Apart," then appears in alternate — and unreleased — form, one of two cuts drawn from the initial sessions for her Aggro Phobia album; famously, the album was originally cut with producer Mike Chapman, before label head Mickie Most decided he could do it better, scrapped the sessions, and started again. The album then closes with another unissued gem, a ten-minute (Yes! Ten!) outtake from 1974's Quatro album. Heavily orchestrated and supremely overwrought, "Angel Flight" might well be the most adventurous track Quatro ever recorded, and it works sensationally. All of which means that it doesn't matter how many times you already own the rest of Quatro's hits. This package will wipe the floor with all that have come before.