Back in 1980 I eagerly purchased the first single by a band called Cuddly Toys whom I had never heard of. I still have it to this day, through nothing to play it on! The reason for this was because the A side was none other than a cover of ‘Madman’, a song co-written by David Bowie and Marc Bolan but never recorded by either. I was most interested to hear it and was impressed by what the band had done with the song. An album, ‘Guillotine Theatre’, followed and to my surprise their own material was often equally good, if not better.     

The history of bands can sometimes be strange, amusing, or just downright interesting. The history of Cuddly Toys is definitely all three, but sadly ended in tragedy. It is far to long to tell here but should you purchase both this and their previous CD, The Complete Raped Collection, the sleeve notes tell some of their amazing story. I suspect the full story would make a very entertaining book. More information can be gleaned by doing a Google search for guitarist, Faebhean Kwest, which will turn up some very interesting interviews. They started life as a punk band called Raped whom mutated into the very Glam Cuddly Toys, then changed their sound to a more Glam/New Romantic mixture in order to appeal to the prevailing trend of the time. The band later split without having had much success in the UK which was a real shame because they made some great music.

The material on this CD stretches from 1979-81 so if you are not keen on punk, fear not, for there is none to be found here. The music covers their Glam and New Romantic phases and whilst there are some clunkers many of the eighteen tracks are well worth having. Personally I am not keen on some of their New Romantic stuff through the single ‘It’s A Shame’ is rather good, being closer to their Glam roots. A couple of their earlier singles also let the side down, ‘Astral Joe’ is a hideous sub Gary Numan effort and ‘Someone’s Crying’ is far too poppy for my tastes. However, there is a lot of good stuff here. Several tracks are very Ziggy Stardust indeed. Among my favourites are ‘Universe’, which is slow like ‘Rock And Roll Suicide’ and ‘Guillotine Theatre’ or ‘Broken Mirrors’, which are much more up-tempo. As with any ‘best of’ collection many of their true best, in my opinion, tunes are missing. For my money ‘Brain Saviour’, ‘My Commando’ ‘Time Warped Garden Of Love’ and ‘Alien’ are better than most of the tracks off of ‘Guillotine Theatre’ found here. So, if you like Cuddly Toys, and have the software required, buy the first album on vinyl and burn a copy onto CD for t