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 Del Lords were pretty good, too - sort of right in between Springsteen and Robert Gordon (somewhat underrated himself).

Cruzados? Eh. But the first Plugz album, Electrify Me, is fucking mind-roasting. I still listen to it at least once a month - I gave a copy to Henry Rollins once, hoping he'd reissue it on CD through Infinite Zero.

Well, the Del Fuegos were from Boston (if you'll allow me a little regional commentary of my own). There's a reason Jason and the Scorchers "got" country...

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.

Man, I loved the Plugz,back when they used to show up on New Wave Theatre, where I first encountered several groups on this and related threads--wiki: New Wave Theatre was a television program broadcast locally in the Los Angeles area on UHF channel 18 and eventually on the USA Network as part of the late night variety show Night Flight during the early 1980s...It was noted for showcasing rising punk and new wave acts, including Bad Religion, Fear, the Dead Kennedys, 45 Grave, The Angry Samoans and The Circle Jerks...he format was extremely loose, owing partly to the desire to maintain the raw energy of the live performances and partly to the limited production budget. The program was presented in a format dubbed "live taped", in which the action was shot live and the video was then interspliced with video clips, photos, and graphics of everything from an exploding atomic bomb to a woman wringing a chicken's neck.
The Plugz were one of the first, if not the first, DIY L.A. punk bands. But I also remember being frustrated by the Cruzados albums, on Arista, although they were on some show, maybe Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and very hot, with a Link Wray-style guitarist who I think left pretty soon. I couldn't emjoy Tito & Tarantula in From Dusk To Dawn because it was such a bad movie, but Desperado would have to be better, and its soundtrack looks pretty promising.

So, since we've got Gun Club and Dream Syndicate on here (Thread Police don't talk about me when I'm gone):

Savage Republic

Meteora

Mobilization Recordings

20 May 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LOWuMFaXSE

Savage Republic will release their album Meteora out May 20 in North America via Mobilization Recordings.

Hailing from the Los Angeles underground of the 1980’s, Savage Republic forged an astonishing reputation for themselves as art-post punk-industrial pioneers. Throughout the 1980s, their five albums combined with their legendary live performances blurred and distorted the boundaries of post-punk, industrial, and soundtrack music – all wrapped up beautifully in Bruce Licher’s innovative graphic design.

After 1989, the Republic went quiet. 13 years passed before they would briefly resurface for a US reunion tour in support of the reissue of their five studio albums and related singles on CD. Thom Fuhrmann, Ethan Port, and Greg Grunke revived the band in 2005, and in 2006 they added drummer extraordinaire Alan Waddington to the fold. This lineup released the full length 1938 LP on Neurot Recordings (2007) and a pounding tribal cover of The Cure’s “Hanging Garden” on a compilation CD included in the French magazine Fear Drop #14 (2008).

In 2009, Savage Republic decided to raise their game. With the departure of Greg Grunke, multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Kerry Dowling joined the band and they’ve never looked back since! The current four-piece line up (Thom Fuhrmann, Ethan Port, Kerry Dowling, and Alan Waddington) has taken the band’s discography to a whole new level with their bombastic live performances. Touring Europe regularly, they have created a live set that never lets the audience catch a breath – four musicians in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s playing with the passion and energy of bands 1/3 their ages.

This longest running lineup of the band have released the full length albums Varvakios (2012) and Aegean (2014), and singles “1938”/”Taranto” – on Italian label “A Silent Place” (2009), “God and Guns”/”Tranquilo” (2018), and “1938”/”Siam” (2019) – recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio during their Midwest Trek tour and capturing more of the raw energy this lineup unleashes in the live setting.

Meteora features some of Savage Republic's best work yet. Self-recorded in a secret cavernous location, their mix of tribal textures, political anthems and Morricone-esque surf instrumentals once again transport the listener to faraway lands at turns both haunting and beautiful. One of many highlights of Meteora is the pandemic inspired piece “Unprecedented” (gifted to the band by Wire’s Graham Lewis) that is sure to become a staple in their set list. This longest-lasting lineup of Savage Republic have infused all the power of their legendary live performances into a cinematic sonic dreamscape.

Over the decades, Savage Republic has performed with or collaborated with similar like-minded artists including Blaine L. Reininger of Tuxedomoon, Einstürzende Neubauten, Flipper, David Yow, Camper Van Beethoven, The Dream Syndicate, Psi-Com, 100 Flowers, Kommunity FK, Christian Death, Sonic Youth, Live Skull, members of Big Black, The Minutemen, Fugazi, the Buzzcocks, and Graham Lewis of Wire.

If you have any questions, contact caroline at clarioncallmedia.com.

Maybe the Paisley Underground thread would work too.

Search and Destroy: Paisley Underground

Some really nasty behind the scenes business with the BoDeans from a few years ago I recently learned about via a friend's blog.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2018/06/11/bodeans-kurt-neumann-stepdaughter-accuse-former-band-member-sam-llanas-molestation/362436002/

Holy crap

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