These California cow-punks are less concerned with revering C&W icons than trashing them at a furious pace: Blood on the Saddle’s idea of country is Hank Williams OD-ing in the back of his car; their western, that of spaghetti flicks. On the quartet’s first album, ragged harmonies, yodelled vocals and the slap of stand-up bass…
North Carolina’s Let’s Active was probably the most misunderstood of the South’s ’80s new-pop bands. Though dogged by a rosy-cheeked nicest-guys-of-wimp-pop image, they could be downright moody. Producer/multi-instrumentalist Mitch Easter assembled the trio in 1981, but it only emerged nationally in the wake of R.E.M., whose first two discs Easter co-produced at his Drive-In garage…
