Great White: Latest and Greatest

Does it seem like 1987 to anyone else, or is it just me? I swear to god, there have been more rebirths over the last two years of horrible bands then ever before. If the sixties gave us bad leaders, the seventies bad fashion sense, then the eighties gave us bad rock and roll bands. I’ll give you early AC/DC (pre-Brian Johnson), I’ll give you Van Halen (pre-Sammy Hagar) and I’ll even give you Metallica up to the Injustice for All album, but I cannot forgive this tired revision of bands that didn’t do anything but offer up misogyny, drink too much alcohol and have bad hygiene.

Great White was just one of the many in this genre of bad rock music from the early eighties. Taking their cue from the likes of Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Great White made some of the most forgettable rock and roll in of the decade. They rank right next to bands like Cinderella and Tesla — Great White was one of those bands that just didn’t have it, but some how they got it.

There was no Randy Rhodes or Sebastian Bach. There was no lipstick or charismatic singer. It was really just a bunch of down-home guys that wrote down-home songs that you might expect to accompany a cross country trip through the deserted Midwest (actually Great White was part of my cross country trip when I was 12. My the things I have learned.). But all in all they lack the certain punch that made rock bands like Bon Jovi or Skid Row or even Guns N’ Roses the big household names and legendary acts that they are.

So this collection of latest (which can not be differentiated from the “earliest”) and greatest proves to be just another attempt by a band to recapture something that they may have had for one or two summers trekking across the world in tour busses, drinking whiskey and being sexist. The music, if it isn’t obvious, is your standard 12-bar blues-based rock. They even manage to murder the unliving “In the Light,” originally brought to us by Led Zeppelin (who may not have been the best rock band in the world, but at least they acted like it).

If you’re looking for a kick in the old tight pants and want to relive the rock and roll eighties, perhaps this title isn’t the best reminder. You’ll find more use in reruns of Mr. Belevedere then you will this trite rock and roll. Leave the reminiscing to masters like Ozzy or Angus and put Great White into the great beyond.