Irwin, Bob and the Pluto Walkers

The Throwaway Age album on Compact disc and 180 Gram Vinyl pressed at R.T.I.

To paraphrase a couple of pretty cool outfits from the '60s, please allow me to re-introduce you to the man you've known for all these years...Bob Irwin has spent over two decades making the dream of a lifetime, Sundazed Music, a reality. And now - with Sundazed universally lauded as the premier '60s reissue record label in the world - Irwin is knee-deep in chasing something else that's been driving his dreams since he first picked up a guitar as a "proverbial knee-high": playing the six-stringed instrument like nobody's business.

Irwin launche Ssundazed Music in 1989, a record label thriving greatly these days, thanks to his marketing savvy, when an army of others have lost their way. Sundazed, based in New York and Nashville, has kept alive the crucial vintage releases of a legion of hall of fame legends from the worlds of garage-rock, surf, R&B, rockabilly, country and jazz. Among hundreds and hundreds of revered Golden Age artists calling Sundazed home over the years are: the Byrds, Buck Owens, Dick Dale, Iggy Pop, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, Yardbirds, Nancy Sinatra, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Hollies, Moby Grape and the Trashmen.

As if Sundazed weren't enough to scratch the itch of world domination in the field of '60s music, Irwin has also spent years as one of the chief producers for Sony/Legacy, whipping into shape the sprawling back catalogues of Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, the Lovin' Spoonful, Donovan and many, many others.

And now Bob Irwin is releasing new recordings by a guitar player good enough to rub shoulders with any of the heroic string-benders he's nurtured over the years: Bob Irwin, himself. As Dandy Don Meredith of Monday Night Football fame once put it, "if you can do it, it ain't bragging." And Bob Irwin can, most certainly, do it with his boss new seven-inch release from the très cool Spinout label, a perfect home to gritty combos like Los Straitjackets, Deke Dickerson and the Kaisers.

Backed by his New York pals, the Pluto Walkers, Irwin digs deeply into the reverb-laced, big-guitar universe of fretboard wizards like the Ventures, Al Caiola and Billy Strange, and comes up with the twang-filled goods. It's a magical sound: haunting music just crying out to be used in silver-screen indie-films or during crucial moments of captivating TV blockbusters everyone will be talking about tomorrow morning around the water cooler. Get on board early, so you can say after it happens: "I knew these guys were going to be huge!" Because you'll be absolutely right.
-Jud Cost, Magnet magazine