Album Review:

Outside of the two excellent Capitol albums that he put his name on ( Surf Age, Hot Rod Dance Party ) most of the other projects Jerry Cole masterminded lie in obscurity. Cole's output outside the Capitol realm usually featured retreads of the capitol album tracks under different titles and/or Cole's singing hot rod lyrics over a simple backing track. These releases were mainly relegated to budget labels such as Crown, however, in the case of the Riser's She's A Bad Motorcycle; Cole deviates from his regular formula for a brief moment. Two elements make Motorcycle stand out from the rest of Cole's output. The first - all tracks are original to this album (sans the title track). Second is the addition of two other vocalists. Presumably, to limit the need for overdubbing, none of the numbers feature any background harmonies - just strophic three-part harmony that follows the melody. In fact, the only instances of any counterpoint on the entire album are the bass line in 'Pico Hornet #28' and the two-syllable echo in 'Cruisin''. 

While the album does feature a few "okay" moments ('Pico Hornet #28', 'Cruisin'', 'Turn Her On'), many of the other tracks tend to wander on and on with no semblance of musical form or direction. 'Chopped and Bobbed 74' drags along aimlessly with strange instrumental breaks inserted between choruses and verses; it's almost like they created a backing track and tried to write a song over top of it. Likewise, catastrophes such as '650 cc.', 'Steel Shoe,' '250 Scrambler' all feature a puzzling number of key changes towards the fadeout that makes the vocal trio strain to reach notes. Moreover, the falsetto voice in most of these numbers is excruciating - notably in 'Knobber Hill.' Many of these poorly executed numbers could've benefited from either overdubs or being left as instrumentals, as evidenced in '305 Dream', which features some nice guitar work from Cole but is marred by poor vocal execution. 'Match the Test' sounds like a rewrite of the Rip-Chords' 'Hey Little Cobra,' and the remaining number, 'Wash Wax and Shine,' sounds unfinished. Ironically, the album's best compositional element is probably the title song which had been released as a single by the Crestones earlier in the year and was not penned by Cole.

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Is She's A Bad Motorcycle worth seeking out? In a word...no. While it may possess 12 forgotten vocal tracks, it's of little interest, and production values are so low that, unless you're a completist, you might as well pass this one up.