Blast from the Past
I thought I was getting too old to see a rock and roll show at a club on a Tuesday night until I got a load of the rest of the crowd that had gathered to see the Blasters reunion gig at the Crocodile Café in Seattle last night. I’d be surprised if there were a half-dozen of the three hundred in the house under 35, with more than half closer to 50. Lots of big guts, lots of gray ponytails, lots of patches of scalp where the ponytails used to be. Kind of like the band, actually.
The strange thing is, the Blasters really aren’t that old. They got started in LA around 1980 and were history before Reagan left office. Often associated with fellow bands like X and the Stray Cats, their connection with the LA punk scene of that era was more social than sonic. The Blasters, more than practically any other band since Creedence Clearwater Revival, played straight-up rock and roll. They probably drew an older crowd even back then.
Just for the record, there aren’t a whole lot of reunion tours I’d pay to see, but I was a big fan from way back and had seen Dave Alvin (the Blasters’ amazing lead guitarist) play with his own group, the Guilty Men, enough to know that he, at least, still had his chops. Dave is good enough on his own to make you feel like you’ve almost seen a Blasters show, but his gravelly bass is, in the end, no substitute for the rubber-voiced antics of his hyper-kinetic brother, Blasters’ frontman Phil Alvin. Intriguingly, it was apparently tension between the two brothers that broke the band up in the first place.
They took the stage a little bit after 10:00 pm and launched into a non-stop set that covered almost their entire catalog. The Blasters were always a crisp, professional musical unit with virtuoso Dave leading the charge on guitar, plus an outstanding Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano and rock-solid rhythm section. Even the crappy sound of the Croc’s PA system couldn’t disguise the fluidity and drive of five incredible musicians playing their hearts out and having a grand old time doing it. By the third or fourth song, there was enough dancing among the middle-aged crowd to make an Advil sales rep beam with delight.
Up on stage, Phil howled and grimaced and sweated his way through one Blasters classic after another. “Red Rose,” “No Other Girl,” “American Music,” “Long White Cadillac,” “Dark Night,” “Border Radio” and a dozen others sounded as great as the first time I’d heard them. Part of the reason the material has held up so well is that the songs sounded old – or perhaps timeless – even when they were new. Dave Alvin’s songwriting genius is what propelled the Blasters from to the front ranks of American bands. His songs didn’t just ape the structures of folk, blues, swing, rockabilly and country-western styles, but went deep to explore the sensibility behind the music. Both of the Alvins know their American roots – historically, emotionally, politically, poetically. Their understanding of the complexity behind such basically simple forms is what gives their music a richness, sincerity and authenticity that separates it from the simple-minded revivalism of groups like the Stray Cats.
On stage, the tension between Dave’s musical professionalism and Phil’s crowd-pleasing clowning gave the performance some drama. At one point, the brothers looked like they might come to blows. Never fashion-plates even in their younger days, the band has ripened into an almost surreal physical ugliness that also made for compelling viewing. Gaunt, gap-toothed Dave was hunched over his guitar like a wounded coyote while Phil, sporting the balding remains of his trademark flat-top, flailed around like a wild boar with an aneurism. The rest of the band looked like they were rounded up from the local filling station and issued a pack of cigarettes and a six-pack of long-neck Buds along with their instruments.
By the time the band launched into the inevitable finale – “Marie Marie,” the best song Chuck Berry never wrote – the Croc had been transformed into a beer-soaked, smoke-filled roadhouse, with the portly, sweaty audience gasping in delight and exhaustion. An unknowing stranger who happened in off the street would have shrugged and wondered what the big deal was: just a veteran bar band on a good night. But hey – isn’t that rock and roll?
10:19:35 AM 
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