Paisley Underground Series, #12: The Gun Club- Fire of Love (1981) MP3 & FLAC

"Gonna get me religion. Gonna join the Baptist church. Gonna be a Baptist preacher, 
so I don't have to work."

While The Gun Club weren't the only band effectively mining the strange but fertile intersection between Punk and the American country-blues tradition (The Birthday Party are an obvious parallel here), no one was doing it with quite as much raw immediacy (and for that matter, authenticity) as Jeffrey Lee Pierce and co. Pierce's formative years were spent in the city of El Monte in Southern California, and as a teenager, he became immersed in the underground Punk scene that was burgeoning in and around L.A. during the late seventies. One characteristic that differentiated this scene from other Punk scenes at the time was the integration of roots music into the Punk aesthetic by bands such as The Blasters, X, and The Flesh Eaters. What set The Gun Club apart from their contemporaries was Pierce's overriding interest in the Delta-Blues, which provided him with a wealth of dark themes and imagery with which to construct his "fire & brimstone" tales of sex, excess, and death. Given an appropriately bare-bones production by Chris D. (of The Flesh Eaters), The Gun Club's debut, Fire of Love is a heady concoction of Swampy Blues, Country-Goth, Rockabilly, and Punk. Pierce's singular voice, equals parts cow-punk twang and hardcore rant, lends emotional weight to these howling testimonials and wailing confessionals, simultaneously grounding these songs in well-worn traditions and recasting them in radically new contexts. An obvious example of this is the cover of Robert Johnson's "Preaching the Blues," which, while thoroughly re-imagining this apocalyptic Delta-Blues chestnut as a psycho-billy epic, manages to do justice to the creepy fatalism of the original. One of Pierce's most brilliant Country-Punk amalgamations is "She's Like Heroin to Me," which features some wonderfully dark electric slide-guitar work from Ward Dotson, relentless drumming from Terry Graham, and one of Pierce's most manic vocal performances. While legends of the L.A. underground, The Gun Club were not technically affiliated with The Paisley Underground scene; however, it is hard to overestimate the influence Fire of Love had on many of the roots-oriented Paisley bands such as Blood on the Saddle, True West, The Long Ryders and Green on Red.

Paisley Underground Series, #11: Green on Red- Gravity Talks (1983) MP3 & FLAC

"I've crawled around caves and books; I've seen the blue parade."

With roots in the Tucson neo-psych scene of the late seventies and early eighties (the same milieu that produced Howie Gelb's Giant Sand), Green on Red left for the more fertile underground musical pastures of L.A., relocating there in 1981, and, so the story goes, playing an instrumental role in solidifying The Paisley Underground scene by holding weekly barbecues at their Hollywood apartment, which were regularly attended by members of bands such as The Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade. As Steve Wynn (of The Dream Syndicate) recalls, "Every Sunday, we’d get together for a barbecue, bring tons of alcohol and whatever drugs—lots of burgers and chicken—and we’d just sit around, play guitar, and talk. That’s how the friendships happened, not in nightclubs or recording studios." Gravity Talks, the band's first long player after releasing two EPs, features the early line-up before the arrival of guitarist Chuck Prophet and with him, a much more overtly country/roots-based sound. This is not to say that Gravity Talks is a straight up neo-psyche record because signs of Green on Red's roots music origins are everywhere, but Chris Cacavas' Manzarek-style contributions on electric organ lend the album its distinctive (and quite memorable) psychedelic character. Admittedly, Dan Stuart's whiney country-tinged vocals can be an acquired taste, but juxtaposed to the album's psychedelic overtones, they give the songs some Garage-Rock authenticity. Many of the songs on Gravity Talks meditate on death and the irretrievable loss of childhood. For example, on "Blue Parade," which features some lovely, haunting organ-work from Cacavas, Stuart, in one of his best vocal performances, sings about loss, ranging from a dead dog's unplanned exhumation to finding a parent dead in a bedroom. The title track, a catchy garage-rocker with an irresistible Doors-style electric organ hook, features Stuart at his snotty, Jagger-esque best. Green on Red's later more roots-oriented albums, such as Gas Food Lodging, are usually cited as their best work, but Gravity Talks, coming as it does midway between the band's overtly psychedelic and roots-rock phases, catches the band at their creative peak, and is a true classic of The Paisley Underground.

Paisley Underground Series, #5: The Dream Syndicate- The Days of Wine and Roses (1982) MP3 & FLAC

"It's not fair to put you against all the years behind me."

One of the most enduring and darkly brilliant albums to emanate from the Paisley Underground scene, The Dream Syndicate's The Days of Wine and Roses takes up residence in the fertile and far too infrequently explored intersection between the darker side of late-sixties psych-rock and the brooding atmospherics of Post-Punk. Drawing on diverse influences such as The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Television, Velvet Underground, Joy Division and The Clash, the original incarnation of The Dream Syndicate were very much a band out of time and place in the early-eighties; as such, their debut, full of Karl Precoda's striking feedback-drenched guitar-work coupled with Steve Wynn's deadpan vocals, was quite a contrast to the synth-heavy approach many Post-Punk bands were adopting at the time. The Days of Wine and Roses begins with one of the most memorable songs of the Paisley Underground: "Tell Me When It's Over," an anthemic piece of dark Jangle-Pop featuring some great guitar interplay between Wynn and Precoda and Wynn's vocal approximation of a young Lou Reed. Another standout is the insistently sprawling title track, a White Light / White Heat-style epic, which gives Precoda plenty of room to stretch out and coax some amazing sounds from his notoriously cheap guitar. Neo-Psychedelia doesn't come much finer than this- one of the truly essential Paisley Underground albums.

The Flesh Eaters- A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (1981) MP3 & FLAC

"Fever turns to ice in a river as cold as life."

The L.A. hardcore scene of the late seventies and early eighties was so much more than the "three chord thrash" stereotype that Punk is often reduced to. Due to bands such as X, The Blasters, and The Flesh Eaters, a perhaps unlikely, but quite combustible mixture of stripped-down Punk aggression, Rockabilly, Blues, Country, and even Jazz was concocted, which pushed far beyond the boundaries of what it was assumed hardcore Punk could do musically. The Flesh Eaters were formed in the late seventies by poet (and, at the time, English teacher) Chris Desjardins (better known as Chris D.) after having met John Doe and Exene Cervenka at a poetry reading. Over the years, the band would feature a revolving cast of characters due to Chris D.'s notoriously "difficult" tendencies, but the music itself, especially the band's early eighties output, is consistently brilliant. A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die was The Flesh Eaters' second album and stands as a noirish, campy, Blues-Punk classic- the kind of thing that could have only emanated from L.A. at the time. Featuring a lineup of no less than Dave Alvin, John Doe, D.J. Bonebreak, Bill Bateman  and Steve Berlin, songs such as "Digging My Grave," "River of Fever," and "Divine Horseman" consistently play with listener expectations to great affect. Where else are you going to hear a tenor sax on a Punk album?  While admittedly, Chris D.'s vocals are an acquired taste, it's hard to deny that he was one of the most powerful vocalists on the L.A. hardcore scene. This is dark, trashy, and thoroughly essential stuff.

The Flesh Eaters- "The Wedding Dice" Video (1982)

More great music from the L.A. underground of the early eighties: