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

The Silos Cuba is indeed great. But their best song came later, on the Susan Across The Ocean album. It's a cover of a song called Let's Take Some Drugs and Drive Around. If you haven't heard it, you're in for a treat.

http://www.amazon.com/Susan-Across-Ocean-Silos/dp/B000000FDI

cover of a song called Let's Take Some Drugs and Drive Around

by michael hall of the wild seeds, who almost certainly fit on this thread themselves.

His version is more ironic. The Silos turn it into an anthem

I was among the ~75 people who saw The Silos, Vulgar Boatmen and Michael Hall do that song at Metro in...'96? One of the better moments of my concert going. Great show!

The Vulgar Boatmen still put on a great show. There's a documentary on them about to come out, I believe.

Yes, it's called Drive Somewhere. It can be downloaded here.

I can't say enough good things about The Vulgar Boatmen. I never had the pleasure of seeing them live, but they are one of the few bands that does not have a bad song.

This is easily Jason & The Scorchers for me. Their new album has at least 4 cuts that'd go on their career anthology.

xpost

Living in Chicago, I've been fortunate enough to have seen the Vulgar Boatmen, geez, at least 15 times. Another standout was at Beat Kitchen in ~1992 when I first saw them do "Roadrunner". The place was going nuts! One of my favorite shows.

First time I saw them was at Marquette University, around the time of "You and Your Sister". The bill was, Vulgar Boatmen, Blake Babies and Die Kreuzen (?!). I've still got the flyer for that show somewhere...

Nice! Was Robert Ray playing with them too?

And...yes, the new Jason & The Scorchers record is excellent. I love Better Than This.

man Drivin & Cryin used to Rock the Dock in Jackson, MS on the reg. Blind Melon was really big, too IIRC (but maybe a year or two later? I think this might have even been before Bee girl fame). I think those might have been my first rock shows that weren't like 3-Dog Night and Steppenwolf doing the oldies circuit at the Mid-South fair with my parents a mere 200 yards away.

The Silos record with the bird on the cover is the first thing I can remember buying purely b/c I read a couple of great reviews of it (I believe in Spin and Rolling Stone), and I do remember liking that song "Picture of Helen" a lot. They had a brief moment where they had a ton of buzz if I remember right.

> Was Robert Ray playing with them too?

He may have been with them for the Silos/Michael Hall show, but that could be revisionist history. Does the Gainesville version of the band still play?

Thanks for that movie link, I'm looking forward to watching it. Always thought the Boatmen would make a good documentary subject.

All about Green on Red. Like Kevn Kinney solo more than Drivin' and Cryin'. Maria McKee both ways.

don't think i really need beat rodeo in my life.

really enjoyed that rank & file album a couple of weeks ago though. long gone dead still rules.

listening now to the eieio album from 1986. *land of opportunity*. so far i dig it more than beat rodeo. some decent guitar action on the first track.

plus, they've got guitars all over the place. over here. over there. everywhere. good solos. good country/southern twang. good riffs. sounds like they liked the byrds AND badfinger AND southern/country rock.

sounds good to me!

singing kinda sucks though. a commmon problem with a lot of the new wave cow bands.

and the production isn't total don dixon blah (he didn't produce it), but its still got that 80's living in a box feel. but not TOO bad or anything. (not the band living in a box. just that canned 80's thing.)

singing kinda sucks though. a commmon problem with a lot of the new wave cow bands.

Yes. Those singers all tried way too hard. It's as if every line of every song ends with three exclamation points.

fly me!!!
courageous!!!

drivin and cryin (the band name) used to crack me up in high school
who would admit to being in a band called DRIVIN AND CRYIN

I like how the Flesheaters guy simultaneously screamed and crooned every line. But they were at the punky end, much more like Gun Club. Someone gave me a Tail Gators cassette of Tore Up that I quite liked, but never felt the need to replace it when it got smooshed. They seemed to be at the bar-band end of the scene.

