Fastball
All the Pain Money Can Buy (Hollywood 62130)

Millions of people bought this album for its perfect lead-off track, the single "The Way." That song, like "A Girl Like You" by Edwyn Collins a few years earlier, was the song of the moment, a brilliant pop song that can be overplayed to no end and retain its freshness.

Unfortunately for Fastball, there is not one other good song on the album. Now, I'm not one of those people who buys a Smash Mouth or Sugar Ray CD and then gets all disappointed that there is not another "Walking on the Sun," and in fact I almost never buy CD's that have hit songs on them, so my assessment here carries credence.

"The Way" is track 1, and you literally may as well shut it off there. The album completely sinks within 25 seconds of track 2 ("Fire Escape"), with its jangly Beatles guitar intro and idiotic opening line "Well, I don't want to be president/Superman, or Clark Kent." Yuck.

Apparently the band has two principal songwriters: the Eric Carmen worshipper and the Lennon-McCartney worshipper. Lots of pop hooks throughout the album, but nothing as sublime as "The Way." Fastball threw themselves an unhittable curveball by writing the best song they ever will write, and having it get as big as it did.

Pity the poor popstars. They can't help but write these power chord progressions and sugar-sweet melodies laced with fake testosterone. In their hometowns across America, no one is heralding the popstars. We've all heard the Beatles before. Yet at the same time, need we necessarily encourage these impotent wimps with nothing new to offer? We'll take their "The Way"s, and their "A Girl Like You"s, but we are not obliged to stick by them through thick and thin. They are not rock stars.

For the record, if you have to listen to further tracks, they'd be "Out of My Head" and "Warm Fuzzy Feeling," unless you have a soft spot for bands like the Jayhawks and Gin Blossoms. I don't.

Of course, this CD has since found "the way" to countless CD shops, as Fastball discovered "the way" to one-hit wonder status after six months. Sorry guys, but you had to have seen it coming.

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Review by Joe Cords