TRAPEZE – Hot Wire [Rock Candy remastered & reloaded]

Rock Candy Records has remastered two underrated albums by TRAPEZE that well worth to revisit, now with a pristine sound & punch. This is “Hot Wire“.
Trapeze were initially one of the most promising and, later on, revered bands to have emerged from the UK during the Seventies. They blasted their way from obscurity to international acclaim, then, just as stardom beckoned, the carpet was pulled from under their feet when vocalist and frontman Glenn Hughes opted to leave the band, hitching his wagon to hard rock grandees Deep Purple.

The general consensus was that Trapeze would not be able to carry on after such a catastrophic blow yet, against all the odds, they dusted themselves down, retrenched and got back in the ring to fight another day.
Choosing to expand the band’s line up, founding members guitarist Mel Galley (later in WhiteSnake and Phenomena) and drummer Dave Holland (later un Judas Priest) opted to recruit fellow Midlanders, bassist Pete Wright (Robin George) and second guitarist Rob Kendrick.
Together they took the Trapeze blueprint of funky hard rock and injected it with a far more hook-laden sheen.

With Mel Galley taking on lead vocals, the first ‘new’ Trapeze album was this “Hot Wire”, showing real growth and the band’s sound evolving incrementally, there were now songs ready for the big arenas and with an eye put in the American market.
You can hear some of the catchy and melodic bluesy riffs that Galley would put at Coverdale’s WhiteSnake service few years after.

Produced by veteran classic rock champion Neil Slaven (Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, Stray) at Island Records Basing Street studios in London, the album contains a stellar selection of hard-hitting tracks, including ‘Back Street Love’, ‘Wake Up, Shake Up’ and the album centrepiece ‘Midnight Flyer’, an impressive and hard hitting funk fuelled track built to blow your mind.

For many years Trapeze’s “Hot Wire” was really hard to find on CD and as far I know, this is the first remastering treatment received by this really good record.
Great job by Rock Candy specialists.
Highly Recommended

01 – Rock Street Love
02 – Take It On Down The Road
03 – Midnight Flyer
04 – Wake Up, Shake Up
05 – Turn It On
06 – Steal A Mile
07 – Goin’ Home
08 – Feel It Inside

Mel Galley – guitars, lead vocals
Dave Holland – drums, percussion
Rob Kendrick – guitars, vocals
Pete Wright – bass, vocals

BUY IT
www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Wire-Trapeze/dp/B00UI751UY