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Blow Up Blow
Sunshine on the Front Line

Comments (0) By MICHAEL COYLE Thursday, Jan 19 2006

Ready to Blow/Tenaya Hills photo

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Blow Up Blow is made up of four guys with some serious local pedigree: Dennis Owens, Bob Kurthy, END and Paul Zansler, if you wanna drop names. Legends, one might even be tempted to call them, since they can be linked back in one way or another to almost everything fun that has happened in Long Beach in the past 10 years. And now they're all working together as one. Expect greatness, yes? Many people hear BUB and knee-jerk something about Gang Of Four, which is actually still a compliment when it's done right, as it is here—BUB do indeed rock snappy rhythms and fuzzy-funky bass lines that make you want to dance all herky-jerky. But really we keep thinking of the glory days of old SST Records: this sounds like punk rock that was meant to be played on vinyl, like it coulda been shipped in the same box as everything else Ginn's label put out in 1985. The guitar is constantly on some crazy melody line, but subtle like how J Mascis would do it under all that distortion, or how D. Boon would just keep piling it on without it ever getting too heavy: the album opens with "Lost All Control," a dirty boogie with Iggy desperation, followed by the paranoid car-chase fury of "Get Anywhere," and it launches straight up from there, mentioning bombs dropping at least twice. That's a good sign—they know the kind of damage they can do.

BLOW UP BLOW PERFORM WITH FUTURE ANCIENTS AND SOLO CLIQUE AT THE PROSPECTOR, 2400 E. SEVENTH ST., LONG BEACH, (562) 438-3839. SAT., 10 P.M. $3-$5. 21+.