THE BLASTERS AIN’T NO CATS!

Perhaps taking a cue from the Book Of Rock Lists, I once considered compiling a list of the best rock records to listen to when going through the breakup of a love relationship. After all, if you grew up with rock 'n' roll as your childhood soundtrack, the music—everything from Phil Spector's teen dreams to the Beatles' hippie anthems— probably helped shape your definition of what love is supposed to be all about (even if a lot of it did turn out to be Disney-like fantasy), and if the music is still good for anything today, it's probably in the identification of shared emotional experiences and that sense of "emotional rescue" the best songs can still offer.

Although the list never materialized, the choices in my head seemed endless: almost anything by Del Shannon for self-pity; Maryin Gaye's Here My Dear for bitterness; the Clash's version of "Brand New Cadillac" for angry frustration; Southside Johnny's Hearts Of Stone for regret; early Elvis C. for revenge fantasies and Get Happy!! for nearly every emotion you can feel under the circumstances, and perhaps the grandest of 'em alj—Dylan's Blood On The Tracks (particularly "Shelter From The Storm") for those moments when you may feel like slitting your wrists but end up passing out instead.

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One of the songs at the very top of my list would be "So Long, Baby, Goodbye" by the Blasters. Probably the healthiest track of the bunch ("You know none of us are gonna cry/It wasn't even worth the try/So long, baby, goodbye"), it combines some haunting imagery ("There was a cold wind blowing on the night we met/The leaves fell from the trees") with some of the happiest, most uplifting rock music this side of the '50s, and the song absolutely defies the listener not to dance and just feel good about things, even if you've just lost the "great love of your life" and you feel lower than you think you'll ever feel again (or at least until the next time it happens) •

The Blasters have a knack for taking sad situations and sad characters and transforming them into open-throttle ravers with their musical integration of classic blues, rockabilly and R&B. This was evident on "Border Radio" and the aforementioned song from their first Slash LP, and it's especially evident on tunes like "Red Rose," "Bus Station," "One More Dance" and"Boomtown" from their latest release, Non Fiction.

"Well, that just comes out of the blues tradition," explains Dave Alvin, the Blasters' lead guitarist and songwriter, who's nursing a beer in a Pontiac Holiday Inn bar. "You can listen to an old 'up' blues song, and the guy's singing, 'I feel so bad today.' It's even like the early Bob Dylan stuff. Dylan would be singing about just wanting to lay down and die, and the music behind him was real rockin' and uplifting."

"Plus you can get power from the realization of a situation, regardless of whether it's good or bad," adds brother Phil, the band's lead vocalist, who briefly joins us in the bar, having no idea at first that we're doing an interview (he came down for coffee), and immediately mistaking me for Ginger Baker—the joke being that the Blasters are on the last leg of an opening slot tour with Eric Clapton, a tour, I might add, in which the Blasters' rip-roaring stage presence is in direct contrast to Clapton's latter-day mellow posturings. (Dave mentions that the band is considering digging out an old Cream chestnut like "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" and doing it R&B style the last night of the tour.) " 'So Long, Baby' is a great song because it gives you hope. Other tempos would have been different. You might have been sobbing 'So long, baby' instead of screaming it and getting power from the situation."

"Yeah, and not only do you get the breakup of a relationship, but you get a Lee Allen sax solo, too!" laughs Dave.

The Blasters have been mistaken as part of the Cat-overloaded rockabilly revival, portraying a dark musical underbelly to the Stray Cats' pop flash, but Dave feels that the classification has probably helped the band •more than it's hurt, just so long as they don't continue to get dragged into the fad mentality. Although they haven't achieved the same commercial success as the Stray Cats, the band has been a critical favorite since their first Slash LP, with hype and acclaim that even had Time magazine comparing Dave to John Fogerty, who the guitarist incidentally lists as one of his biggest heroes.

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"My best song is probably equal to his most mediocre," he says. "It made us feel good, but some people put stuff on us that we didn't want, like '1982 is the year of the Blasters.' How do you live up to that? You don't. You just keep doing what you've been doing. The live EP took a lot of blows in the press, so I think that helped equal things out. CREEM published one of the only reviews that actually knew what the goddamn thing was all about. A lot of critics thought it was the next Blasters' album. I mean, the Clash put out EPs every week with dub reggae versions of their songs, so we just did this quick thing. We told our management not to push it, and we just put it out for the fans who like the Blasters' style. We're not dumb enough to think that we could actually do a better version of 'High School Confidential' than Jerry Lee did. It was just meant to be a party record. Have a party, put it on, drink beer, step on it, pick it up, flip it over...you know."

Non Fiction is somewhat of a change, both lyrically and musically (i.e., the Otis Redding/Steve Cropper-influenced ballad, "Leaving"), for the Blasters. A lot of critics have picked up on the political thrust of songs like "Boomtown" and the gospelinfluenced "Jubilee Train," which deal with desperate economic/political times, and are. examples of "New Depression" rock in the same vein as Springsteen's Nebraska, although Alvin's characters don't resort to such desperate extremes. The political content isn't all that surprising when one learns that the Alvins' dad was a union organizer in their native Downey, California.

"I'm a political person, but I don't think we're a political band. 'Boomtown,' 'Jubilee Train' and 'Bus Stop' to an extent are about as political as I ever want to get. I like Phil Ochs, but I don't want to be that heavy, and I don't want a Blasters show to be like the Clash's political rallies. We'll do 'Jubilee Train' in the set, but it's not a big statement. I don't like yelling at people, telling them what to do, because they'll turn off immediately. But if they understand what the song's about, that's fine.

