Manual Scan

All Night Stand: Best of (Get Hip)
by Jon Sarre

With a couple of exceptions (most notably the first ten or so tracks, ‘specially their by-the-Nuggets covers of Them’s “I Can Only Give You Everything” and Max Frost and The Troopers’ – okay not a real band, but see Wild In the Streets sometime – “Shape of Things To Come”), Manual Scan‘s twelve year career was essentially a waste of a dozen New Years and damn near an hour for yours truly. Sorry, but these San Diego power poppers touch upon irrelevance more often than the Highs in the mid-’60s they aspired to. The stuff’s too poppy to be appealing to the garage sub-culture, and too retro to strike a chord with those who follow the radio programmers instructions of what’s happenin’. As far as a “mod revival,” Southern California freeways’n’strip malls sure as hell ain’t no swingin’ London. Never will be, either.
(PO Box 666 Canonsburg PA 15317)