{"id":21717,"date":"2021-09-26T05:30:48","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T09:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21717"},"modified":"2021-09-27T11:59:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:59:55","slug":"album-review-jim-basnight-and-the-moberlys-seattle-new-york-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/26\/album-review-jim-basnight-and-the-moberlys-seattle-new-york-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Jim Basnight and The Moberlys \u2013 Seattle \u2013 New York \u2013 Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-21718\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/moberlys.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"349\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/moberlys.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/moberlys-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/moberlys-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Describing something as underrated is sometimes little more than a lazy way of approaching an artist\u2019s work. But it can have useful meaning. In the case of The Moberlys, the group could well be described that way. But the label doesn&#8217;t quite get to the heart of the matter: how can you be underrated if hardly anyone\u2019s even heard you? That was the situation that faced The Moberlys.<\/p>\n<p>When the band is mentioned, it\u2019s often lumped into the musical bin known as <i>power pop<\/i>. That label makes many musicians bristle, and not just because one of the leading gatekeepers in the subgenre is a notorious would-be impresario who utilizes a pay-to-play model for his live events. And The Moberlys certainly transcended the tag; their music has elements of everything from punk to country-rock to Paisley Underground to heartland rock to&#8230;well, you get the idea. And sure, there\u2019s plenty of music that would fit nicely on a <i>Yellow Pills<\/i> compilation.<\/p>\n<p>The Moberlys\u2019 music, however, never got the wide release and exposure it so richly deserved. A 1979 self-titled debut has never seen reissue, and it\u2019s semi-rare today. In 2000, French label Pop the Balloon compiled nearly two dozen previously-unheard tracks as <i>Seattle \u2013 New York \u2013 Los Angeles<\/i>, but that disc was never easy to find Stateside, either.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s quite welcome that Precedent Records (apparently an enterprise of lead Moberly Jim Basnight) has seen to the reissue of that compilation. As good as the debut album was, <i>Seattle \u2013 New York \u2013 Los Angeles<\/i>underscores the versatility of the group. Spanning several years\u2019 time, multiple lineups of the band and its changing bases of operations (hence the title), the album serves up loads of tunes that \u2013 in a just world \u2013 would have been hits the first time \u2018round.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s certainly unlikely to happen now, even with the belated reissue of this set, but if it gets The Moberlys\u2019 music into the hands (and ears) of receptive listeners, it will have served its purpose. Call it underrated, call it under-heard. But listen and you\u2019ll call it what it is: <em>great<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Describing something as underrated is sometimes little more than a lazy way of approaching an artist\u2019s work. But it can have useful meaning. In the case of The Moberlys, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49,50,55,62,64,65],"tags":[3762,4652],"class_list":["post-21717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-new-wave","category-powerpop","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-jim-basnight","tag-moberlys","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-50-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21719,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21717\/revisions\/21719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}