Love/Hate

Wasted In America ROCK CANDY

Almost-were’s second album.

Love/Hate were the most glorious failures in an age of glorious failures. They arrived in the dog days of the glam-metal era, waving Budweiser can crucifixes and primed for fame. But fame never arrived and the crucifixes ended up crushed, along with Love/ Hate’s hopes, dreams and egos.

Wasted In America was their second album, originally released in 1992. Lousy timing, record label ructions and sheer public indifference to a band that came on like Faster Pussycat playing at being Jane’s Addiction conspired to kneecap it on the starting line.

Which was a shame, because no one else was doing what Love/Hate were doing. The Sunset Strip might have been their natural habitat, but the title track and Spit were slyer and funkier than anything else crawling out of the Cathouse on its hands and knees, while singer Jizzy Pearl – still the best worst name in rock’n’roll history – could out-sneer the best of ’em.

By the end of the year, Pearl was crucifying himself on the Hollywood sign in an attempt to drum up interest in his band. It was a brilliantly dumb stunt, one doomed to end in indignity. But then that was Love/Hate all over.