Moon Martin - Escape from Domination

The year was 1979, and the battle between good and evil raged through the land. Disco was making it pretty much impossible to listen to the radio. Still, it was a good time for rock and roll.

I remember hearing Moon Martin and really liked "Rolene," but at the time I never picked anything up. Fast forward through the years, and I did have a decent retrospective on CD that covered the bases, but I wanted more.

Recently, I was digging in the bins, and I found a decent copy of Street Fever, which was his third album in three years. It was good, really good, but I wanted to find his debut (let's be honest, as good as his version of "Bad Case of Loving You" is, Robert Palmer really made it his own) or his follow-up, Escape from Domination.

As fate would have it, I found a copy of the latter and brought it home for a little loving care. Aside from a nick in the vinyl on the second track, which isn't as bad as I'd expected, it cleaned up real good (extra points for those playing at home if you read that last bit like Big Jim McBob (Joe Flaherty) and Billy Sol Hurok (John Candy) from SCTV's Farm Film Report).

The album is a cohesive effort that bears up to repeated spins. You can hear Mister Martin's rockabilly roots throughout his songwriting, and that's not a bad thing. Who doesn't love the grit and twang that hearkens back to the early days of rock and roll?

I defy you to not get a grin while listening to "Bootleg Woman" when the guitars start ripping it up. In my mind's eye, Moon is doing a duck walk and strutting like a peacock.

Musically, the songs land somewhere between the rock world and the singer-songwriter stuff (more edge, less pop) that was all over the '70s. The showpiece here is still "Rolene," and this song alone makes the album worth picking up.

The other thing is the album is short. Ten songs, three minutes - get in, get out, leave you wanting more. I played this a few times while gathering my thoughts for this little blurb, and each time through I liked it a little more. I guess you could say it was a grower not a shower (I make no apologies for this).

For a guy who apparently got his nickname for using the word moon in his songs, he only uses it once on the album, and that's on "The Feeling's Right," where he writes, "The moon is burning bright." For a little while, he really did.

In the early '90s, I would discover Jude Cole's music when "Baby, It's Tonight" was on the radio (who is only a few years older than me. He was maybe 20 when Escape from Domination came out). I love it when you can follow threads and learn new things.

Sadly, Moon Martin passed away in 2020.

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