Jason Ringenberg is from the same micropolitan area I\u2019m from. Or, to put it in simpler terms, he\u2019s just one county to the west. You might think this has nothing to do with this review, but it does, in a way.<\/p>\n
See, I\u2019m from a town that exists in liminal space. When I grew up in Ottawa, Illinois, it was neither Chicagoland or Central Illinois; it was a bit of both, stuck on Interstate 80, slightly redneck, slightly city folk, slightly farm boy, slightly industrial, slightly a river town\u2014a bit of everything, if you will.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a pretty good metaphor for Jason And The Scorchers, too. Their declared genre is \u201ccowpunk,\u201d that strange liminal space where outlaw country meets punk music, a bunch of good old boys smashing their steel guitars against the rough and rowdy world of punk. The EMI Years<\/i> is a documentation of their second, third, and fourth albums, released at a time when most of America was listening to synthesizers.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, there are no synthesizers on this CD that I can hear.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s get the hits (hit) out of the way. \u201cGolden Ball And Chain\u201d is one of the best rock songs from the 1980s, and in a truly just world it would have been a huge, ground-breaking beginning to a long and hit-filled career. The world, my friends, is not just.<\/p>\n
Once we get past that, it\u2019s a mixed bag. For every great song like \u201cCrashin\u2019 Down,\u201d there\u2019s a clunker like \u201cHelp There\u2019s A Fire.\u201d \u201cI Really Don\u2019t Want To Know\u201d has some red-hot wailing harmonica, but \u201cBroken Whiskey Glass\u201d comes off slightly flat. The second disc is definitely better than the first; it seems like Jason And The Scorchers got their feet under them later in their EMI career, and started branching out into songs like \u201cMy Heart Still Stands With You\u201d and \u201cGhost Town.\u201d They even took on the Rolling Stones with a wicked cover of \u201c19th Nervous Breakdown.\u201d <\/p>\n
The best word I can use for these godfathers of cowpunk is interesting. Their music is definitely worth checking out; their continued career after this, while intermittent, is quite good. The EMI Years<\/i> is a nice place to start, albeit with some pitfalls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10768],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46423","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jason-and-the-scorchers","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46423"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}