June 13, 1980 Gusto concert review: Robin Lane and the Chartbusters at Stage One

Another entry in the parade of forgotten New Wave rockers at Stage One.

June 13, 1980

Chartbusters try for a breakthrough

Robin Lane and the Chartbusters ain't exactly busting up the charts in Buffalo. Or the turnstiles either, judging by the paltry gathering of about 100 that came out to greet them in Harvey and Corky's Stage One in Clarence Thursday night.

Nevertheless, Lane and her four male compatriots let fly with the kind of hard-hitting music that's made them the toast of their hometown, Boston, and other appreciative sections of the Northeast.

The thundering succession of tunes transformed Lane from a small, rather haggard-looking blonde-haired figure into something quite like a rock 'n roll angel, looking for the saving sparkle of hope in a heavily tarnished world.

"I'm givin' you a second chance," she barked bitterly in "Why Do You Tell Lies." "And you better not let me down. I want to love you ..."

Standing there in a loose white jumpsuit and red Fender guitar, she needed only one song to warm up her brooding alto. For the second, "Many Years Ago" off her debut album, she began generating a moody intensity that was reminiscent of the early Byrds and the latter-day Tom Petty.

She, like Petty, seemed to push her music past a personal threshold of pain. Similarly, her triumph came when the threshold gave way to a fast-moving groove, when the beat was rolling, the songs segued smoothly and the guitars pushed Lane out to her limit.

It peaked late, but the peak came in time for the finale, a climactic pairing of "Don't Wait Too Long" and "I Don't Want to Know," two of the most haunting pieces from the album. The critical acclaim for Lane, though, is partly praise for her promise. She's still developing. But like Petty, she's bound to be busting up the charts one day.

Lane might have earned an encore had the Stage One management not sent the Toys out for two warm-up sets. One solid slice of these colorful, high-decibel Buffalo New Wavers would have been just fine, but the double serving wilted the little crowd and left the fans too weary to give a proper rave for Robin Lane.

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IN THE PHOTO: Robin Lane and the Chartbusters in a publicity photo.

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FOOTNOTE: Like so many bands trying to emerge during this depression in the music biz, the Chartbusters, whose lineup included two former members of the Modern Lovers, struggled to break through. The record company that was supposed to release their first album, Private Stock, went out of business.

But then renowned producer Jerry Wexler saw them and was so impressed he got them a deal with Warner Bros. The video from their biggest single, "When Things Go Wrong," was played on the day when MTV went on the air in 1981, but it didn't make them viable commercially. Business disputes followed and the end came in 1983 when Robin Lane decided she'd like to be a mom.

Robin kept writing songs, putting out occasional albums and doing music therapy for survivors of abuse in the Springfield, Mass., area. Eventually she and the Chartbusters got back together for reunion shows, first in 2001 and again in 2019.

Before the Chartbusters, Robin had grown up in L.A., where her father Ken Lane was songwriter and pianist for Dean Martin and she played the folk-rock clubs in the late 1960s. She was married for a couple years to Andy Summers, who went on to become guitarist for the Police, and sang backing vocals on Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" album.

Meanwhile, setlist.fm has no listing of any songs from Chartbuster dates in 1980. The Stage One show isn't even on their site