TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

On record, not live. Saw both, had most of their records. Del Fuegos were a good to great live band - much harder, swinging and aggressive than their recorded material let on. Del Lords were always solidly mediocre but had a couple songs you could actually remember like the previously mentioned, "I Play the Drums" and "Judas Kiss."

Of REM, Dan Stuart said that they jammed with 'em on occasion, "but you're looking at a band that got more produced and more pop on every album and a guy who was deliberately very non-concrete about his sexuality".

He reserved most of his bile for Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, though. "Oh god, I hate that guy. He's just some rich Jew boy from Scranton Pensylvania who goes through his phonebook and gets people to make his records for him!"

Oh, and the Del Lords also ruled.

**He's just some rich Jew boy from Scranton Pensylvania**

Now I REALLY don't like this asshole. "Hey, man, I'm a authentic roots rocker, not some fag or jew poser." DESTROY!

Of course, between comments like these and firing three-fifths of his band to make ends meet, we get to the nub of why Dan Stuart was effectively ostracised frm the US music industry.

I still say they're worth investigating.

Keeping it real?? Suppose Stipe HAD come out of the closet in 1986, would Dan Stuart have been cheering him on? Hah. And his knee-jerk antisemitism re:Howe Gelb is pathetic. Stuart could've stuck to evaluating their music and stayed out of trouble. So fuck him.

But hey, even bigoted jerks can make good music. We're all sinners in the eyes of the lord, etc.

I remember seeing the Long Ryders cover "Public Image," and the singer almost broke his head doing a stage-dive on a sparse audience.

Both the "Del" bands were good live.

the replacements kinda sorta fit in the scene, too. they certainly had some common ground. they covered x, rem and tom petty on "the shit hits the fans," as well as the carter family (a song they probably learned from alex chilton). they toured with steve earle. and they wrote a handful of fine straight-up country tunes themselves.

my two favorite albums that were totally of the scene were the knitters album and the danny and dusty album (a one-off all-star band featuring guys from the long ryders, green on red and the dream syndicate). everyone else had lots of great songs but almost no great albums.

oh, and i'd count dwight yoakam's first album, too, if he counts, though maybe the fact that he was clearly headed for nashville itself (instead of just dreaming of the nashville of the mind, like everybody else) disqualifies him.

i could be completely wrong about this, but somewhere in the back of my mind i got it that dan stuart was gay himself. which would make his comments about stipe come across completely opposite from how they're being interpreted here. he's not criticizing him for being gay. he's criticizing him for being in the closet. it may be a pointless and unnecessary thing to say, but i'm not so sure it's evil.

calling howe gelb a "rich jew boy" is offensive. and if you don't think half the non-jews in rock (and probably a third of the jews) haven't said something exactly like this to someone somewhere while drunk in some bar at some point in their lives, well, you're probably wrong.

well the 1st big single was written (co-written?) by Tom Petty and had that Benmont Tench organ sound so it had a lot of reasons to stick out.

my response was a tad self-righteous, admittedly, I've used bigoted terminology before when I WASN'T drunk but Stuart said this shit in an interview and that's different whether he was stoned, drunk, withdrawing or whatever. And while every human being is prejudiced, I find it hard to believe that such a high per centage of musicians would castigate their peers in this way. I mean, when one jew calls another "jew boy" it's sorta like "nigga" you know what I'm saying? Stuart just sounds like a bitter fuck.
And this idea that Michael Stipe disguised his sexuality to sell more records strikes me as absurd. The thousands of people who bought REM albums in the 80s -- and probably most of the millions who did in the early 90s -- weren't viewing him as a sex symbol. I mean, the guy's never been exactly MACHO. I don't think his coming out would've been a big shock to the majority of fans. Now George Michael, that was another story...

http://guitarbands.de

Nevermind the asshole comments, this is pretty fucken lame as well.

Jason and the Scorchers rule

It's funny it actually took me a long time to figure this out because I was in high school in Nashville during their heyday, and they were all over the college radio station I listened to and played at local clubs constantly.

Anybody here ever hear Web Wilder? Cause he's definitely in this group though he didn't even achieve the bit of recognition the bands in the title of this thread got.

i used to own a treat her right album that wasn't horrible. but they came a little later then the rest of these guys. (i think.)

I think they had a lot of female fans who thought they were hott in the '80s, actually.

Heheh, I totally recall that on the D&D album.

Ditto above... A sizable minority of REM's early (female and gay male) fans most definitely considered Stipe a sex symbol in the arty downcast boy-poet vein. (I saw em in '83 at Queens College)

FWIW Omnivore has a "back to school" sale that ends today - 50% off everything except pre-orders and new releases, so now's a good time to scoop up all of those Lone Justice reissues.

Have we mentioned the Bottle Rockets here? Def. indie, their own kind of border music, despite and during this one major label shot---From Real Gone Music:

We just have one new release for you this week, but it’s a good ‘un! Bottle Rockets leader Brian Henneman worked as Uncle Tupelo’s guitar tech for a couple of years before forming an alt-country band that rivalled his former bosses. Released in Atlantic in 1997, 24 Hours a Day represented The Bottle Rockets’ chance at the big time; it’s their sole major label release, and they pulled out all the stops for this one, hiring former Blackheart and Del Lord Eric “Roscoe” Ambel to produce and revisiting “Indianapolis,” the song that got Henneman a record deal back in the early ‘90s. Alas, the record failed to break through commercially; but there will always be a place in our hearts for this kind of hard-driving, honest, tuneful rock and roll, best exemplified by “Perfect Far Away” and “When I Was Dumb.” For its LP debut, we’re pressing this underappreciated classic in coke bottle (natch) clear vinyl housed inside an album jacket with inner sleeve…limited to 1000 copies!

