In a perfect world, Roogalator would have cut its first album a full 18 months earlier than it did, when the band was still brittle and the songs still fresh, and before a whole new generation of angry young punks rose up to carve its own noise into immortality. The last of the so-called pub rock bands to threaten to make a major impact, Roogalator was the first to suffer from the changing of the guard. One moment, they were being feted as the biggest thing since Springsteen -- or at least Graham Parker, whose brand of angry Motown finds more than a stylistic sibling in Roogalator's mutant funk. The next, they were yesterday's bill-toppers, and the days when the Clash and the Sex Pistols were grateful to support them weren't simply forgotten memories, they were forbidden ones as well. The difference is, Parker had a record deal to take his frustrations out on. Roogalator cut one single in the band's prime, then went out on the road and stayed there forever. By the time they came back to record a full album, they'd been playing the same songs for so long it hurt. But don't let familiarity get mistaken for staleness. True, the re-recordings of the band's debut 45, All Aboard and Cincinnati Fatback, do pale alongside the original single. But the imagery ("down by the banks of the O-Hi-O") remains just as potent an invocation of the American Midwest as it ever was -- think the Modern Lovers' Road Runner, if the nearest Stop-N-Shop was a three-hour drive away. And, elsewhere in the package, it's still hard not to get caught up in keyboard player Nick Plytas' Love and the Single Girl, a pop super-ballad in every sense of the word, and impossible to avoid becoming ensnared in the deliberately convoluted rhythms and rhymes that mark out bandleader Danny Adler's strongest compositions. The Parliament-esque Sock It to My Pocket, the '60s RB-flavored Change, and the punch-drunk Who-shaped blues jam of Water are gems in any era's language. But Play It By Ear did nothing upon release and, by the time Roogalator was ready to record its follow-up album, the band had already broken up. Play It By Ear's legacy, too, has been short-circuited somewhat, because better versions of many of the songs exist among the demos and outtakes featured on the Cincinnati Fatback anthology. Anybody seeking their first wild ride on the Roogalator, then, would be best advised to seek that set out first. Save this one to fill in the gaps. ~ Dave Thompson, Rovi

1		Get Ready for the Get Ready
2		Magicoooeee
3		Cincinnati Fatback
4		Sweet Mama Kundalini
5		Mind Breeding
6		Walking
7		All Aboard
8		Water
9		Love and the Single Girl
10		Sock It to My Pocket
11		If You Don't Like Smelling It
12		Change