Right now, we’ve gathered some of the best Red Devils, 13 and Lester Butler clips in easy-to-use playlists, so you can hear things like Pinkpop all in one sitting (and in the right order). If we have time, we’ll try to upload some of our own personal videos, and collect up some other Devils-related music. And if any fans have videos they’d like us to upload to nofightindotcom, or found some vids we haven’t seen, please let us know.
You can find more about some of these videos here on nofightin.com, including reviews, background info and more.
For all your Bill Bateman needs, look no further than The Doghouse Lords, with dates next week in California. As an added bonus, it looks like Bateman and John Bazz are pulling double duty with The Blasters on a couple of these gigs.
Doghouse Lords guitarist Chopper Franklin (late of The Cramps) tells nofightin.com that tour dates and more can be found on the mutts’ new site doghouselords.com.
Aug. 5: Redwood Bar, L.A. Aug. 6: Red Devil Lounge with The Blasters, San Francisco Aug. 7: Thee Parkside — the “Doghouse Duo” in San Francisco Aug. 8: 19 Broadway with The Blasters, Fairfax, California Aug. 9: Redwood Bar — the “Doghouse Duo” in L.A.
If anyone hits these shows, give us your review on nofightin.com.
And for those not familiar with the Lords, watch “Georgia Chain Gang:”
The guitarist is Chris Masterson; in an e-mail, Clark tells nofightin.com that “Chris replaced Alex Schultz and Enrico Crivellaro and did most of the gigs in the Los Angeles area and short road trips outside of L.A. Alex Schultz was the ‘ringer’ for festivals and such, as promoters asked if Alex was in the band for those events. Hence his appearance on MBO 1998.”
Clark — who says he does not remember the bassist on this session — says he was the man who insisted on rehearsals, including three in 1998, “mostly going over old material and creating Lester’s new material. We had to make up our own parts for those new songs and try to make it fit.”
Great find on YouTube recently — vintage video of The Blue Shadows, the pre-Def American version of The Red Devils. The description, from user checker764, says:
Before signing with Def American Records and being given the name The Red Devils by producer Rick Rubin, Lester Butler’s band was known as The Blue Shadows. They were featured in a showcase for new bands at something called The Colvin Convention (?), an event for radio and record companies in Los Angeles in 1991. This clip is from that performance.
The videos offer a fascinating look at the Devils before hitting it “big.” Unfortunately, checker764 didn’t make the videos available for embedding, but here are the links to the two videos: Continue reading →
Nothing will ever make up for the fact that the one time the Devils played in my town I didn’t blow off my English paper and go see them instead. It’s small consolation that I did graduate with said degree. After all, it was a short paper. How much could my grade have suffered? This incident probably serves as eternal fuel for me to find everything accessible about them anywhere I can. With the wealth of info that is the internet, this has gotten easier. That English paper thing is still regrettable, however.
The other evening I was rabidly surfing the web for all things Devils-related, when I happened across some Youtube videos featuring Lester Butler in his solo work with the band 13. The existence of such videos is not new to me, having owned some of them in one form or another for several years. However, as I idly watching some familiar clips for the umpteenth time I glanced over to the right under the “Related Videos” box, and saw one labeled “Lester Butler Bolwerk.” It didn’t sound familiar, but I didn’t think much of it as so many videos are merely identical content with different names. I have to check these things out, though, so I clicked on it. What came up didn’t look immediately familiar. Interesting. After several minutes of viewing I was pretty happy to realize that I’d actually found something I’d not seen or heard of yet, and with only about 450 hits to it since its posting on June of 2008, it looked like no one else had either.
The videos in question are from Lester’s 13 tour. He has Eddie Clark on drums, Alex Schultz on guitar, and I believe it’s Mike Hightower on bass, although I only saw Mike live once, and it’s hard to make him out in the dim light of the video. There are two separate clips, one is Automatic. The other is titled “Onbekend” on the video, which is obviously a foreign title, and I can’t readily assign a title to it myself. I heard Lester do a song similar to this when I saw him live at Lynaugh’s in Kentucky, but it’s not off of the album 13. Anyone with information relating to it is welcome to drop a line here at Nofightin.com and enlighten the masses. The video quality is fairly decent, if not pro, and the audio is above average, though not studio quality by any stretch.
Naturally, I feel it’s my duty to share these new findings with any and all fans of the Red Devils and their related groups/artists. Enjoy. Maybe I’ll watch them again and pretend I was at this show instead of writing a paper or something not nearly as personally fulfilling.
