We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It - Bostin' Steve Austin

Reviews of the band formerly known as We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It's album Bostin' Steve Austin (often shortened to the Fuzzbox's classic debut) highlight its blend of loud, sometimes controversial punk-pop with a raw, amateurish energy, characterized by creative risks and a unique irreverence. Reviewers generally praise the album's originality, artistic fearlessness, and clever hooks, though some note the loss of this distinctiveness when the band later smoothed its sound as Fuzzbox. 

Watching The Chart Show’s Indie Chart and four young women are a top ten staple with their single XX Sex/Rules and Regulations in 1986. They have multi coloured hair and clothes and who you would have to say were, at that point, not the most musically proficient. They had bought a distortion pedal and had become the magnificently named We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use it. They followed it up with Love Is The Slug which went Top 40 and with John Peel and Janice Long championing them and an appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test with a violin that sounds as if they are strangling a cat. They had something, and you would not say that they were not entertaining which we all forget, myself included, is what music is meant to be about. 

Bostin’ (seemingly means very good in Birmingham) Steve Austin is twelve tracks, eleven originals and a rousing cover of Spirit in the Sky. Each track has its merits with distortion pedal and pounding drums the main staple and the odd saxophone thrown in for good measure. They all singalong in harmony for the excellent What’s the Point and Love is the Slug. Hollow Girl highlighted lead singer, Vix, voice and showed they could do an atmospheric song if they needed to, it’s a nice contrast to the rest of the album.

They returned as just Fuzzbox and as polished pop stars a couple of years later but smoothing out the rough edges they had sadly lost something.

Ripped to MP3

A1 - Love Is the Slug

A2 - Wait and See

A3 - Jackie

A4 - Spirit in the Sky

A5 - X X Sex

A6 - Alive

B1 - What’s the Point

B2 - You Got Me

B3 - Hollow Girl

B4 - Console Me

B5 - Rules and Regulations

B6 - Preconceptions