Assignment: Review an old record as if it were a brand new promo from a brand new artist (300 words)

The Guitar Institute set that worships arpeggios, paradiddles and other multisyllabic musical terms that sound like great porn names would hate this, but that's only because they don't got the funk, gotta have the funk. William apparently does, having grown up on a diet of hair metal and hip-hop. He obviously paid attention to his guitar lessons after school while everyone else was out playing football, but he cares not about technical ecstasies. More likely he sat next to Kid Rock in school, passing notes about wanting to nail the teacher.

The quintessential party cut is "My Kinda Lover," with synth-horns layered beneath happy So-Ca chori (there *are* actually two; the part that some might technically call a bridge would be a chorus in any other song and the actual chorus is a concert-screaming "Maah Kindahh Lovahh" that in concert will become "la, la, la, lalala" and nobody will give a damn) and huge drums that overdrive the shifting rhythms. But our boy Billy can do the rocker poses too - "You Know What I Like" chugs ferociously like a ham-fisted thrash band loosened up with a few shots of Cabo Wabo Tequilla with subtle hints of psychedelia, "Too Daze Gone" out-Robinsons' the Black Crowes' best efforts, and if you imagine "Whadda You Want From me" done by the White Stripes, you might just understand.

Too busy for ten songs? Fortunately there's one track that combines all of Squier's black-and-white influences into a gray-scaled three-or-so minutes of download fodder: "The Stroke" is the best AC/DC song that Run-DMC didn't sample and it doesn’t sound as dated as that might imply. It's absolutely huge sounding; expect for some producer to center it around some tribute to some fallen rapper and watch it play on the Grammy’s as well as it does Peoria, if not better.

(In doing this I found out that it is exceedingly difficult to do this without slipping in some cheesy "Back To The Future" intentional foreshadowing and that reviewing via stream-of-consciousness has limitations. I look forward to better efforts. And better records; I just got this one for a buck and felt inspired...)