Dress In Dead Mens Suits [CD]

Boz & The Bozmen started life in the late 1980s, when Boz Boorer was asked if his band, The Deltas, could play a festival. Some of the line-up couldn't make it, so on the spur of the moment, Boz said that his other band, Boz & the Bozmen, could. He'd got the name from a flier for legendary 60s club The Marquee - the original Boz was Boz Burrell of Bad Company, and that particular Boz & The Bozmen were opening for Pink Floyd. Boz rang round his friends to form the band, having already told the festival organiser that they were in the band. Luckily for Boz, they didn't mind. He'd met Steve Hooker when Boz was managing Essex blues bloke Howlin' Wilf (for god's sake... that name kills me), who Steve knew. Chuck in Johnny Stingray (Jonny Bridgewood, yes, him, the long-lost Morrissey bassist, who replaced Lloyd Tripp on bass in The Stingrays) and drummer John Buck, and the boys realised they should get it on for the good of British music (well, American-style): Boz & The Bozmen were born.

This is the first time that Dress In Deadmens' Suits has been available on cd. It was originally released in 1988 on vinyl, and Boz claims that it's his favourite album - of all time, ever in the history of the world. The tracks were remastered by Steve Hooker from the original master tapes, and there's two bonus tracks that aren't on the vinyl: "Red Ready Amber", which is on Boz's album Between The Polecats, and "Creepy John", which was on an album called Southend Connection ("Creepy John" is a cover of a song by American blues and folk musician Spider John Koerner, about a sex murderer). And you might recognise "Rock Ol' Sputnick" from Raucous Record's Twenty Blasters From Blighty compilation.

Unlike My Wild Life, which is Boz working entirely solo, Dress In Deadmens' Suits has a more varied sound, and must be down to Boz letting the Bozmen in on the act. Boz sings on eight of the tracks, while Steve does the vocals for "Midnight Shift", "Creepy John", "Wild Heroine" and "Catch On", and bassist Jonny Stingray sings "Slippin' In" (is it just my filthy mind, or does that sound rude?). There's a couple of Boz originals: "Drag Strip" and "Mars & Jupiter Stomp" and two by Steve ("Wild Heroine" and "Catch On") - the rest are covers. And it's the diverse range of styles that these covers are drawn from that makes the album as delightfully varied as one of those packets of miniature breakfast cereals that you take on caravanning holidays. Except there's no Rice Krispies that everyone tries to avoid.

There's not many rockabilly records that would feature a cover of a T. Rex song ("Baby Boomerang", B-side to 1976's "I Love To Boogie"), or segue into The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (on "Mars & Jupiter Stomp"), along with a Rolling Stones pastiche like "Wild Heroine". Perversely, perhaps, "Wild Heroine" is my favourite track on the album. It sounds like "Honky Tonk Women" and it's genius. The lyrics are where the title of the album is drawn from, and it very nearly didn't make it to the album, but as John Buck is a Stones fan, he insisted they include the track.

Most of the people on the collage cover are dead - Brian Jones (elegantly mining for bogies), Marc Bolan, Elvis.... In some ways it's like a Bozmen scrapbook: there's handwritten lyrics, a note from Boz about the backwards guitar on seven-minute "Mars & Jupiter Stomp", topless women (pouty Elana Fernandez) and burlesque dancers, trashy novel covers, a horoscope for Taurus - "Because Mars and Jupiter will be passing through your own birth sign after the 19th you simply will not have any reason to complain that your life is dull and uneventful" (Boz and Steve have the same birthday), a gig listing, a childlike doodle of The Bozmen, and then a curious newspaper piece about the band: "Sleazy Boz storms in with trash." Some of you are scratching your heads: "Dear ol' Boz, sleazy? Surely not! He looks like my uncle." But then sleazy is just the right word to describe the overall tone of the album, drenched in slinky blues guitar and Jonny Stingray's hip-swinging bass.

You shouldn't buy this album just because Boz is on it, just because he's Morrissey's guitarist. Not that it would be a bad reason, but it wouldn't be fair on the rest of the band. Buy this album because you want to hear something different, something that will make you dance like it's about to be made illegal. Go on. Do it.