Sammy Hagar - Street Machine
Rock Candy
www.rockcandyrecords.com  

Rating: B 

Rock Candy Records is one of the coolest record companies around these days.  What fun it must be to release classic records that others have laid out to pasture.  A perfect example is the re-release of The Red Rocker’s Street Machine.  This is Hagar on the way to international stardom.  The album saw Sammy paying his dues.  Since leaving Montrose, Hagar had struggled to find his niche in the rock world.  His solo albums lacked the energy and fire of his live performance.  Street Machine changed all of that.  This album rocks, from start to finish, and sees Sam depend on his own creative juices instead of remaking others’ music, something he had been manipulated by his record company to do in the past. 

It figures that it was Sammy’s F YOU attitude that brought out a great album from him.  The blond locked vocalist/guitarist went balls to the wall and tore it up from beginning to end.  The disc starts off “Growing Pains” and slams right into “Child to Man” and “Trans Am.”  This is not Sweet Sammy on this album; this is the birth of The Red Rocker.  “Plain Jane” is one of his most underrated tunes and showcased what would become Sammy’s signature sound.  “This Planets on Fire” is a forgotten rock monster that sounds fresh and powerful now that it has been given a new lease on life.   

Rock Candy added two bonus tracks on Street Machine.  The first is Hagar’s take on “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” and the other is “I’ve Done Everything for You,” the song that put Rick Springfield on the map.  Sammy’s original version is superior in every aspect when compared to the bubble gum rocker’s remake.   

Street Machine should be added to your collection.  It will instantly make your “Best Underrated Albums of All Time List” and deservedly so.  This sucker flat out rocks.   

– Jeb Wright