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Punk Americana
The Blasters’ Testament
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

It was sweat, blood, muscle, and grit that allowed the Blasters to flourish in the heart of LA’s early-’80s punk scene, alongside bands as varied as X, the Germs, Black Flag, and Wall of Voodoo. To the audiences at joints like Club Lingerie and the Whiskey, it didn’t matter that these guys from suburban Downey were a little older, or that their music was a lot older, either plucked from the long vines of blues, country, gospel, Louisiana folk, and early-’50s rock or nourished by them. What mattered was that they put out a bone-crunching barrage of energy and sound.

"In those days we played pretty fast and pretty loud," Blasters founding guitarist Dave Alvin agrees. "That helped us with the punk crowd. We felt that the audience would go along with it if we never slowed down. They’d never have a chance to decide they didn’t like us. Of course, LA in those days was a different world. It was very eclectic. Later what sort of happened with punk rock is that it all became the same."

What happened as the Blasters went on was that Alvin grew as a songwriter, graduating from full-on boogie love songs like "Marie Marie" to literate and emotionally complex numbers like the Cajun-fiddle-propelled "Little Honey" and "Fourth of July." En route to a solo career, he replaced Billy Zoom in the increasingly polished-sounding X, contributing two of his tunes, "Fourth of July" and the title track, to that band’s 1987 See How We Are (Elektra). But even before the end of the Blasters, the entire group had begun branching out beyond their Americana roots. Frontman Phil Alvin, Dave’s brother, was drawn to the labor songs and spirituals he had grown fond of as a child under the tutoring of their father, who was a union organizer. Hence late-era Blasters tracks like "Samson and Delilah," a showcase for his smooth shouter’s voice. Gene Taylor returned to his love of blues, leaving for the Fabulous Thunderbirds, where he still holds the piano chair. Saxist Steve Berlin joined Los Lobos and became a producer; the Blasters’ other sax player and secret weapon, the early rock and R&B ace Lee Allen, fell ill and died.

The new two-CD Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings (Warner Bros./Slash/Rhino) chronicles what they accomplished together. During their fast-paced run from 1979 to 1985, the Blasters recorded five albums and a handful of singles. Forty-one excellent studio cuts are included here, along with 11 live tracks that catch the band on stage shooting sparks like a runaway steam engine. Phil’s clear and powerful voice remains the outfit’s signature; he hangs Dave’s lyrics and the Blasters’ well-chosen covers on his edgy, upward-arching vibrato. But the playing is captivating and authentic without exception, whether the Blasters are driving home a zydeco number like "Hey, Girl" or a sneering whack at political hacks like "Common Man." Dave’s riffs, Phil’s peaks, the piano and horn colors, and the uncluttered and solid-granite attack of the drums and bass would’ve sounded just as right in 1965 as they did in ’85. And they still hold up today.

The past decade has seen a remarkable growth in the number of Americana artists, from Wilco and Steve Earle and Beausoleil on the national scene to local outfits like the Tarbox Ramblers and Raging Teens. It’s hard to believe that the Blasters were an oddity for whom the term roots rock was more or less invented for in the ’80s. Sure, cowpunk outfits like Rank and File and the True Believers were around. We’d already got the Cramps. But the Blasters revisited the past without any hint of irony. They played so sincerely and so hard that they willed the great music of America’s bygone days into the present.

Two of the most emblematic Blasters songs on Testament are "American Music" and "Boomtown." "American Music" is Dave’s ode to the band: "We got Louisiana boogie and the Delta blues/We got country swing and rockabilly, too/We got jazz, country-western, and Chicago blues/We got the greatest music that you ever knew." It’s set to a sound plucked right from Sam Phillips’s Sun Studios. "Boomtown," with its spanking country beat, chronicles the reverberating underside of the American myth, spinning a tale of hard times and poverty that echoes The Grapes of Wrath. The ensemble arrangement, which is jammed full of harmonica, guitar, and clattering percussion, is as intricate as anything on Howlin’ Wolf’s stone-classic homonymous "rocking chair" album.

Phil Alvin has assembled new Blasters line-ups in recent years. Sometimes the magic’s still there, though plans to record these groups have been thwarted by personnel issues and the complications of the music business. But even if there is no future for these champions of American roots music, Testament secures their lofty place in the past.

Issue Date: April 4 - 11, 2002
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