Dawgs

  • Dawgs
  • My Town (Star-Rhythm) 1982 
  • On the Road to You (Fr. New Rose) 1983 

These Boston bar rockers play ingenuous ’60s Stones-styled original rock’n’roll tunes with choogling guitars and vocal panache on My Town. Produced by ex-Brownsville Station leader Cub Koda, the sound is muddy and the energy level only about half of what it might be, but a refreshing lack of pose and nostalgia-mongering redeems the project. On the Road to You reprises two of those tracks (which sound far better — must have been the mastering), adds three produced atmospherically by Elliot Easton and five more; the audio results are far crisper and the playing significantly hotter.

[Ira Robbins]