Lost Crusaders: Wasted On Broken Wind....

I first met Chandler several centuries ago at a place called the Club 57 on St. Marks Place. It was an impromptu nightclub and bar without a liquor license in the basement of a church that was a CIA front staffed with Ukrainian Nazi collaborators resettled by the OSS to fight communism. I was the DJ. Chandler arrived from Portland, Maine with Tim Warren, who would go on to found Crypt Records. Chandler liked good records and he liked to drink and we became friends. His first musical enterprise was a duo--- Tchang & Chandler (pictured here standing on the carcass of a woolly mammoth they'd killed for food). Chandler was a natural as a frontman and songwriter and within weeks had composed some killer tunes like "Spit It On The Floor", "A Man Needs A Woman", "Black Jack" (recently covered by the Hives), and others I can't quite remember. He joined a neo-garage band called the Outta Place who cut an LP for Midnight Records then formed the Raunch Hands with Tchang, George Sully, Vince Brnicevic and a guy whose name means cocksucker in Spanish (so he moved to Spain, what would Freud say about that? Here's what the Mummies had to say). The Raunch Hands never caught on with the Indie rock crowd but they kept rockin' through the 80's and 90's, made some fine records, spent most of their time in Europe and eventually dissolved.

Chandler took to sleeping in shopping carts and garbage cans. But tenacity is an under

rated character trait, and Chandler pulled himself together, quit drinking, and put together a new band and recorded a new record. The band is the Lost Crusaders and the record is called Have You Heard About The World? (Everlasting Records, Spain, or available from Itunes). It's hard, really hard, to make something new out of the old influences in this post-everything era, few veins have not been mined to death. The Lost Crusaders take their inspiration from black gospel music, groups like the Sensational Nightingales and the EverReady Singers. However they do not sound like a bunch of white guys imitating Ray Charles. In fact, they don't sound like anything I've ever heard. The closest analogy I can make is a 21st century version of Brother Claude Ely. Here's one of my favorite tracks on the disc--- Wasted On The Wind. Country singer Laura Cantrell appears on two tracks and Jon Spencer is on one if that sways your opinion in any direction.
It's rare I hear a new record I like, it happens about once a year or less. It's even rarer I find a new record that I play over and over again, but this one has really got it's talons into my ears.
Now go buy it.