"I don't know if Reagan will have anything to do with it, but I think better times will come again. The thing is, times are bad for some people all the time. When the economy got bad, it didn't become all that publicized until white people lost their jobs, and then it was 'oh, no, times are tough again.' The thing about Non Fiction is that the Blasters have been typecast as being a fun, party-time band, kind of one level. But now, especially in light of the rockabilly craze, it's more important to make a statement and show that there are a lot of dimensions to us and this type of music apart from 'let's party!' "

In terms of concept, does Alvin see the political content tying in with the LP's other songs, most of which deal with lost love and faded dreams?

"Yeah, because I think people start to reevaluate things in those sort of tough situations. And when times are hard, love sometimes fails. It's real hard to hold onto relationships. I wanted to use that sort of everything's beaten and gone to hell theme. Even 'Long White Cadillac'—which is not a tribute to Hank Williams, because a tribute would be 'Hank, you're great, I love you,' and I'd like to write one of those someday—but it fits on the album because it deals with the pratfall of what happens sometimes when you get what you want and it's not what you expected or you're not prepared for it. But overall, the album's about people coping and trying to get by."

In some ways, it seems that the LP's political themes, particularly the sense of American survival on "Jubilee Train," are an extension of Alvin's celebration of U.S.A. culture on "American Music." He laughs when I tell him about an acquaintance who thinks the Blasters are "reactionary" because they glorify a "corrupt" nation.

"Well, I guess it all depends on how you define American culture. I mean I agree with him that things are all fucked-up and stuff, but 'American Music' wasn't about Ronald Reagan. It was about Lightnin' Hopkins. So if he wants to tell me that Lightnin' Hopkins sucks, he's in for an argument. I don't think that our songs at all gloss over the bad side of the American experience, but there is still a strength in American culture that has nothing to do with the politics of El Salvador or anything like that."

The Blasters contain a genuine artifact of American culture in the personage of Lee Allen, the legendary sax man who played on the classic recordings of Little Richard and Fats Domino, and who is now a permanent member of the band. The Alvins have known Allen since they were kids in Downey.

"When I was 12, we were hanging out with Lee and Big Joe Turner and T-Bone Walker and people like that, and it was the greatest experience of my life. Not even so much musically, but just attitude-wise. Here were these guys who'd been stars, sold lots of records, and they were playing in a small bar in Inglewood, California in a Sunday afternoon jam session. And you got this sense of why you do this, why you play music. Do you do it to get girls and be bigger than the Beatles, or is it for a better reason? The biggest thing I wanted was to be an extension of that tradition—the folk tradition of R&B and rockabilly, which was an extension of Jimmie Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, the backwoods singers and the 19th century tradition of the slaves. To me, that's what we're a part of—or at least trying to be a part of. And to have Lee Allen in the band, someone who is genuinely a part of that succession, helps the Blasters to become a part of the lineage."

During the past several years, the Blasters have had numerous highpoints: Shakin' Stevens scored a hit with their "Marie Marie" in the U.K., Elvis Costello opened a show for them in England, and they were the stars of their own PBS-TV special with Carl Perkins and Willie Dixon. Dave says the one thing they'd like to achieve now is scoring their own hit single, something akin to a Blasters' "Proud Mary."

"That's the main thing for me. I like writing songs that capture the mood, and I admire people like Butch Hancock and John Fogerty. I just want to continue to write songs that explore the whole mythos and what it is and what it's like to live in America, all the archetypes. 'Marie Marie' was an archetypal song—Marie's from Chuck Berry's 'Memphis, Tennessee,' but she's grown up now, and you've got the car, the boyfriend and the parents. I like dealing with that stuff and putting it into new situations. I think Bruce Springsteen does that, but he seems just a little bit too verbose for me. I'd prefer to write like Raymond Chandler olr Chuck Berry or Charles Bukowski. Just keeping it real short and real straight, like Hemingway."

In a previous CREEM interview, Alvin complained that Americans are unaware of their cultural heritage. With the success of the Stray Cats, the Blasters, and new bands like Rank & File or even the Violent Femmes who quote Willie Dixon on their LP, does he think the situation is improving? Unfortunately, he isn't very optimistic.

"It's the sort of thing you can't teach in school because it's just something you have to learn on your own. I don't think it'll ever completely go away, but it's just becoming more and more underground. You can see it happening in country music with guys like John Anderson and Ricky Skaggs, who're trying to get back to purer music—because they realize that once Merle Haggard and George Jones are gone, that's going to be it for country music.

"I think Americans are soYt of embarrassed—at least white Americans—about being the lost cousins of Europe, because Europe has this long tradition. A lot of people don't learn the right history, and they feel culturally inferior. That's why England can sell us back the Beatles selling us back rock 'n' roll, or the Stones can sell us back the Chicago blues, or the new synth bands can sell us back disco, and you have all these people going, 'Oh, that's groovy.' It's the sort of thing where that's cool because it's coming from over there, and they're all very cultured. Europeans are all educated and witty, while Americans are slobs, and the men drink beer, and we all wind up looking like George Jones. It's not a very attractive sort of thing, but it's the reality of the situation."

I mention to Alvin that I think a big part of the problem is a lot of rock fans have no sense of roots, and just like during the punk onslaught when a lot of people knew nothing pre-1977, there are kids today who know nqthing pre-MTV—adding that if A Flock of Duranjagoogoo is "new music," I'll take Little Richard.

He smiles. "Yeah, Well, I think Duran Duran make great videos. I really love some of their videos."

Did I forget to mention that Dave Alvin is a real nice guy?