The CDC called…and boy, do they have an update for you.
Like many Austin-area musicians, The Blowies were sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic. Simultaneously cut out of a just-canceled South by Southwest festival and reeling from an indefinite delay for the release of an album that’s already finished, the political punk duo parted ways and headed for isolation – but not before hitting up Rock n Roll Rentals to secure enough gear to convert their respective shelters into studio spaces. From there, Sam Thompson and Tucker Jameson set out to see what would become of collaborating from afar.
When another local act began gathering the necessary ingredients for a compilation record that would spotlight Austin artists affected by the SXSW cancelation, to be titled LOST X LOST WEST, ThompsonandJamesonrespondedtothecall.TheBlowiesself-producedsomenew music in isolation with the help of their rented equipment and a ProTools free trial, and “CDC” was born – an irreverent and sassy track with just the right dash of practicality for a mask-or-be-masked world.
The Blowies have a sound one part Ramones, one part Sex Pistols, one part Joan Jett (they recently released a pitch-perfect cover of The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb”). The energy in their music is partly manic but never unsettling – the two aim to be political when they write and to attack topics with a tepid sense of neutrality, and maybe a tinge of anarchy. The Center for Disease Control was a perfect catalyst for their energy: wildly politicized by leaders and the media alike.
To hear Jameson put it, “We…set out at the beginning of this project to have a voice that spoke to current events…We have an angle on it. And usually, it’s not your typical angle; it’s not taking…any particular side in the argument but it’s pointing out the absurdity of it all in a palatable way, in a fun way.” “CDC” takes these tropes and props them up with added humor that sears the song into memory by playing on our collective pandemic hysteria (“The CDC’s got an update for me / Cozy on up to Mr. Clean”).
Satirical analysis of current events is critical to this writing duo, so much so that they are fighting to release their delayed album “sometime before the election” so as to capitalize on cresting momentum. For a band christened by an American flag-clad blow-up doll, the high stakes could matter less, though. It’s more about the absurdity of it all.
-Mike Floeck