Gun Club: Classic or DUD

(Though my personal favorite's probably be Miami)

I know there's a lyric or two on Fire Of Love or Miami (both records I love) but I'm listening to a great bootleg from 1982 and at the beginning of Jack On Fire he just says "N-Word".

Is this ok?

To address the heart of the matter, Jeffrey Lee Pierce was not a racist; he loved and respected black people, and he was an avid follower of many blues and reggae artists. He certainly wasn't a bigot on account of his lyrics. In his music he used a device called a persona, which is to say he delivered his songs from the perspective of a fictional character whose views were not necessarily consistent with his own. If the line "I was hunting for niggers down in the dark" makes you uncomfortable, just pretend the narrator of the song is a deranged mid-20th-century Kentucky preacher whose wife just left him for a black woodcutter whose name is probably LaDerrick. And if you're offended by Jeffrey's casual use of the word "nigger" at the beggining of "Jack on Fire," just pretend he was hopped up on heroin -- and thuis deprived of his social conscience -- for the duration of the concert. [/prolixity]

"It is not an art statement/to drown a few passionate men"

Fire of Love totally beyond classic

She's like heroin to me, she cannot miss the vein... Wow. Fuck "Miami", it's indeed all about "Fire of Love"... Oddly the GC is currently being revived here in Montreal by an up and coming band which regularly plays covers of their songs during their live sets. The Club's really another one of these obscure bands from which spring various cult figures... the Kid, Patti Morrison... It's a bit like Crime & the City Solution, confidentially yours...

And "Sex Beat"! What an album-opener!

-- Simon, Wednesday, April 4, 2001 12:00 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

i wonder what band this was/is

mother of earth (from 'miami') is one of my favourite songs of all time.

are the gun club really obscure these days? i remember tons of kids seeming to dig/ at least know about them -- goths, rockers, punkers, mockers...

but then i do speak of twenty-plus years ago.

and yeah i love them a lot, in small doses. best rev. gary davis cover, ever.

ohh wait that's son house, doh.

are the gun club really obscure these days? i remember tons of kids seeming to dig/ at least know about them -- goths, rockers, punkers, mockers...

but then i do speak of twenty-plus years ago.

lol

i wonder what band this was/is

Godspeed You Sex Beat

are the gun club really obscure these days?

yes

Waht! I thought they were pretty well known.

I wouldn't have heard of them if not for the Left of the Dial comp which I only came across thanks to the internet. Even then they were still buried amongst 50 other artists.

I knew about them cause of the Guthrie production, apparently "Breaking Hands" is awesome tho I dont know if I have it/have heard it.

I know their music from way back when.

Kid Congo's living in DC these days. He was in the row ahead of me seeing "the Fabulous Stans" movie at the Library of Congress a little while back.

His new album's pretty nice, and there's ILXor involvement...

Yes.

Two Lone Swordsmen are doing their best to revive them.

My typo above--Kid Congo was seeing the "Fabulous Stains" movie. I am also trying to remember if I ever saw the Gun Club. I know I missed them opening for the Cramps at the Bayou in Georgetown (DC) because I was studying for a final. Hmmmm, I wonder if they ever came back to town.

Lucky Jim's a bit crap though, IMO.

I wouldn't have heard of them if not for the Left of the Dial comp. . . . .

And what a fantastic -- utterly classic -- comp it is.

Original drummer Terry Graham has got a Kickstarter going for a book project on the time/place -- looks well worth it!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1417342148/its-a-book-punk-like-meliner-notes-for-a-revolutio

"Lucky Jim's a bit crap though"
no it isn't. it is one of the great last albums. like nirvana's unplugged.

coming after pastoral hide & seek and divinity I thought lucky jim was a drop in quality for sure

want to give some special extra shine since nobody seems to really talk much about it, but damn, the las vegas story is something else. totally engrossing, lynchian subversive america shit. i'll take that record over ANY psychobilly album ever recorded including the whole of the cramps catalogue

Jose Esteban Muñoz, "Calling Up Thunder: The Gun Club and the Punk Rock Commons"

EMP Pop Conference presentation scheduled for March 25th

"Calling Up Thunder: The Gun Club and the Punk Rock Commons"

What does that even mean?

Anyway, been listening to Miami lately and it's really good. I am new to this band.

Google tells me that Munoz is an NYU professor who listened to the Gun Club, Germs and other LA bands when he was younger, and he writes about that in his book Cruising utopia: the then and there of queer futurity . I still do not know what the "calling up thunder" phrase refers to.

It's a Gun Club song title. The "Punk Rock Commons" is what I don't quite get.

i think it just means punk-rock's tropes & shared values etc in this instance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_commons

Thanks.

I guess drummer Graham has still not gotten his book published yet, although the kickstarter financing was successful.

The lyrics to "Jack on Fire" (posted way upthread) reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian".

I will fuck you till you die

Like the judge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvTM8XtF-kA
Interesting, hadn't known this existed as video until earlier today.
Am assuming it's the source of the image here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Party-Gun-Club/dp/B0002DRKYY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1329434582&sr=8-2
and here http://www.discogs.com/Gun-Club-Love-Supreme/release/913496

Rob Ritter departed, to reappear in 45 Grave. Patricia Morrison brought in as his replacement. She stayed in the band until they split at the end of '84, but wasn't in New York when Tex & The Horseheads recording session ran short and Death Party was recorded. Jim Uliana was, so is on that but wasn't in the band.

Not sure if the video is the same gig as the recording on the 2 discs pictured above. Love the garage rock take on A Love Supreme on them.
The lp of that title is 1/2 of what's on that Death Party disc. The other half was released as Sex Beat '81.
The 2 lps were released when Terry Graham and Ward Dotson sold the tapes to a European record label cos they were making no money from being in the band.

The video is from around the time Miami was released but Rob Ritter was already gone by the time that came out hence his face not being on the cover and his weird sleeve billing. I think that record has one of my favourite covers ever which I find almost synaesthetic to the record inside. not sure too many would. But I find a record that was recorded in a cramped NYC studio fills my head with visions of wide open plains as well as swamp fronds. Love the psychedelic touches, the swirls of pedal steel guitar etc. One of my all-time favourite records.