Captain Oi!
1977
Life On The Line
About This Album
Eddie & the Hot Rods' much-anticipated second album appeared in fall 1977, on the heels of the band's biggest hit single yet, the gloriously anthemic "Do Anything You Wanna Do." Like that attraction, Life on the Line revealed a considerably more mature musical outlook than did its predecessor, the fury-whipped Teenage Depression -- aware that there was no point in pursuing their original whiplash R&B-soaked visions in the face of the ever-accelerating hordes of punk, the Hot Rods swerved into a hard-hitting prototype of what would later become power pop, awash with guitars and riffs, but clinging to some genuinely memorable melodies, too. Of course, the band did not wholly eschew their past -- excuse the young Steve Lillywhite's sparkling production, and both the Pistols-guitar powered "Quit This Town" and the premonitory closer, "Beginning of the End" would readily have fit into Teenage Depression. Flip the coin, however, and the instrumental "We Sing...The Cross" reached far beyond any musical pastures the band had hitherto grazed, toward the same extremes of tension and release that made the early Television such a dynamic experience.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 8)

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