Robin Lane and The Chartbusters - S/T (1980)

     Even if Robin Lane & the Chartbusters' self-titled 1980 debut album didn't quite meet the expectations of the band and their rabid Boston following, it did capture their blend of new wave pop with dynamic folk-rockish guitar lines for the first time on a widely distributed national release. At the fore were singer-songwriter Lane's own husky vocals, delivering songs that for all their melodic hooks were tinged with far greater darkness and ambivalence than most pop-rock of the time, new wave or otherwise.

   Although Robin Lane & the Chartbusters was Lane's first album, she had actually been active as a singer-songwriter for about a decade. Back in 1969 she had sung backup vocals on "Round and Round" on Neil Young's classic Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. In the 1970s she left California to move East, and only a little prior to hooking up with the Chartbusters, she'd been playing far mellower, folk-rock-aligned singer-songwriter material. Those were the kinds of songs she was doing when she got a deal with Private Stock, Blondie's first label.

    Soon afterward, a newfound love for acts like Patti Smith, Television, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, and Dwight Twilley sent her own music into a much different path. Hanging out with Boston bands like the Real Kids and at the legendary local venue the Rat got her in touch with most of the musicians who would become the Chartbusters: guitarist-vocalists (and ex-Modern Lovers) Asa Brebner and Leroy Radcliffe, bassist-vocalist Scott Baerenwald, and drummer Tim Jackson. "I put this other band together and actually enticed them to be my bandmates, because I had this deal with Private Stock," remembers Lane. "And then about a month or two later, Private Stock folded. So I had my new band and new direction."

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