{"id":82,"date":"2015-02-15T20:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T20:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.71.127.204\/wordpress\/?p=82"},"modified":"2015-09-25T17:36:39","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T17:36:39","slug":"the-blasters-continental-club-houston-tx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/15\/the-blasters-continental-club-houston-tx\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blasters – Continental Club – Houston, TX"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
Written by Jim Bille <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Image\"The Blasters are on the road and they stopped in at the Continental Club in Houston on Valentine’s Day\u00a0after playing the Austin Continental the night before\u00a0to perform before a packed Houston house.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

High energy rock-a-billy blues has always be<\/a>en the hallmark\u00a0sound of this West Coast group that brothers Phil and Dave Alvin formed 35 years ago\u00a0in Downey, CA. After all this time they still\u00a0deliver that sound with the same intensity and vigor that sets the\u00a0standard for this type of music. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Phil Alvin, who was just recently nominated for a Grammy for best Blues Album along with his brother Dave for their collaboration on Common Ground, an album of Big Bill Broonzey music, was in fine\u00a0animated\u00a0form Saturday night with his controlled screaming vocals ringing loud and clear\u00a0along with\u00a0his ever present\u00a0ear to ear grin.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Original band veterans\u00a0John Bazz\u00a0on bass guitar and Bill Bateman on drums\u00a0kept the\u00a0rhythm churning\u00a0at a\u00a0forever frantic and non-stop pace.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although Dave Alvin left the Blasters a number of years ago the group has not missed a guitar riff since by incorporating journeyman blues guitarist Keith Wyatt who has now played with the band for\u00a0close to twenty years.\u00a0 Wyatt is featured on the last two Blasters albums 4-11-44 and Fun on Saturday Night. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Original Blasters keyboardist Gene Taylor sat in at their Austin performance the night before but unfortunately\u00a0did not make it to the Houston show.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Image\"Nevertheless, Alvin and company’s first song\u00a0filled the cramped dance floor with excited fans by opening the set with one of the many Blaster’s signature songs\u00a0“American Music”. The front of the stage was shoulder to shoulder from that point on as the band musically whipped the audience into a sweaty frenzy and held the crowd spellbound the rest of the night.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of numbers from the band’s latest release, Fun on Saturday Night were performed this evening including the title track but the music that really got the packed house jumpin’ were classic tunes like “I’m Shakin”, “Good bye Baby So Long”, “One Red Rose” and\u00a0“Marie Marie”.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Other songs featured were\u00a0“One Bad Stud”, “Dark Night”,\u00a0“Blue Shadows”,\u00a0“Trouble Bound”,\u00a0“Border Radio” and\u00a0“Daddy Rolling Stone”. The Jerry Lee Lewis penned,\u00a0” High School Confidential” was the last encore number and had the packed Continental Club bouncing high and hard.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Blasters make it to Houston every year or so and if you crave a shot of fast paced and revved up blues you need to check them out. \u00a0Not sure if they have another 35 years in them…but if they do I’m sure they will be delivering the same high energy show to packed venues of excited fans.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Jim Bille The Blasters are on the road and they stopped in at the Continental Club in Houston on Valentine’s Day\u00a0after playing the Austin Continental the night before\u00a0to perform before a packed Houston house. High energy rock-a-billy blues has always been the hallmark\u00a0sound of this West Coast group that brothers Phil and Dave… <\/p>\n

Read More<\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concert-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonmusicreview.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}