The Blue Gangsters

 This Blues Gangsters’ review by Bucketfull of Brains’ appears at the end of their issue #73 “Lucky Soul”. This short review was our first break in the British press! Here is what Bucketful of Brains’ Editor Nick West wrote about The Blues Gangsters: The Blues Gangsters are an amalgamation of veterans of San Diego’s Che Underground; an 80s scene based around that town’s Che Cafe which seems to share a lot of characteristics and antecedents with LA musicians of the same period. There’s echoes of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Paisley gang in here aplenty, and the tracks like ‘Tigershark Blues’ and ‘High Society (Borderline Blues)’ have sufficient sleazy glam and dirty licks to make this eight-song mini-album well worth chasing up. 

Read Kristi’s post on the Che Underground blog, From ZERO to HEROine: On becoming a Blues Gangster & ‘The Perils of Life’.

Here’s our new CD. We wrote this music over the internet, since we now live in various far-flung corners of the globe (Africa in my case). One of us would write a riff or two, and maybe a few lines of lyrics, and then we’d send it to another person. Pretty soon it added up to a song, and then the eight on the record. We all used to be in bands in San Diego and play shows together, so we knew how to communicate with each other. Matt and I were in the Wallflowers together back in the heyday of the Che Underground in San Diego. Dave Ellison was in the Rockn Dogs, they played with the Wallflowers all the time. We were united in our admiration of Johnny Thunders. So, the common history made it all pretty easy.

I think Kristi wrote some of the lyrics back in the day when she was a bohemian and lived at a house full of art-types on Madison in San Diego, but most of the music on the record is brand new. We were looking for a direction, because we’re not finished! We have the whole second half or our lives to fill with music. Rock and Roll music to be exact. We all plan to keep playing until we keel over and die. Someday, loose our teeth and hair and be old and all, but even then we’ll sit on the porch and play blues together on old acoustic guitars anyway. Dave Ellison is such a great guitar player now that I can’t even imagine how he’ll be when he’s like 75 years old. Wow…

“The Perils of Life” is pretty easy to figure out since we’ve all led perilous lives in multiple ways, and specifically Kristi had a stroke a few years ago. Dave Fleminger pretty much just stepped right in and did the bass and keyboards. He’s such a great musician, plus a great sound engineer, as evidenced by the final mixing and mastering he did on this record. Also, it’s notable that the son of Matt Johnson’s (the drummer) girlfriend gave us that line on “Tigershark Blues” about having only “100 days to live and nothing to do”. He’s only seven years old! He says he says he got the idea from watching Johnny Cash prison videos. Man, tough kid, he’s gonna grow up a rock and roller for sure.

All of us punk rockers, glam rockers and rock and rollers, etc. are Blues Gangsters, in the sense of being cultural criminals. We broke the law, and now we’ll pay. Or… maybe we won’t. Just maybe, like Bonnie and Clyde, we’ll get off scot free. Okay, either we’ll all fly off to Rio and live out the rest of our days lazing on the beach spending our ill-gotten gains, our musical loot if you will, or we’ll do time. Who knows? Who even cares?

David Rinck - Nairobi June 2009