This summarizes everything that was problematic about the bands in the thread title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88cewhasU74

maybe i should blame mitch easter as well as don dixon for that uptight box sound but i love mitch and i would feel horrible saying anything bad about him. all these bands should have recorded their albums wherever the hell hardcore punk bands recorded their albums. they needed more ragged liveliness. a more live feel. but they all loved the byrds and stacked harmonies and shit which was usually their week spot to begin with. they shoulda just spent all their time on the guitars.

listened to some of an EP by a band called Lifeboat from 1985. not great. definite R.E.M./DBs thing going on with a dash of u.k. new wave a la echo and the bunnymen? or someone like that. boston band i think?

(so anyway they don't really belong here except for the jangle angle.)

jeezus i totally forgot about the bongos song numbers with wings! its like a fuckin' proust cookie! swear i haven't heard it since 1983 or 1984 and i know every second of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbzYn48qJxU

Boston had a mess of bands doing this, like the Del Fuegos, a little more east coast, less cowboy. Neighborhoods, Rubber Rodeo, Dogmatics, Scruffy the Cat, Blackjacks. They'd get a bit local commercial radio airplay and they had videos on the short lived Boston UHF music video channel, in a way that the hardcore bands, or even Mission of Burma never did. There was a bit of spillover. I think I saw Dogmatics and the Queers play an all-ages show together.

wow barbarella! by the bongos. total memory lane. i really need a copy of the remix now. always loved that.

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

sorry i'm straying...

i get so much of that 80's boston indie stuff cuzza where i am.

everyone should have just had richard gottehrer do their records. he gave everything a little i want candy punch.

Scruffy The Cat got some MTV airplay for "My Baby" something something. I remember their distinguishing characteristic being a banjo player.

Were the Neats part of that same Boston scene?

yah, they were.

OK, I thought so. I saw them open for R.E.M. in 1985, and wasn't into it, but I heard a record or two which was a lot better.

neats were on ace of hearts. boston label.

the neats always make me think of the neighborhoods. same label. same kinda thing.

I used to like the Neats' first EP, Monkey's Head In The Corner Of The Room (that had "Do The Things" on it, right?); just noticed yesterday that I mentioned them in the first review I ever got paid to write, of Bad Religion's Into the Unknown.

Rob Sheffield write a pretty hilarious thing in Radio On once about all the "next Cars" bands out of Boston in the early '80s; not sure if the Neats made that list or not.

really enjoyed that rank & file album a couple of weeks ago though. long gone dead still rules.

I kind of hated this album when I bought it a couple years ago! Wrote why here:

Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Have had way more luck with the first two Jason & the Scorchers albums (well, the 12-inch EP Fervor and Lost And Found). Still on the fence about the Beat Farmers' Tales Of The New West, which I probably wouldn't have hung on to if it didn't at least have the courtesy to be really short. Totally swear by Danny & Dusty's Lost Weekend and the Long Ryders' State of Our Union, though.

"...Sheffield wrote..."

Think I got the Neats' first album, too, at the time (did that have "Six"? I'm not even sure how I remember these titles, haven't heard the records since the mid '80s), but I didn't like it as much. Maybe it was just too much of a neat thing.

I liked the Neats and saw them at the old 930 Club. I don't think of them alongside the 80s alt-country bands though. More pop but in a Hoboken way not a Cars new wave way.

Just realized that in a more questionable music period in my life, I saw at least three of the thread title bands open for U2 ...

Got the forthcoming Silos, but haven't made it that far in the promoyard. Apparently there's a film about the Vulgar Boatmen, according to Ann Powers' twitterfeed (she's in Tuscaloosa, but unscathed). A number of Mitch Easter's 80s productions (incl Murmur,I think) were done in his parents' attached garage, next to the Purina Dog Chow. But what was everybody else's excuse? Not that familiar with Green On Red, although some fun live stuff, and Chuck Prophet has that arguments over fun vs. "meaning" split the band. I'd say fun vs. "meaning" vs. actual meaning is a signif undertow in his solo albums, which can be slack and pretentious simultaneously (like he's trying to be Tom Petty trying to be Dylan)--but when he's on he's on. "She was unwanted in 17 states"! Go tell it, Mr Prophet. And if you can find Dreaming Waylon's Dream ,that's some kind of inspired country power pop. Good live set posted on NPR, too.

Oh, and I drove by the Easters' house, back in the day--the garage was more like a barely walled-in carport!