24 Hours a Day [Atlantic, 1997]
Like Wilco, only not so generically or formalistically, this is a rock band. They love Lynyrd Skynyrd; they love the Ramones. Their country leanings merely ground their commitment to content--Brian Henneman's savory sense of character and place, the every-word-counts delivery that lends his singing its specific gravity. Going for simple, they pay a price in detail this time out. But the likes of "Smokin' 100's Alone" and "Perfect Far Away" would be pretty damn rough for Nashville. And "Indianapolis" is the sequel all us "1000 Dollar Car" fans were waiting for even if it was written first. A-

Although the first one I heard might make a better gateway--

xgau again:

The Brooklyn Side [ESD, 1994]
More raucous and pointed than such fellow Midwestern alternacountry-rockers as the Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, and Blood Oranges, these citizens of Festus, Missouri will hit you where you live when they lay out other people's pains and foibles--the welfare mom on Saturday night, the Sunday sports abuser, the constable with his radar gun, the local Dinosaur Jr. fan. They also speak plain truth when they criticize their car. And if they seem to relive cliches when they confess their many romantic errors, how do you think cliches get that way? (Including this one.) A-

Never had any of their albums myself, but they were pretty big with the Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Jayhawks loving crowd in college, which makes sense since they were from not terribly far away.

Glad those bands' fans liked 'em, though actual sound/taste on record more like proto-Drive By Truckers, also kinda Great Plains (and later OH band Two Cow Garage).

Oh yeah, wasn't meant to connect them to those others necessarily, just kind of always filed them away in that whole group even if sonically they weren't that close.

I still have a CD of The Brooklyn Side (in a box in the basement where my CDs live these days). Good album iirc, tho I haven't listened to it in forever. "Welfare Music" is one I remember.

"RADAR GUN"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpqTcGbn9r4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLMJl-ry314

“WESTERN EDGE - THE 80s” CONCERT PAYS TRIBUTE TO A GROUNDBREAKING DECADE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ROOTS MUSIC

Los Angeles, September 2024--The country rock of LA from the 1960s and 1970s is oft-heralded and celebrated while the decade of the 1980s that brought us highly influential “cowpunk” and “roots rock” bands in Southern California often takes a back seat.

Western Edge - the ‘80s is putting early work of Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, Los Lobos, X, The Blasters and Rosie Flores front and center as well as the brief but groundbreaking work of Desert Rose Band, Lone Justice, Rank and File, The Long Ryders, The Beat Farmers and The Rave-Ups.

The event is inspired by the Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit celebrating all decades of LA country rock but this event is not connected with the Hall.

The special concert is October 20 at 8pm at The Zebulon Cafe Concert in L.A.’s Frogtown neighborhood. Tickets are available at zebulon.la.

Celebrating and paying tribute to these artists is a who’s who of country and roots music artists from the Los Angeles music community ranging from international superstar singer-songwriter and producer Shooter Jennings to up and coming acts like Leroy from the North and The Doohickeys.

The night is led by musical director and guitarist Chris Masterson of The Mastersons and The Wallflowers. The all-star house band features violinist/keyboardist Eleanor Whitmore (the Mastersons/The Whitmore Sisters), guitarist/pedal steel player John Schreffler Jr. (Shooter Jennings/Tanya Tucker), bassist Bonnie Whitmore (The Whitmore Sisters) and drummer Mark Stepro (The Wallflowers/Butch Walker).

The overflowing special guest list also includes: The Mastersons, Pearl Aday & Jim Wilson, Dustbowl Revival, Dead Rock West, Chris Pierce, Garrison Starr, Manda Mosher, John Surge, Grant Langston, Johnny Marfa, Nocona and Nancy Sanchez. With more to be announced.

The master of ceremonies is famed music executive and producer Bill Bentley currently a DJ on Sirius XM’s Cowpunks to Nowpunks radio show.

The promoters for the show are active in the LA roots community - Twang City, Hardscrabble Productions, Liz Garo of Stepping Stone Productions and Grand Ole Country Bunker. The event is the brainchild of Surge, who in addition to being a performer is a promoter with Twang City.

According to Surge his inspiration for the night was twofold: “I have an absolute passion for this era of music that influenced me to record songs by the Beat Farmers and Chip and Tony Kinman on two recent albums,” he explained. “And, frankly, I’ve spoken with many twenty- and thirty-somethings in the LA community who have no idea who many of the acts are or their legacy. This is a way to bring together all the generations in the community and celebrate a key element of the city’s country DNA.”

###

Press contact: Kim at kgmusicpress dot com | https://kgmusicpress.com/

I can see Chris and Eleanor of The Mastersons anchoring that, given their own albums, work w Steve Earle & The Dukes, also Eleanor and Bonnie's Whitmore Sisters album.