REVIEW: Various, Blastered: A Musical Tribute to the Blasters
(Run Wild)
- Daniel Aloi
Dave Alvin has probably covered more Blasters songs than anyone - the odd thing being, he wrote them.
On a number of solo albums since leaving the band in 1986, he has seen fit to revisit and rework his songs, and go for the darker musical edge and appropriate mournful tone of his lyrics, abandoning the rockabilly beat of, say, "Barn Burning" and "Long White Cadillac," and rerecording the songs to express the kind of menace and hopelessness he had in mind when writing them. So with that kind of inherent possibility, a Blasters tribute album by others would be just as diverse and expansive, right? Well... it isn't, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This tribute is as good a roots-rock party album (with think-about-it undertones intact) as anything by the Blasters themselves.
Most of the 18 tracks on Blastered are faithful to the originals, poured in the same sweaty Saturday night rockabilly mold as the ahead-of-its-time (and way behind it, too) band from Downey, California. The Blasters drew from a well of blues, folk, country, R&B and rockabilly influences, and ruled the '80s underground in the most un-MTV way you could imagine in a decade of synthesizers and British hair bands.
The bands here -- from San Francisco's Sloe Gin Joes to Pittsburgh's Highway 13 and Ireland's Sabrejets -- also defy contemporary pop trends, and kick into high gear to show their appreciation. Their names are enough indication of what to expect - The Blacktop Rockets, The Barn Burners, Hot Rod Lincoln, Jumpin' Jupiter, and the aforementioned Sabrejets, the only non-American act here.
But there are some original takes worth noting. Tom Clifford (of Austin's King Soul) leads the "local supergroup" Alvin City Limits on a Blasters-worthy roadhouse version of "Trouble Bound," minus any attempt to ape the Jordanaires backing on the original. On the very next track, King Kerosene, an original but Blasters-loving band from New Jersey, adds those very same hiccuping vocal harmonies (to great effect) to the kinda-sad Casanova study "Help You Dream." Hot Rod Lincoln adds Tejano flavor to "Border Radio" and backs up Josie Kreuzer on "Red Rose," and on an album of almost exclusively male exercises in rockabilly rebellion, a fantastic female voice like Libbi Bosworth's on "Hey Girl (Boy)" is most welcome.
The standout track appropriately closes the album. Last Train Home, recently voted Washington, D.C.'s best country band, slows down the pace of "So Long Baby Goodbye" to make it an emotional parting song -- rather than the speedy getaway suggested by either the original or the other cover of it here, by Lucky 7 (with Kenny Margolis, formerly of Mink Deville).
All in all, this is a fine tribute to a great band that deserved even more than the loving cult of fans it found -- and shows that even a band that found its heart in what came before can be a seminal influence in its own right.
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