An American Music Story: The Complete Studio Recordings 1979-1985 was a superb release in last year’s Record Store Day offerings, a comprehensive five LP overview of the Los Angeles roots-rock band’s career that immediately sold out. Rare Blasts: Studio Outtakes and Movie Music 1979-1985 was the fifth album and as with the other components, it is now available as a separate entity, released on CD and Cobalt blue vinyl. Both are fine of course, but vinyl is what suits the music best of all. Whilst many bands around this time were picking up on Magic Sam’s deep blues guitar lines and using them as the basis for longer solos, The Blasters open this release with his energetic, rockabilly-flavoured “21 Days In Jail,” all of two minutes and 16 seconds, deep echo on…
Category: rockabilly
After releasing two strong albums for Slash, the Blasters had plenty of critical acclaim and a sizable hometown following, but they hadn’t come especially close to landing a hit record, and on the 1985 album Hard Line, they overhauled their approach in the studio in hopes of creating something that sounded more contemporary.
Producer Jeff Eyrich pumped up the sound of Bill Bateman’s drums (and for a few tracks replaced him with Stan Lynch of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), Dave Alvin’s guitar tone got thicker and harder and the emphasis was put squarely on new songs. “Trouble Bound” and “Help You Dream” showed Dave Alvin’s gift for writing in traditional styles was as strong as ever. Alvin’s songs took on a darker tone on Hard Line, especially the tale…
When punk rock began exploding in the late 1970s, more than a few fans of the new music declared the only hope for rock & roll was to throw away its past and start over, but thankfully, a few people knew better than that. Dave and Phil Alvin were a pair of brothers from Downey, California who’d been raised on a steady diet of what they called “American Music” – blues, rockabilly, country, jazz, swing, R&B, and early rock & roll.
The Alvin brothers formed a band called the Blasters that approached the classic styles of the past with the energy and insouciance of punk rock, and their music taught a new generation that rock & roll was hard, wild, and manic fun even before it was called rock & roll. The Blasters, the band’s second album, is divided roughly…
Pastor Chris Congregation – West Virginia Snake Handler Revival “They Shall Take Up Serpents” (2025)
High in the mountains of West Virginia lies McDowell County. Formerly a hotspot for American coal mining, technological advancements and outsourced labour crept through Appalachia in the mid-twentieth century, leaving communities like McDowell destitute. From 1950 to 2020, the county saw its population fall by over 80%, and by 2015 it had the highest number of drug-related deaths of any county in the United States.
Alongside abandoned buildings and burnt-out cars, McDowell County is dense with churches. Typically Pentecostal, these have become a refuge for a community on the fringes of a zombified American dream clinging to bygone prosperity. One is The House of the Lord Jesus, also known as the last remaining snake-handling…
By the end of 1980, after 10 years waiting for the world to catch up with them, things were looking bleak for Suicide. The pioneering New York electronic project of keyboardist Martin Rev and vocalist Alan Vega had released a sinister self-titled debut in 1977; the album was met by hostility from crowds and mocked as “puerile” by Rolling Stone. Playing on tour with Elvis Costello, the Clash, and the Cars, they’d been pelted with shoes, coins, and even knives. ZE Records had backed May 1980’s glitzier follow-up, Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev, putting the duo in the expensive Power Station studios with the Cars’ Ric Ocasek on production. But the label had hoped for a dance-pop record, telling Ocasek to think of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” for reference, and Vega felt it…
Mike Badger returns with his first studio album in almost a decade. Founder member of The La’s, Badger quit the band before they shot to stardom with the top 20 single ‘There She Goes’. Since then, he’s turned his considerable skills to sculpture, producing album art and videos, and co-founding Liverpool-based Viper Records. It’s all chronicled in his entertaining autobiography “The Rythm & The Tide (Liverpool, the La’s and Ever After)”.
His latest offering, produced by son Ray, gives us 14 mainly upbeat tracks which confirm that he’s not a man for the mainstream. That said, there is plenty to admire here. The opening ‘Ghost in the Machine’ is jangling pop at its best, ‘Wolfman’ is raw psycho rockabilly which deserves to be cranked up to maximum volume.
The legendary Americana band’s 1983 album re-released with brand new liner notes and band interviews written by Chris Morris with rare photos and memorabilia images. The release recreates the band’s third studio album complete with a replica of the inner sleeve with songwriter Dave Alvin’s lyrics.
The 11-track set features the four core band members-Phil Alvin, Dave Alvin, John Bazz and Bill Bateman accompanied by Gene Taylor, Lee Allen and Steve Berlin. Includes band classic cuts- “Long White Cadillac” (a hit for Dwight Yoakum in 1989), “Jubilee Train”, “Red Rose” along with deep track covers of “Barefoot Rock” and “Tag Along”, sung by piano player Gene Taylor. The album was critically acclaimed with positive reviews…
Alabama’s favorite haunted artists The Pine Hill Haints return with their latest long player, Shattered Pieces Of The True Cross, on Single Lock Records.
The collection of southern psychedelic tunes were recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound on Jackson Highway, captured and mixed by Ben Tanner, Grammy-winning producer/engineer and Single Lock co-founder.
The Haints have long represented a 21st century chapter in the Muscle Shoals music legacy, applying a DIY ethos to folk and blues traditions. Not unlike their Swamper forebears in the same studio, the Haints transcend their myriad influences to sculpt a sound of their own.
The album bears their signature sonic palette – washtub bass, snare drum…