Record: Zodiac Mindwarp & the Love Reaction "The Very Best Of"

There is something very impressive about taking your first album and changing its name to “The Very Best Of”. If you are of a certain age you will remember Zodiac Mindwarp. He once flew around in a space ship and then flew down to earth on the back of a jeep which drove a wall into the dormitory of a girl’s boarding school, playing hard rock music the while. Mr Mindwarp’s amazing powers turned all the demure schoolgirls into heavy metal sluts, with predictable consequences. I've already mentioned this in the context of discussing a novel by C.S. Lewis.

There is one big problem with this record – it’s not very good. The tracks all sound the same, and now that I am older and wiser Mindwarp’s spoken word intros and phrasings come across as the wrong kind of funny too much of the time. ‘Prime Mover’ is still great, though, but it is unfortunate that they did not figure the long intro as a separate track. ‘Backseat Education’ does the job too.

The cover of ‘Born To Be Wild’ is pretty woeful, though, suggesting that there are some things one should leave to the professionals.