The 70’s were a time when artists and bands entered into often-onerous deals, given mere months or even weeks between album releases (never mind recording sessions), and when those were not taking place they had to go out on tour, where incidentally, their real money was made. The story goes that the band’s record label got tired of waiting for the one last album which would theoretically end their run, and so they hired Andrew Loog Oldham to cobble together a coherent document out of material taken from sessions recorded at Marriott’s home studio. Most likely none of this was meant for a Humble Pie album, but it was marketed and promoted as such. The band got together and toured behind it, then split when the tour ended. Ironically, calling in Oldham to salvage the material had to had been an extra kick in the pants for Marriott, who had been extricated by his then-current management from a huge mess that was partly thanks to Oldham’s mismanagement back in the Pie’s early days, and now he was being thrown back into another, even weirder mess with Oldham’s name attached to it. The album itself is a joke. It sounds like outtake, demo-level material which should have never been released. There are three Beatles covers here which pretty bad, and maybe placed here out of self-sabotage. First, let’s start with the production values, which highlight the point above about demo-level material. Not that it doesn’t sound surface-decent, but even a person not in the business can tell more care has to be put in the product before it was ready for mass consumption. Just inexcusable. Then the songs themselves – well, a few of them have flickers of the old Humble Pie fire, like the cover of “Let Me Be Your Lovemaker” and “Street Rat”. But all too often, the band sounds tired and just wants to give up. Hell, “Road Hog” is about that very topic, and it’s depressing to listen to. The absolute nadir has to be the ballad rendition of “Drive My Car”, where they waste Ridley’s vocal talents on a real boneheaded idea which only people fueled by large amounts of cocaine use would think works. It is simply inexcusable. In sum, Street Rats was just a crap way for the group to go out, but one also got the feeling they ultimately called the final self-inflicted wounds.
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