(Dangerous) Toys for Christmas!

“They bring their kids!” So crowed Jason McMaster’s email about Dangerous Toys’ annual reunion – Saturday, Dec. 7, at the Red Eyed Fly – in regards to the hard rockers’ multi-generational appeal. What does that mean to the teasin’ pleasin’ Austinites?

“Turning into a classic soundtrack to anyone’s life is a great feeling, something you cannot plan,” muses the frontman. “The early fans of any group will grow. They move on, yet they don’t forget that summer of ‘89.”

That’s putting it mildly for Dangerous Toys, whose ferocious Southern rock dominated the local scene and landed them on Columbia Records for their self-titled debut in 1989, which was subsequently certified gold – sales of 500,000. Follow-up Hellacious Acres followed two years later..

Though they broke up in the late Nineties, McMaster’s brought members back together in recent years for annual reunions. In 2007, they even recorded “Simple Man” for the All-Star Tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd, proving there’s a cachet to being a hard rock Texas legacy. McMaster remembers his own teen years, and the creeping awareness of what it meant to be from the Lone Star state.

“I think my early influences are my three brothers’ record collections. I was so young when I was becoming a music freak. I didn’t know what group was from what part of the world. When I found out ZZ Top and Willie Nelson were Texans, I flipped!

“The Toys have a sound that talks Texas. I’m just happy that after all this time, we get to play songs that take the fans back to when they turned it up loud in their first car stereo with their first girlfriend or boyfriend.

“It’s a memory for all of us of what music really means.”