Built For Speed Stray Cats

• 1 Rock This Town 03:25
• 2 Built For Speed 02:54
• 3 Rev It Up And Go 02:28
• 4 Stray Cat Strut 03:16
• 5 Little Miss Prissy 03:00
• 6 Rumble In Brighton 03:13
• 7 Runaway Boys 03:00
• 8 Lonely Summer Nights 03:18
• 9 Double Talkin' Baby 03:04
• 10 You Don't Believe Me 02:55
• 11 Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie 02:20
• 12 Baby Blue Eyes 02:50
• Total Runtime 35:43

Info for Built For Speed

„Built for Speed“ is the third American album from the rockabilly band Stray Cats. It was the most successful record for the band, with the videos for songs such as 'Rock This Town' and 'Stray Cat Strut' reaching MTV regular rotation status.

This album is a compilation of 12 songs taken from the band's first two albums which were released in the UK. Six songs from Stray Cats and five songs from Gonna Ball plus the title track, which had not previously been released in the UK. The title track can also be heard in the 1984 film Surf II.

'In 1982, the unexpected success of the Stray Cats' American debut, Built For Speed, made America aware that rockabilly, previously believed to be extinct, was actually alive and well somewhere in New Jersey (though the evidence had to be taken to England before anyone would notice). Pulling together six songs from the Stray Cats' self-titled debut, five tunes from the follow-up Gonna Ball, and one previously unreleased number (the title song), Built For Speed is song-for-song the group's strongest album.' (All Music Guide)

Brian Setzer, guitars, lap steel guitar, vocals
Lee Rocker, bass, electric bass, vocals
Slim Jim Phantom, drums, vocals

Stray Cats
With high-blown quiffs and 50s ‘cat’ clothes, Brian Setzer (10 April 1959, Massapequa, New York, USA; guitar/vocals), Lee Rocker (b. Leon Drucker, 3 August 1961, Long Island, New York, USA; double bass) and Slim Jim Phantom (b. Jim McDonnell, 20 March 1961; drums) emerged from New York’s Long Island as the most commercially viable strand of the rockabilly resurgence in the early 80s - though they had to migrate to England initially to find chart success. Their exhilarating repertoire was dominated by the works of artists such as Carl Perkins and Eddie Cochran in addition to some stylized group originals, but their taste was sufficiently catholic to also acknowledge the influence of later rock ‘n’ roll practitioners such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and Joe Ely. Probably their most iconoclastic re-working, however, was their arrangement of the Supremes’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ that appeared on the b-side of their second single, 1981’s ‘Rock This Town’. This shared the same UK chart position as their earlier, debut hit, ‘Runaway Boys’, reaching number 9. ‘Stray Cat Strut’, produced by Dave Edmunds, was another hit as was the trio’s debut album, but 1981 closed with the comparative failure of both Gonna Ball and ‘You Don’t Believe Me’.

The band was buoyed by the US success of Built For Speed, however, which combined the best of the two UK albums and rocketed to number 2 on the album charts, and the belated Top 10 success of ‘Rock This Town’, ‘Stray Cat Strut’, and ‘(She’s) Sexy + 17’. Following the release of Rant N’ Rave With The Stray Cats the band fell apart. Rocker and Phantom amalgamated - as Phantom, Rocker And Slick - with guitarist Earl Slick with whom they appeared on a star-studded televised tribute to Carl Perkins, organized by Edmunds in 1985, and released two lacklustre albums. Setzer released a solo album before reuniting briefly with Phantom and Rocker in order to record 1986’s Rock Therapy. A more solid reunion took place in 1988, and the trio returned to the lower reaches of the UK charts in 1989 with ‘Bring It Back Again’. The attendant Blast Off! was a disappointment, however, and after three more albums the unit disbanded. Setzer went on to greater success in the late 90s when his 16-piece orchestra spearheaded America’s swing revival. Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker resurfaced as the Swing Cats, but reunited with Setzer in 2004 for a series of live dates. (Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music)

This album contains no booklet.