"Hey don't forget to get drunk out there, throw up, get busted, get sent to detox ­ it's rock n roll . . . " So this is what would happen if you took the Ramones and The Commitments and smashed them together into one band . . . cool. It's the ultimate punk rock bar band, playing two-minute, loud, fast, rockin' versions of tunes you know like Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour," James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," Otis Redding's "Shake," and Sam and Dave's "Hold On I'm Coming." There's also some you might not know like "Riot On Sunset Strip" and "Silverspoonpunkthunk." The cool thing is they've got such a solid sound, that if you don't know the songs, you'd have no idea which ones are covers and which aren't ­ if any aren't that is ­ see, I don't know. This is what all bar bands should aspire to be . . . excellent. And just in case you were thinking 'sounds like Me First and The Gimmie Gimmies,' well yeah, maybe a little, except this is fifteen years older (34 of the 37 tracks were recorded in 1980 - the other 3 are from last year) and there's none of that snide "we're playing this song because we think it's funny to play this song" attitude. These guys love this shit and it shows.. - Mike d'Ariano / Areuonsomething

Reissue of these slob kings' 1980 debut (live) LP, w/ a WHOLE HOUR of bonus footage...for those NOT in-the-know, the Hypstrz blasted outta Minneapolis in the late seventies detonating the usual post-Greg Shaw sixties garage influences with the same ill-mannered eloquence as contemporaries the Chesterfield Kings. Like the Kings-and UNLIKE other garage pioneers like DMZ and the Fleshtones - the Hypstrz didn't even make a PRETENSE at writing their own material, preferring to play ultra-ULTRA hyped-up versions of just about every garage rock staple in the book...which separated 'em from the Kings since the Kings covered songs that were so obscure they could more or less claim 'em as their own whereas the Hypstrz dove RIGHT INTO THE HEART O' THE BEAST by covering songs everybody knew n' loved, from "96 Tears" to "Talk, Talk", and just slobbing them down. Whereas the Chesterfield Kings were like a neo-classical remake of the sixties, the Hypstrz didn't give a damn about "authenticity", as this alb more than aptly proves, containing powerhouse rethinks of "Louie Go Home", "Shake", "I'm Gonna Make You Mine", "Little Girl," etc. sure to make your adrenal glands do the full-tilt boogie inside your flowered blouse. How much of it can you take? Perhaps the greatest cover band EVER. -JSH / Kapital Ink #2

The Hypstrz cover everyone they please and damn me if they don't do it well and with much attitude. Special attention should be given to their version of "Don't Look Back," and check the awesome guitar work in "96 Tears" or the reverted feeling of "Hey Joe," "All or Nothing," "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl," and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag."  Fans of rock history and fun, fun rock, check this - it's obligatory. Thank God for labels like Bomp! Please keep 'em coming. - Hansel Merchor / CD Reviews

Almost all of The Hypstrz recorded output comes from tapes of two live dates at the Longhorn Club in April 1979. This includes the whole LP, EP, and 15 unreleased tracks also included on this 37 track CD. You also get three 'new' live tracks recorded 25 years later. The band still sound like a human jukebox, an imaginary juke box playing all your favourite 60's garage punk tunes, with a little bit of R&B and rock'n'roll. If such a thing as a 'Pebbles Top 40 Favourites' ever existed, virtually all of them would be in The Hypstrz set list; 'Action Woman', 'Little Girl', '96 Tears', 'Tried To Hide', 'Shake' and scores of others. Almost no-one was doing this kind of stuff in the late '70s. On these recordings the band have a raw, direct approach. Bill Batson's vocal, backed by frantic guitar, bass and drums, with the occasional backing vocal. You can almost hear the Batson brothers saying to each other "If there are any real complicated bits in these songs we'll just miss 'em out and strip 'em right back to their basic essentials!" - Phil Suggitt / Shindig!

The year? 1979. The band? The Hypstrz. The place? Jay's Longhorn. The music? Cover songs. A lot of them. But before you say, "Ugh! A cover band? Please no!" Let me say, this isn't some cover band playing KC & the Sunshine Band songs down at the Jersey shore. In the disc's liner notes, The Hypstrz explain, "We chose to cover songs we loved rather than write ones that we didn't love." And their love for the music they chose comes through in the recordings. And whom do they love? The Music Machine..., The Trashmen, The Sonics, Standells, 13th Floor Elevators, Love and like thirty other groups you and I may or may not know. But The Hypstrz know 'em, love 'em and play them. It's garage rock from before they were calling it garage rock. The last three songs were from a 2004 show they played, so they're still around. Why not book them for your next wedding or suffer through another version of "Shake your Booty"! - D.W. Friend / The Sentimentalist

