"Rock and roll's a loser's game," goes a Mott the Hoople line borrowed for an epigram for this best-of. It invokes the story of this New Jersey band on two levels. First, these guys were smart enough to draw on slightly left-field influences while remaining sufficiently modern to gripe about the FM stranglehold of "Classic Rot." Second, like Mott's Ian Hunter, they bet big and lost big. This collection of semi-hits and obscurities might well have been titled "Work for Food." Singer John Easdale wrote that song for Hi-Fi Sci-Fi, the outfit's 1993 swan song. Imagining himself a few years past his minor stardom, Easdale sang of pushing a shopping cart full of Dramarama memorabilia, aluminum cans, and his baby blanket. The song roared with power chords, bitterness, and resignation, flipping the rock cliché "keep on rollin'" onto its side. Girls who don't count sleeping with the radio on as being alone, non sequitur rhetorical questions, promises of everything, all tied up with bashes and riffs and madly catchy hooks--these are the stuff of Dramarama songs. Typically, 18 Big Ones comes a day late and a dollar short--maybe the same buck Easdale passes to a street-corner denizen in "Last Cigarette." But it also stands as testament to the fact that, whatever else, Dramarama lived up to its end of the bargain. --Rickey Wright

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Dramarama has always been a hard band to peg. Since starting out in Wayne, New Jersey, in the mid-'80s, the band has synthesized early '70s glam rock influences with enough skill to avoid the retro tag at the same time that it's managed to avoid sounding current. The group's big-hair metal look and choreographed stage show were too slick to be alternative but the band members were too geeky and obsessive to be mainstream FM rockers. Auteurs Chris Carter and John Easdale must be tired of not belonging, because on Hi-Fi-Sci-Fi, they all too eagerly embrace the played-out grunge movement. The result is jacked-up, tuneless noise, but things are even worse when the group abandons the fuzzy formula to indulge in cocktail-lounge jazz. Only "Late Night Phone Call" recalls the catchy magic of early Dramarama releases such as Cinema Vérité and Box Office Bomb. --Jim DeRogatis

1987 Questiomark Records / Chameleon Records - 11 Tracks - UPC 033237482028