(In Winston-Salem, NC)

Chuck Prophet has *said* arguments etc

So, turns out the Neats were #19 on Sheffield's Next Cars list. (Defined as "the best New Wave haircut bands who emerged from Boston between 1978 and 1984": "All these bands had great fey local radio hits; none ever broke out except Til Tuesday....Some of them didn't even have keyboard players! But they all made their mark as the Next Cars.") As a public service (even though most were obviously not the sort of farmer bands this thread was originally created for) here is the list:

1. November Group
2. Sex Execs
3. Berlin Airlift
4. Private Lightning
5. 'Til Tuesday
6. Adventure Set
7. The Buddy System
8. Boys Life
9. The Atlantics
10. (Dissplin) Ad-X
11. Someone and the Somebodies
12. Native Tongue
13. The Models
14. Mission of Burma
15. Poland's Angry Workers
16. Nervous Eaters
17. The Outlets
18. The Fools
19. The Neats
20. The Rings
21. Chain Link Fence
22. Men & Volts
23. Human Sexual Response
24. The Stompers
25. Robert Ellis Orral
26. Jon Buther Axis
27. The New Models ("unless they're the same band as #13")
28. The Proletariat
29. The Rhythm Method
30. Wild Kingdom
31. Push Push
32. The Schemers
33. The Neighborhoods
34. The Blackjacks
35. The Lines
36. Lou Miami and the Cosmetix
37. Face to Face

----

I personally currently own albums by Native Tongue, Mission Of Burma (their debut EP and 45, on CD), the Fools (four by them I think!), and Human Sexual Response. In my distant past I wrote good things about Men & Volts and the Proletariat, so I must have liked them once too.

i LOVE this lou miami video. his records were cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw_u6InmNmU

love this song too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd6uUq4Tj0c

Wasn't "cowpunk" coined by a Boston reviewer? Local examples including, maybe, The Last Roundup, or something like that ( with Amy McMahon, later Amy Rigby)? And the Lazy Cowgirls--? Isn't Robert Ellis Orral now a Nashville songwriter, and hasn't he been covered by Lady Antebellum or somebody similar, and don't two of his sons now record as JEFF (caps in orig) The (Something or other)? I could look it up.

. November Group - i'm a fan
2. Sex Execs - can't remember
3. Berlin Airlift - album i have is pretty good
4. Private Lightning - dunno
5. 'Til Tuesday - fan
6. Adventure Set - um...
7. The Buddy System - um...
8. Boys Life - not a fan
9. The Atlantics - dig them. really like their album
10. (Dissplin) Ad-X - um...
11. Someone and the Somebodies - uh...
12. Native Tongue - pretty good
13. The Models - i'm a fan
14. Mission of Burma - like the hits
15. Poland's Angry Workers - uh...
16. Nervous Eaters - fan, but not of their one big studio album
17. The Outlets - uh...
18. The Fools - awesome
19. The Neats - okay
20. The Rings - dunno
21. Chain Link Fence - not my kinda thing
22. Men & Volts - no thanks
23. Human Sexual Response - love them
24. The Stompers - okay, not great
25. Robert Ellis Orral - some good tracks on his albums
26. Jon Buther Axis - cool
27. The New Models ("unless they're the same band as #13") - dug them a little
28. The Proletariat - punk rock
29. The Rhythm Method - not bad
30. Wild Kingdom - dunno...
31. Push Push - dunno...
32. The Schemers - um...
33. The Neighborhoods - okay
34. The Blackjacks - probably better live
35. The Lines - funny
36. Lou Miami and the Cosmetix - cool
37. Face to Face - couple songs i dig

-

xp Lazy Cowgirls weren't cowpunk from Boston, though! They were (girl-less) garage/hard rock/metal punk from L.A., kind of Stoogey or at least quasi-Stoogey.

And yeah, I think Robert Ellis Orral has written hit country stuff, though I'm not seeing his byline on either Antebellum CD. (Surprised to see they write almost all of their own stuff.). Apparently Orral also had a Top 40 duet with Carlene Carter in 1983, called "I Couldn't Say No."

There's lots of bands on that Next Cars list that I've never even heard of, or ever seen a record by.

I get the Sex-Execs mixed up with Exude, who did the Lauper parody "Boys Just Want To Have Sex." (No idea where they were from.)