The bulk of this 37-song Garage Rock extravanganza was recorded live in 1979 (with the last three tunes having been caught in the act as recently as 2004). The Hypstrz are four floor-stompin' Garage Rock purists who have been wreaking all kinds of frenzied sonic havoc in the basements, ballrooms, bowling alleys and beer halls of Minnesota since the 1970's. Theirs is the primal, animalistic sound of wild-eyed, amphetamine-rushed Rock n' Roll filtered through a heaving behemoth squall of amplified distortion and a festering blitzkrieg torrent of snot and sweat. Its unwashed and unkempt 1960s-style Punk with a swaggering sex-infused twist of Soul, several of the songs being frantically savage covers of Nuggets classics and some being raucously blistering renditions of Wilson Pickett and James Brown standards. What a gritty and impure noise The Hypstrz make! - Moser / Under The Volcano

A damn good disc, with blistering renditions of some well-known and some more obscure songs. If you find the 60s a little slow, strange, dated and just a little too far out, and you lean more for straight ahead garage rock 'n roll, than you will dig The Hypstrz. - 7/11 Brother Bucket / Culture Bunker

This is an expanded reissue of the 1980 LP Hypstrization, about which Greg Shaw wrote, "A high-energy frat band who's LP may be the rarest item on Voxx - even we don't have a copy!" He certainly hit the nal on the head with the description of their music. This record is an instant party, which will appeal to fans of good-time garage bands like the Fleshtones or the Woggles. The twist here is that the frat-rock sounds are sharpened with a deadly high-energy guitar attack along the lines of the MC5. The CD version contains 37 tracks, expanded from the original 15, four of which are originals. While it might not be too hard to find current bands covering the likes of the Pretty Things or the 13th Floor Elevators, back in 1980 it was a relative rarity. It's all live, and it sounds great. Dig the photo of the club grid that has them on the same month as U2, the Replacements and Husker Du! -Sean Law / The Nerve

Calling all poseurs! Check out this release. It will steamroll your white belted ass from here to some small island in the pacific. Take that modern day hipster "killers" pacifier from your supple cherry red lips and engorge your pie hole with The Hypstrz brand of deep throat rock and roll. Bomp! Records never fail to disappoint. Greg Shaw (R.I.P) and company know how to separate the wheat from the shaft. There is so much "wheat" with this release that you could overstuff your colon and never have to worry about bulking up! Bomp! reissue this 1980 Garage/Rock and Soul record as well as adding on the first ep and bonus tracks. The Hypstrz follow the jungle path that The MC5 had bushwhacked previously. Amped up, unpretentious Rock and Roll played from the gut and constantly bitch slappin' you. The Hypstrz put their fingerprints on such classic rock and roll output such as In The Midnight Hour, Slow Death, 96 Tears, Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White and Action Woman to name a few. Having a lame party? Throw The Hypstrz on to liven it up! Even the most discerning tight ass will loosen up and probably manage to get you evicted. 10 Sweat and Blood Drenched Guitar Slings out 10! - Christopher Duda / Sugarbuzz

An American amphetamine version of Dr. Feelgood? This CD consists of live performances recorded in 1979, 19 songs have been released on an EP and their "Hypstrization" (1980) album, along with 17 from a Longhorn gig, yeah, that's 37 (!) tunes of full-on high speed rhythm & blues/soul/garage classics and a few originals. The Hypstrz cover Small Faces, Wilson Pickett, Music Machine, Sonics, Flamin Groovies, The Litters, Standells, James Brown and tonsa other artists which get their hyperactive treatment. Mucho thanks to Bomp! Records for releasing the ultimate party comp by these rockers. The live sound is shitraw but it fits the songs perfectly. AWESOME! - Jens / Lowcut

Damn, do I love Bomp! This is a CD reissue of the Hypstrz 1980 LP with 22 bonus tracks added on for good measure! Most of the songs here are covers of 60s garage classics, but done double time, so it's like listening to the Nuggets box set on speed! This is an absolutely perfect party disc & sounds as great now as it did 26 years ago. Put the Schlitz on ice! - JR / Loud Fast Rules #3

The Hypstrz made a mark for themselves back in the late 70s by playing other people's music. Well, maybe not just playing other people's music, but hijacking it and driving it across the state line. A high speed chase on the garage rock highway, if you will. It's a fairly simple formula they came up with, actually. They basically took the bombastic sonic blueprint from The Ramones and applied it to classic (and not-so-classic) rock and soul songs from their youth. The end result saw tunes like In The Midnight Hour,  Shake, and Remember (Walking In The Sand) run through the rock-n-roll grinder and punked out to the hilt. This live set is gathered from two stands at Jay's Longhorn in 1979 when the band was in top form, and the music proves this point over and over again. You can literally feel the energy coming off the stage as the band tears through song after song, making each and every one of them their own for a brief and loud moment in time. Absolutely freaking brilliant! - Mishmash

