From the 1970s through the late 1990s, the newsstand music magazines set the tone. And the magazine music critics were the tastemakers, and were often more famous than the one-hit-wonders they were assigned to review. Readers loved a brutal takedown as much as a glowing recommendation.
And there was no critic as acerbic or as succinct as one J.D. Considine.
Considine got his start in the mid-1970s. Over his long career, his byline appeared prominently in Rolling Stone, Musician, Revolver, DownBeat, Spin, The New York Times, Guitar World and many, many other publications.
But musicians, beware: A Considine review could help your album’s momentum, or it could be a verbal molotov cocktail tossed casually into the window of your band van — while you’re driving over a gorge.
(He continues to file well into the 21st century, with essays on Tidal as well as a snarky Twitter page, a platform built for his brand of observation:)
Thankfully for The Red Devils, Considine became enamored with the band in his Sunday, Aug. 21, 1992, review of “King King” for the Baltimore Sun:
Ever since bands like Canned Heat and Cream made blues-rock safe for the Top-40, the standard rock and roll approach to Chicago blues has been to emphasize the melody, downplay the rough edges and soften the instrumental sound. But that’s exactly what the Red Devils doesn’t do. Instead, the sound this quintet pumps out on “King King” is raw and realistic, boasting the same hypnotic riffs and edgy enthusiasm that made the original Chess recordings so revelatory. Even better, the group avoids the sort of overplaying that usually undoes white blues bands, leaving the sound lean, mean and utterly believable.
This review was no fluke, either. Considine remembered the album four months later, including it in his Sunday, Dec. 20, 1992, “Sounds Advice” column in the Baltimore Sun as a holiday gift recommendation:
Should something a little bluesier be in order, the Red Devils’ debut, “King King” (Def American 26795), is as rough-edged and raw as any early Butterfield Blues Band LP, while Robben Ford’s “Robben Ford & the Blue Line” (Stretch 1102) is the next best thing to a new Stevie Ray Vaughan album.
The Red Devils should be proud of coming out unscathed at the other end of a Considine review. They certainly fared better than Phil Collins.
No Fightin' 