Dave Alvin

The Blasters - Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings (2002) {2CD Set, Rhino-Slash-Warner Bros. R2 78345 rel 1981-1985}
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© 1981-85, 2002 Rhino / Slash / Warner Bros. | R2 78345
Rock & Roll / Rockabilly / College Rock / Classic Rock

"We got the Louisiana boogie and the Delta blues/We got country swing and rockabilly, too/We got jazz, country western, and Chicago blues/It's the greatest music that you ever knew." Dave Alvin was writing about "American Music" in his song of the same name when he penned those lines, but while he would never be quite so arrogant as to say so himself, he could have been talking about his band, the Blasters, who used the song as the title track of their first album. While often lumped in with the L.A. rockabilly scene that rose up in the wake of punk rock, from the start the Blasters displayed a wide-ranging musical diversity that set them far apart from, say, Levi and the Rockats.

From allmusic: You might have thought the Blasters had been in suspended animation for 25 years when their major-label debut turned up in late 1981 sounding for all the world like something cut in the Sun Studios in Memphis in 1956. Dave Alvin knew all the licks and his brother Phil had the R&B/country wail down. Best of all, you couldn't tell the oldies from Dave's newly written classics. Welcome to the birth of rock & roll, all over again.

An album of originals by Dave Alvin, accompanied by the expanded lineup that included Steve Berlin and Lee Allen on sax, this is prime-time vintage Blasters.