Treat Her Right (1986) LP

Treat Her Right 

Treat Her Right

RCA (6884)

Major label 1988 reissue of 1986 debut 

Rating: **** (Recommended)

Mark Sandman’s pre-Morphine Boston blues band, quite different than the primitive frantic blues that the Gories were putting down in Detroit at the same time, but still similar in many ways, this band featuring an almost polished sound (w/ cool harmonica and various guitars) but keeping a rough edge and an honest feel (not like that stale museum blues by most white boys).  

This clearly comes from the Boston underground/barroom tradition, with one foot firmly planted in the Southern swamps, the band’s name obviously from the Roy Head song, solid set, especially side one, mostly originals by Sandman, Jim Fitting (harmonica) and David Champagne (guitar), covering “Everglades” (Harlan Howard) and “Where Did All the Girls Come From” (James Blood Ulmer).

 The original sleeve better fit the sound, and the sound of the original was likely a bit more raw, but even the clean sound can’t ruin this.  Good stuff.

— Winch

(author of Kalamazoo: Growing Up Sideways in the 1970s)

http://eight-track.com/kalamazoo.html

http://www.amazon.com/Kalamazoo-Growing-Up-Sideways-1970s/dp/0692013865/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Treat Her Right: Tied to the Tracks (1989) LP

Treat Her Right 

Tied to the Tracks

RCA (9596)

1989

Rating: **** (Recommended)

While the band likely would have liked to have this come out a bit rawer, the music still sounds great with the major label production.  The first side is solid to the end, all originals except a cover of Beefheart’s “Hit A Man.”  The side closes with Sandman’s “No Reason” (which sounds especially haunting in retrospect, after Sandman’s fatal on-stage heart attack in 1999).  

Side two is filled with originals by various members of the band.  (After this second album, Sandman would form Morphine and this band would move to Rounder, a better fit for this outfit.)  

Another recommended set, none of that “I Got My Mojo Working” crap.  Instead this is a collection of slightly oddball but refreshingly honest white-boy blues.

— winch

(author of Kalamazoo: Growing Ups Sideways in the 1970s)

http://eight-track.com/kalamazoo.html