Sweet “Give Us a Wink” 1976. Today, February 23rd, would have been Sweet founding member and bassist Steve Priest’s 75th birthday (b. 1948, d. 2020). Give Us a Wink was Sweet’s fourth studio LP and the first to be entirely written and produced by the band members. It hit #27 in the US but didn’t chart in England, Sweet’s home country. Hard and fast glam rock, Give Us a Wink is overblown 70’s awesomeness with intricate guitar solos and sometimes wailing operatic vocals (“White Mouse” has all of that and more), it’s what the UK punk movement was directly rebelling against. But it’s a really really good time! Our version is the US Capitol Records release, which flipped the European RCA sides A and B and adds the song “Lady Starlight” which originally appeared on the European versions of Desolation Boulevard (1974). Sweet released three singles from Give Us a Wink: “Action” (which leads off the US version) which went to #20 in the US and to #15 in the UK; according to Wiki it’s a criticism of the music press’s coverage of Sweet and has a “masked backwards vocal with the words ‘You kiss my arse.'” The other two singles were “The Lies in Your Eyes” (#35 UK) and “4th of July” (only in Australia where it failed to chart).