Muscle Of Love is underrated IMO.
I gotta get my say in on the Cooper release.
This album, while not a sales leader in its day, is unique and iconic in a number of ways. First lets talk the original packaging. It came in a cardboard box. Stained looking. The sleeves had great spoofy photos of the band posing as sailors on leave.
There is a theme here, as there was on its predecessor "Billion Dollar Babies". In the way that album explores material success and excess, "Muscle of Love" does the same for ... say it with me now...S-E-X. Yes, if you are unfamiliar, this record is largely about dirty, kinky, cheap, sex... from several different angles. Its pretty obvious with the title being semi-slang for male genitalia, but then throw in the "love stained" cardboard cover (which IIRC had something similar to verbiage from condom packages), the song titles like "Never Been Sold Before" "Workin" Up a Sweat", and the title track. So damn cool, especially when you are a teenager, like a lot of us were at the time.
Musically this album rocks. Its right up there with BDB, and better than Alice's first solo album "Welcome to my Nightmare". This group had the formula down pat when they made this. It even had a high charting single, "Teenage Lament 74" . But some of the best tracks allude to sex, which may have affected how it was promoted in a lot of areas, and sales were low. Its a shame. I agree its wayyyy underrated. So if you liked BDB, be sure to get this. The track "Man with the Golden Gun" is interesting in that its kind of an out-take. It was written for the Bond movie of the same name, but something didn't work out and it wasn't used. Priceless.
I had the quad on a Q8. In my circles back then, the mix was considered very demo worthy. I have also heard the Q4. If AF can pull some veils off the tape fidelity with fresh re-mastering to HD, this is going to be good.
Enjoy folks. This one is a winner from AF.