My resolution: write even more for the blog than I usually do.


The Del Fuegos’ Boston, Mass. is the point where The Replacements (ah!) meet The Georgia Satellites (ugh). That might also indicate early Soul Asylum, but the description is especially apt here. The band has a ragged Westerbergian rock ‘n’ roll soul, but they’re not far from being a bona fide bar band extraordinaire (they almost made it big), the type that is only a few steps removed from hair metal. I wrote about their Embarrassment connection and their appearance in a line from a great Juliana Hatfield song in a post last year, but now I’ve actually started listening to them, and can say they’re most definitely allusion-worthy. Boston, Mass. is a great archetypal rock album full of glorious metronomic drumming and singer Dan Zanes vamping like Sky Saxon or Jimmie Dale Gilmore. It strikes me as fortuitous that the album was released in the same year as The Replacements’ Tim, and also Green on Red’s No Free Lunch, whose bluesy Americana it approaches on this one:

[mp3] The Del Fuegos – “Night on the Town”

Note: Much of The Del Fuegos’ output, long out of print on CD, has recently been reissued on Wounded Bird Records (excluding fourth and final album Smoking in the Fields, which I know there’s a copy of lurking somewhere in my sister’s house). Of course WMCN never had to worry, because Warner Bros. was sending us the band’s records back in the glory days.