Hysptrz review on the Munchkin site (Belgium)

Review on the 3rd Generation Nation site (Germany)

Before bands like The Strokes were ever a twinkle in the daddy's pants, before "garage rock" even had a name there were The Hypstrz. While they may have done more cover tunes than most bands what they did to the music was far beyond anything you could have imagined. Time and time again they proved they could bring the rock in a way that would do the scene proud. The Hypstrz have just released Live at the Longhorn, recorded over two nights at the Longhorn in 1979 this is the next best thing to actually seeing the boys live! Full of pulsating energy their cover of James Brown's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag would make the king of soul feel good. While Tunes like Silverspoonpinkthunk show that they were never just another cover band. For those of you who may have been luckily enough to see the guys live, I am truly jealous, but I think that Live at the Longhorn will suffice the rest of us until The Hypstrz grace us with their presence once more. - Ectomag

All is given a Hypstrz sheen where, if you didn't know the orignal songs, you would never realize they were covers. Even more phenomenal to me is that they're still out there doing it. Tracks 35-37 were all just recorded last year at a live show. They still rock out with crazed, amphetamine glee. And I still can't think of a way to make my words capture their glory upon the written page. So this will have to do with the hope that you too will go out and get The Hypstrz Live At The Longhorn and join me in being struck dumb in the glory of rock and roll. Guitar, bass, drums, and somebody willing to scream are all you need for a good time. - Wally Bangs / Blogcritics

The bulk of this 37-song Garage Rock extravaganza was recorded live in 1979 (with the last three tunes having been caught in the act as recently as 2004). The Hypstrz are four floor-stompin' Garage Rock purists who have been wreaking all kinds of frenzied sonic havoc in the basements, ballrooms, bowling alleys, and beer halls of Minnesota since the 1970s. Theirs is the primal, animalistic sound of wild-eyed, amphetamine-rushed Rock 'n' Roll filtered through a heaving behemoth squall of amplified distortion and a festering blitzkrieg torrent of snot and sweat. It's unwashed and unkempt 1960s-style Punk with a swaggering sex-infused twist of Soul, several of the songs being frantically savage covers of Nuggets classics and some being raucously blistering renditions of Wilson Pickett and James Brown standards. What a gritty and impure noise The Hypstrz make! - Roger Moser / Under The Volcano

The MC5 on a back alley bar crawl, the HYPSTRZ send me "Live At The Longhorn" ­ Inspired raw power that pulls you in and never lets up. Let us know when you get to town, XOXOXO. - NY Waste

The Hypstrz were a Twin Cities club institution in the 70s and 80s, and one of the first American bands to revive the 60s garage rock sound. The quartet gained a receptive audience in the burgeoning punk/new wave movement for its incendiary live shows, a couple of which are captured here. The usual suspects make an appearance-the 13th Floor Elevators' "You're Gonna Miss Me," the Litters' "Action Woman," the Music Machine's "Talk Talk," Love's "7 & 7 Is," tunes by James Brown, the Chocolate Watchband, the Troggs, Mitch Ryder, the Pretty Things and more, plus a couple of punkish originals. The Hypstrz don't put a new coat of paint on these songs so much as clean away the grime, but the band's enthusiasm for the tunes is palpable. This isn't quite the landmark release it might have been in 1979, but it's still a fun party record. - Michael Toland / High Bias

Gets plays at Booze HQ mostly because of the Hypstrz rendition of new-wave C-lister Jayne County's "Are You a Boy or are You a Girl" and their amphetishized take on "96 Teardrops," the lone hit from the original garage pioneers the Mysterians. We can't get enough of that shit. - Boozeismymomma

