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…
Tag Archive: The Blasters
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…
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…