The Best Of Faces: Good Boys... When They're Asleep...

This album arrives as a timely reminder to all the whining, sour-faced, hard-done-by miseries who pass themselves off as today's pop stars that there once was a time, in the early-'70s, when it was the bounden duty of every single one of them to have it fucken large. That's what they existed for, that's what we paid them for and that's what they did; they had it fucken large.

And the Faces, well, they had it the fucken largest of the lot. And like it or not, they had it large in the grand 'Give 'er one for me, George' tradition. No matter where they were - on Top Of The Pops, in the studio, onstage, at your party, at their own parties - they approached all they did with the thoughtless gusto of the seasoned gatecrasher.

Unencumbered by guilt, saturated in guile, untroubled by that Spinal Tap sexist/sexy conundrum, they clung to the crack like the ageing mods they were, lording it up as if their very lives depended upon it, scoffing down fame and all its accoutrements with an appetite borne of the canny knowledge that that which is so easily won is just as easily lost. In short, they seemed to suffer from the illusion that an endless river of free booze and a veritable army of adoring female admirers somehow added up to fun. Extraordinary!



This, one must admit, does absolutely naff-all to further the cause of womankind to be rightfully considered as man's equal (or better) but unfortunately, with our current crop of pop stars so mewling and emasculated, it just sounds kinda great.

As does 'Pool Hall Richard'. And 'Had Me A Real Good Time' is another corker in the same throbbing vein. 'Borstal Boys' another. And on... And even when they got all sentimental, like wot they do on 'Sweet Lady Mary' and 'You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything', it's like blathering through a hangover, quickly turning from soppy to seductive at the slightest hint of a shag. There's life here, and energy, and joy... essentially all the stuff that's missing today.

The Faces were the fag stubbed out in the vol-au-vent of rock. They pissed on your bog seat, pulled your girlfriend, drank all your dad's whiskey, crashed out in the bath and you'd still make them toast in the morning. Glad to do it. They had charm. Just look at those grins! Cheeky fuckers.

Nervous exhaustion? Make mine a double!