Your Mamma Won't Like Me

The divine Miss Q's third album is, unfortunately, the least divine of them all, an album that finds her in catatonic chrysalis stage, midway through the reinvention that turned the early '70s' most convincing rocker chick into the later decade's homespun sweetheart. Maybe she was, as the song says, "A Prisoner of Your Imagination" -- or, at least, of her own former image, which was much the same thing. But there were surely better ways of unlocking the cage than this. Both "Your Mama Won't Like Me" and "I Bit off More Than I Can Chew," spun off as singles during 1975, offer little more than watered-down power balladry, still playing on Quatro's bad-girl image but determined that no one would take it seriously any longer. Neither is the absence of any of the stripped-down '50s covers, which had previously given her an excuse to blast out, remedied by a lukewarm "Fever." Thankfully, this diversion into mediocrity was swiftly remedied by her next couple of albums, and time has repaired any damage that they failed to address. ~ Dave Thompson|