Abyssal Arrows

"Blues Theme" is arguably the most famous track by Davie Allan & the Arrows. It was recorded quickly on Mike Curb's Tower label for the soundtrack to the move Wild Angels – Peter Fonda's first biker flick and just before Easy Rider. With wild, screaming fuzz guitar and a surf beat, it signifies the sound of the L.A. Strip in 1967 and embodies – in its two-minutes-and-ten-seconds – all the cultural elements of its soundtrack – the waning surf scene that traveled it, the muscle cars that roared through its lanes, the dawn of acid-crazed hippies floating down it, and the speed-drenched outlaw biker tribes who haunted it…

"Blues Theme" is arguably the most famous track by Davie Allan & the Arrows. It was recorded quickly on Mike Curb's Tower label for the soundtrack to the move Wild Angels – Peter Fonda's first biker flick and just before Easy Rider. With wild, screaming fuzz guitar and a surf beat, it signifies the sound of the L.A. Strip in 1967 and embodies – in its two-minutes-and-ten-seconds – all the cultural elements of its soundtrack – the waning surf scene that traveled it, the muscle cars that roared through its lanes, the dawn of acid-crazed hippies floating down it, and the speed-drenched outlaw biker tribes who haunted it…

Arrows, the follow-up to 1978's The Blue Man, has Khan again signed directly to Columbia rather than Tappen Zee, where Bob James produced Khan's 1977 debut, Tightrope. With commercial considerations a non-issue and armed with a vague concept, Arrows is often a humorless and bleak affair despite the skills of the talented guitarist. Khan shares the production duties with Elliot Scheiner on this 1979 effort. Almost immediately, Arrows seems to suffer from a lack of direction. While the 11-minute-and-42-second concept song "City Suite" offers nary a memorable riff, "Candles" has Khan doing some great unnerving solos with Michael Brecker supporting on soprano sax. The insistent "Some Arrows" finds the rote backing of most Khan's fiery solos null and void. "Calling" has some of the tunefulness of Tightrope and has him easily accessing the sense of longing and drama the earlier tracks stumbled over.