Short on quality material

Review Score: (4/10)
After You're Never Alone with a Sczhiophrenic Ian Hunter had a difficult time coming up with original material. While Short Back 'N' Sides has it in spades both the quality and production on the album is uneven. Mick Jones evidently decided to use this album as a precursor to his Big Audio Dynamite albums. He experiments with weird sound effects, production touches and arrangements. Unfortunately, most of them don't fit Hunter's songs very well.

SBNS has its moments but they are few and far between. This remastered version sounds great but is less filling than Ian's 1st, 2nd and 4th solo albums.Mick Ronson is usually a stablizing force for Hunter. Here both Hunter and Ronson are pretty well dominated by Jones' hatchet job on the production end.

Rain, Gun Control and a handful of other songs make the grade. Still, if you're going to purchase a copy go with the 2 CD set. It contains an extra disc of outtakes and previously unreleased songs. Na Na Na Na has Little Richard written all over it while China features a rare lead vocal from Ronson.

After this Ian came up with an even worse album (All The Good Ones Are Taken)before returning to the quality songwriting of previous albums.

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