Sunday 23 January 2011

Black train Jack



Black train jack were a band I listened to a lot during the nineties. And I mean a LOT. Hell both their albums I bought on CD and just played them all the time. I was a huge Token entry fan (well apart from that 3rd album) so when I heard in 1993 that Ernie the guitarist had a new and similar sounding band I was excited and when I first heard 'no reward' I wasn't at all disapointed. It was a bit more melodic sounding than TE but still packed a punch. The year later 'You're not alone' was released and that that was even better (although a bit more comercial sounding). Of both their albums 'You're not alone' has fared better with age. It's a more accomplished sounding album with no filler tracks (well apart from that 30 second blues jam thing). 'No reward' still has some amazing tracks but over all it's not as consistently great as 'you're not alone'. I knew a few folk who loved these at the time as well but that wasn't enough to satisfy the corporate vultures at Roadrunner who dropped them after their second album for dsiapointing sales. The band split up but members went onto to Grey Area who had a couple of albums out on Victory records.
Amazingly until now I've never owned these albums on vinyl. They probably wouldn't have been in good condition if I had anyway because like I said these two were played constantly at one time. It's annoying I had to resort to ebay and pay a bit when I remember seeing 'you're not alone' in bargains during the 90's but there you go.

3 comments:

Piesay said...

no one care bout black train jack anymore, awesome band

Tjerk de Heer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tjerk de Heer said...

Er something went wrong with that previous comment I think, oh well. What I was trying to say was:

Some time during the 90's, I must have been 17 or thereabouts, I discovered this band by accident. I have loved them since and played both their albums so many times it was insane.

I could not find any merch of them (living in Holland) so I painted my own T-shirt. The cartoon of them playing in the street from the back side of No Rewards. On a white t-shirt. It took me a couple of weeks because painting with an actual brush on fabric is pretty hard work!

I wore it proudly for a couple of weeks until I put it in the wash and forgot to turn it inside out. After that my hard work was only a faint memory. The love for their music is still there though, I still play these albums every now and then.