ROCKIN’ TO NEW ORLEANS

With all of the rich R&B-jazz soil to till, it’s strange to imagine the youth of New Orleans going out and forming punk rock bands, but that’s exactly what they were doing back in ’79. The Red Rockers started out as a garage band they called the Rat Finks, learning by playing along with early records by the Clash, the Damned, Stiff Little Fingers and the Buzzcocks. Their first album, last year’s 'Condition Red, was a pretty good approximation of the sound of the first Clash album (a comparison that eventually started to drive these guys crazy from hearing it so often).

They moved to San Francisco to record the album (they are signed to the San Francisco-based, CBS-distributed 415 records), but then moved back home. They maintain their ties to New Orleans, and the sense of belonging to a place helps them, but they remain a New Orleans band with no ties to what could be thought of as the New Orleans “sound.”