Band:	Autograph
Album:	Sign In Please
Style:	Hard rock, Glam rock
Release date:	1984
A review by:	omne metallum

01. Send Her To Me
02. Turn Up The Radio
03. Night Teen & Non-Stop
04. Cloud
05. Deep End
06. My Girlfriend's Boyfriend Isn't Me
07. Thrill Of Love
08. Friday
09. In The Night
10. All I'm Gonna Take

Sign in as you mentally check out.

Ah, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, one of the best and most groundbreaking games for the Playstation 2 when released eighteen years ago (that long ago already?!), and one that hit upon that rose-tinted nostalgia for the decade where the coke-fuelled music industry threw huge sums of money at bands with the look rather than the talent in the hopes of finding their own Mötley Crüe or Poison. In their drug- and ego-fuelled haze, bands like Autograph were signed alongside the likes of Kix and Saigon Kick in the scramble to find as much talent as possible before the glam bubble burst.

While not necessarily as bad as many of their peers, Autograph were very much a forgotten quantity after the release of their debut in 1984, Sign In Please, except for the brief moment of misplaced deja vu when Aerosmith's album cover for Just Push Play looked strikingly similar to the band's front cover for That's The Stuff. However, once Rockstar Games rolled around in 2002 and selected "Turn Up The Radio" for the soundtrack for their game, suddenly interest peaked in this group of glam rockers (this is how yours truly came to know of this band) and the band found renewed interest in their work.

Cruel as it is to say, the band's relative obscurity isn't all too surprising when you listen to Sign In Please; "Turn Up The Radio" aside, the band does have more strings to their bow in the form of "Night Teen And Non-Stop" and "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend Isn't Me", but these are found in amongst some of the most generic filler in the genre. While the band isn't bad, the band fall into the unfortunate category of being forgettable, with the songs not swaying you either way and playing out with as much excitement as wallpaper. Autograph aren't bad but they don't have much in the way of solid platforms in order to showcase this, ending up with them often stifling their own attempts at standing out.

Case in point are tracks like "Cloud 10", "Thrill Of Love" and "Send Her To Me", songs that aren't bad but once they have come to a finish you struggle to recall much beyond vague ideas of what the song sounded like; sure enough they are listenable when they were on but nothing that'll make you want to return in a hurry. "Friday" is somewhat forgettable in practice but the concept is memorable at least, offering a story of what the Sunset Strip was like for those come the turn of the weekend and giving the listener a insight into the world that bore the glam metal scene.

Apart from Plunkett's somewhat unique voice and Lynch's occasional flourish on the guitar, the band stay in second gear for the album; they do well at producing the track but for the most part it is done with little to no oomph or character to stand out. Case In point are tracks like "All I'm Gonna Take" and "In The Night", so devoid of life that they could easily be mistaken for elevator music.

As mentioned earlier, the band do have moments where sparks fly and they show that they can push themselves to the next level when the inspiration takes them. "Night Teen And Non-Stop" and "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend Isn't Me" are fun listens and betray the rest of the album as exceptions to the rule. Then of course there is "Turn Up The Radio", the song by the band; Lynch's little flourishes here and there in the introduction add character and add to the tension before the sing along chorus kicks into gear. If the band could have extrapolated this across the album then Autograph's career would have been very different indeed. If the song has somehow passed you by I suggest you hunt it down asap.

Every genre has one or two bands that strike it lucky with one of the more prominent forgotten hits that those familiar with the genre will recognise but many beyond the hardcore fans are unlikely to know. Autograph had the unfortunate luck of being one of those bands for glam; while they aren't the worst thing to come out of the LA scene, they are one of the more forgettable beyond that song.