With all the energy of the Ramones, The Hypstrz seem to "Englishify" the original Ramones sound enough to re-cast all their tracks in a favorable veneer. With tracks crashing into each other all willy-nilly like, the live songs here have a studio sensibility to them that belies their freshness and spontaneity. Crafted in such a way that ensures listeners will not be tired, the average Hypstrz track hovers right at about two minutes; when the band moves into a near-perfect sound (such as in the blues-looking "I'll Go Crazy"), the fact that these tracks are so short will throw listeners into a state of depression. When the band slows down their sound, especially during tracks like "I Don't", one can hear each constituent part of the band. The benefit from hearing this is that it shows each member of The Hypstrz as contributing their all; the vitriolic vocals are not the only thing on "Live at the Longhorn" that should knock listeners on their ass. Hell, one can even say that The Hypstrz are more immediately influential on the state of punk than the Ramones are. Listen to a track like "Talk Talk" and hear the Matt Freeman-like bass lines strewn throughout the arrangements; wow at the multiple-part vocal harmonies that The Misfits would perfect a few short years later. "Live At The Longhorn" is a twenty-five year old album, and yet there is a level of directness that The Hypstrz has with their audience, both in reality and those who listen to the concert now. This lack of bullshit, of overbearing distortion and egos is what makes "Live at the Longhorn" so damn compelling. Each of the tracks here is eminently radio-friendly, but is not of the same style of what is being pandered to radio nowadays. There is a solid foundation of rock which The Hypstrz place themselves on; there are chunks of psychedelic working next to surf music, and even further linked back to the blues of a more-forgotten day. Why exactly this band has been relegated to the footnotes of history is beyond me, but The Hypstrz were easily the equivalent of a Ramones or Clash at the height of their careers. Perhaps it was because so many stars were shining with so bright of a light in 1980; anyways, be sure to pick this album up as it is some of the most directly influential music of this era. - James McQuiston / Nuefutur

It's ironic that '60s revivalist bands often produce records that are as rare and difficult to find as the records from which their material is sourced. Such is the case for this Midwest band's fantastic 1980 Bomp LP, "Hypstrization!" Despite the backing from Bomp, the album went unnoticed by many ardent garage rock fans, only to attain a level of cult desirability among collectors in later years. The band themselves were an anachronism, reviving mid-60s garage rock in the teeth of late-70s punk, thrilling and confounding audiences in fraternal halls, local ballrooms and bowling alleys throughout the upper Midwest. What made it work, and what comes across so clearly on these live recordings, is that the group was fully committed to the sounds they produced, and the fuel of fellow punk bands (both local like The Suicide Commandos, and god-like, such as The Ramones) made their snarling, thrashing garage rock a lot more than a pose. Bomp's original LP is included in full as this CD's opening 15 tracks. It's a sweaty evening of garage rock classics whether or not they were garage rock in the first place. In addition to mid-60s punk anthems like "Riot on Sunset Strip," "Talk Talk" and "96 Tears," the band revs up the soul side "In the Midnight Hour" and "I Go Crazy," and takes The Small Faces' "All or Nothing" out for a heartfelt spin. The non-stop assault, punctuated by occasional song count-offs, follows the performance template the band picked up from The Ramones, as does their combination of hammering guitars topped with melodic vocals. This reissue expands upon the original LP with 18 additional live selections from the same pair of nights at Jay's Longhorn. These extra tracks include more garage-ified soul/funk tunes ("Hold on I'm Coming" "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"), Nuggets/Pebbles standards ("Action Woman" "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White"), well-picked British Invasion winners ("Come See Me" "66-5-4-3-2-1" and "I'm Not Talking"), rockabilly rave-ups (Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody"), and some '60s chart oddities (Sgt. Barry Sandler's "Ballad of the Green Berets" and The Shangri-Las "Remember (Walking in the Sand"). Closing out the collection is a trio of live tracks waxed in 2004 (including a stomping take on The Sonics' "The Witch"), proving that the band rocks just as frenetically now as they did twenty-five years ago. This is a must have for garage rock fans, original or neo. - Eli Messinger / Amazon

Four original songs, thirty-three cover songs, thirty-four recorded in 1979, and three recorded in 2004. One great record. The Hypstrz is my new favorite bar band. The new album is 'Live at the Longhorn' and it's a compilation of their first EP, the album 'Hysperization', and more live tracks from other performances. Playing covers of your favorite rock tunes of the 60s and 70s with a punk twist they really adapt the songs to their own style and make them their own. Not taking away from their writing talents the four original songs also shine through. The quality is surprising good considering how old the recording is. Do yourself a favor and pick this up. If for no other reason to hear "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" sung punk/garage style like you've never heard. - Josh / EPunk Zine

The penultimate Xmas gift for that Minneapolis rock pioneer or newbie on your list is The Hypstrz Live at the Longhorn: The Complete Recordings, a 37-track trip captured at the Longhorn Bar in 1979 (plus a few from the Turf Club last July) and unleashed by Bomp! Records this week. Like every classic garage band from Nordeast to Brixton, and like no other that has ever walked the Earth, the Hypstrz deliver amphetamine soul--"Talk Talk," "Hold On I'm Comin'," "6654321," "Let's Talk About Girls," etc. etc., with mind-blowing ferocity and ageless passion. - City Pages

"The Hipstrz - Live at the Longhorn" is unlike a lot of "live" albums you hear in that it actually sounds live. If you're having a party and want to throw on a disc that will last for more than a few minutes this is for you. With 37 tracks consisting of some covers and originals this may be the perfect party record. Punk-a-fied garage rock is exactly right.- MusicFilter