‘Music’ Recalls the Blasters From the Past

*** THE BLASTERS

“American Music”

HighTone

Yes, the ‘60s was one golden age of Los Angeles rock bands: the days of the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

But there was a second golden age in the ‘80s that was in many ways equally thrilling--though clearly less commercially successful. At the top of that crop: the Blasters, Los Lobos, Black Flag and X.

The highlight of the Blasters’ formal history on Slash/Warner Bros. Records--including some of the most convincing expressions of blue-collar frustration and determination this side of Merle Haggard and Bruce Springsteen--is nicely documented in “The Blasters Collection,” a single-disc retrospective released in 1990.

The 46-minute “American Music” is a rewarding glimpse into the Blasters’ beginnings as a studio band--and we owe it mostly to an unknown truck driver.

In the liner notes, Dave Alvin, the Blasters’ chief songwriter and lead guitarist, recalls the group’s “outsider” role--a Downey-based rockabilly and blues band in a late-’70s Hollywood-centered rock scene ruled by Van Halen and the Knack.

The group, however, felt it might have a kindred spirit in “Rockin’ ” Ronny Weiser, a rockabilly devotee who ran the tiny Rollin’ Rock Records label in the San Fernando Valley. So they made a demo tape in 1979 and played it for Weiser in his living room.

“Ronny dug the tape but still wouldn’t make a commitment to record us until this truck driver came by Ronny’s to pick up a box of records to be shipped,” Alvin writes.

The Blasters tape was playing when the driver arrived and he got real enthusiastic about it. “I’ll buy a copy,” he is quoted as saying. “My wife and I dig this kind of music. You can’t find music like this anymore.”

That was apparently endorsement enough for Weiser, and he soon took the Blasters--whose lineup at the time also included lead singer Phil Alvin, bassist John Bazz and drummer Bill Bateman--into his garage studio to cut the 13 tunes that were featured on this 1980 release (as well as six other tracks that were unreleased until this reissue).

Only 2,000 copies of the album were pressed, but they proved to be the ideal calling card for the Blasters. The group was soon signed by Slash Records, which was also the launching pad for Los Lobos and X.

The Blasters play at such breakneck speed on much of “American Music” that you get the feeling the Alvins were afraid that Weiser was going to change his mind any minute and wanted to get as much down on tape as possible.

The music here is spirited, but most of the material is either vintage or generic. It’s in the three Dave Alvin originals--especially the anthem-ish title track and the joyous “Marie, Marie”--that you start to feel the group’s individuality and future.

Though the Blasters never became much of a commercial force, the group’s Slash/Warner Bros. studio albums--1982’s “The Blasters,” 1983’s “Non Fiction” and 1985’s “Hard Line”--compose a glorious chapter of American rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a legacy that continues in the Phil Alvin-led Blasters’ own work as well as the solo recordings of Dave Alvin, who broke away from the band a decade ago.

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).