Saturday, July 20, 2013

Sundowners - tape (1994)

Cassette.  Procured this one off of Ebay a couple years ago, due in no small part to Mitch Easter's production credit (yes, some of the songs were tracked at his fabled Drive-In studio).  Fronted by one Lynn Blakey, the Sundowners were a North Carolina duo (backed up by an ancillary drummer, Eddie Walker for this recording).  As depicted, the tape sleeve oddly enough features text, specifically a blurb from a CMJ scribe who touts the 'downers as influenced by the likes of Let's Active, Zeitgeist (later The Reivers), and X.  Hmmm.  Well, they lack the creative spark of Mitch and Co., and are equally devoid of X's punky thrust.  However the Zeitgeist assertion kinda works for me.  A Tanya Donnely comparison would have been far more apropos, even if these eight tunes are more streamlined than pretty much any of Throwing Muses and/or Belly's offerings.  Blakey mixes things up between the relatively fervent "Long Gone" and "Faith," with the navel-gazing balladry of "Polaroid" and "Soultwin."  The core duo of Blakey and her compatriot John Chumbris later parlayed their Sundowners roles into a quartet that went by the name of Glory Fountain

01. Follow Me So
02. Long Gone
03. Soultwin
04. Straight Line
05. Faith
06. Like Gold
07. I Belong to Me
08. Polaroid

Hear

6 comments:

jay strange said...

Lynn Blakey was a touring member of let's active back in 83
Paul Westerberg then in The Replacements and Lynn met at one of the sf gigs she played with lets active and had got on very well that evening and exchanged phone numbers. Westerburg then proceeded to lose her number and that was that. A few months later while on tour he heard a radio interview with Let’s Active and wistfully regrets losing contact. Later he writes one of his most famous songs, Left Of The Dial about the incident.

spavid said...

Cool backstory. Thanks Jay. I'll have to pay extra close attention to the lyrics the next time I give "Left of the Dial" a spin. Too bad Paul didn't have Facebook back then... But luckily for us, we had the Replacements.

sk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
sk said...

feel like doing a re-up?

hard drive died....lost it all...

thx....shane

spavid said...

The link has just been updated.

Rod Whisner said...

Any chance you could re-up this one? Also, do you happen to have any of the Glory Fountain stuff? Impossible to find!

Thx!

Rod