5a. Love and Rockets, 'Express'

I wonder if the reason we - and by we I mean my group of friends in high school, particularly 5 guys I affectionately refer to now as "The 5 Musketeers," in which group both Gaz and I are included - loved L&R so much was because they'd been in Bauhaus. 'Cause upon critical re-evaluation, frankly, they're not that good. It saddens me to say this, let alone publicly, but it's true. At root, L&R were basically a fair-to-middling UK rock band with the added cachet of "ooh, they were 3/4 of Bauhaus!" Which means the whole was clearly greater than the sum of its parts. The cover of "Ball of Confusion" is nice enough (and oh-so-'80s-British, covering "political" Motown), and "Yin and Yang the Flower Pot Man" is self-indulgence that actually works, nearly akin to perforamnce art without the visuals. But the bulk of the rest is mumbo-jumbo lyrics fronting faux-"alternative" pop-rock. Ah, teenage heroes... C