Keeps Us Off the Streets

Riddled with hits that never were and draped in a denim jacket that was just as flashy as any of labelmate Gary Glitter's sequined sleeves, Hello's debut album hit the stores in the aftermath of the band's sophomore hit, Russ Ballard's "New York Groove," and portrayed the north London quartet as the hottest band to hit the glam trail in at least a couple of years. Hello's breakthrough had always been threatening -- caught on the phone during Glitter's own Remember Me This Way movie, producer Mike Leander is heard proudly announcing that Hello was "taking off," a full six months before the group finally did. That they then promptly came back to land is one of those guilty mysteries that British pop will always have to live with -- Keeps Us Off the Streets also kept them off the chart. How different things might have been. Plans to release "Teenage Revolution" as the band's next single were shelved in favor of the non-LP "Star Studded Sham" -- a great record, but not a great follow-up. "Teenage Revolution," on the other hand, was a slow-burning stomp driven halfway between classic Sweet and ideal Glitter, and nailed into place by an insistent thumping harp. Elsewhere, a slamming cover of Chuck Berry's "Oh Carol" updated classic R&B for the requirements of an entire new generation, slapping handclaps and debauched guitar line included, while the title track is a superlative (if slightly Mud-like) celebration of wild wild youth finding salvation in rock & roll. There's also a reprise for "Another School Day," Hello's third single (from 1973) and, again, a rebel cry for everyone who ever thought education was simply an adult plot to keep them from more interesting pursuits -- "I'm just a bopper with the schoolboy blues." In an age when most of the most crucial stars had been rattling around the U.K. club circuit for at least a decade before they finally made it, Hello's fresh-faced grasp of what it truly meant to be "young" was as refreshing as it was honest, and it's that naïve insouciance that gives Keeps Us Off the Streets its greatest attribute of all. It may be decades old today, but it still sounds as snotty as ever.