XTC - "Dear God" (1986)

I think we do all need a big reduction in the price of beer...

Notes from the Paisley Underground: The Long Ryders - 10-5-60 EP (1983/2011) / Native Sons (1984/2011) / State of Our Union (1985/1990)

While Uncle Tupelo is commonly credited with spearheading the rise of the alt-country movement (referred to in some quarters as "No Depression") that flourished throughout the 1990s, its true origins can be traced back to a number of Los Angeles-based cow-punk bands that inhabited the margins of the Paisley Underground scene during the early 1980s. Bands such as Tex and The Horseheads, Blood on the Saddle, The Beat Farmers, Rank and File and many others helped pioneer the unique fusion of country music and punk that would profoundly inform alt-country stalwarts Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Whiskeytown a decade later; however, no cow-punk band was more influential or as talented as The Long Ryders who integrated influences such as Gram Parsons, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield into a harder-edged punk-infused sound. The seeds for what eventually became The Long Ryders were sown in an uber-obscure and militantly retro Los Angeles garage-psych band called The Unclaimed, which Sid Griffin had joined in 1978 after tiring of the then-nascent punk scene. However, Griffin soon felt trapped by the band's unwillingness to broaden their mid-sixties aesthetic and consequently left in late 1981 to form the nucleus of what would quickly evolve into The Long Ryders, which early on included Steve Wynn who soon left to form The Dream Syndicate. Fatefully, the band's formation coincided with the beginnings of the Los Angeles-based pysch-rock revival that eventually (and quite reductively) came to be known as the "paisley underground," a scene that actually featured an eclectic mix of bands that were linked together more through strong friendships and an ethos of mutual support than any sense of a shared musical approach.

Sid Griffin: "There was tremendous sharing in those days. At first everyone was on equal footing and then some bands became rather possessive and a bit more private but the Long Ryders were always looking at things from a socialist perspective. People shared amps, guitars, worked for other bands [...] Steve Wynn put out the early Green on Red album, I worked doing merch for several bands, Matt Piucci of Rain Parade became a kinda guitar roadie if you needed help like that and the Bangles sang back up on a lot of other people's records. Many of the bills of the day were three of these bands all at once. Perhaps Bangles, Dream Syndicate, Long Ryders, something like that." The early days of The Long Ryders featured several lineup changes, but their debut EP, 10-5-60, produced by former Sparks guitarist Earl Mankey, established the band as peerless exponents of the kind of country-infused jangle-pop The Byrds were doing in their post-Sweetheart of the Rodeo incarnation. Starting with the stellar Griffin-penned jangle rave-up "Join My Gang," a song that might actually be better than a good percentage of the material many claim it is emulating, and also featuring the raucous title track, a garage-rock holdover from Griffin's days in The Unclaimed, 10-5-60 finds the band on the precipice of greatness. Following the release of 10-5-60, the band's bass player, Des Brewer, jumped ship to resume his career as a longshoreman, which apparently appealed to him more than touring; as a result, Tom Stevens, who at the time was working at a record store, joined The Long Ryders, thus ushering in the band's classic line-up. Having recently signed to Frontier Records, the band entered the studio with producer Henry Lewy whose résumé included the first two Flying Burrito Brothers LPs, and the result, their first full-length LP, Native Sons, represents a step away from the occasionally literalistic approach of 10-5-60 and step towards something approximating what Gram Parsons once described as "cosmic American music."

 Tom Stevens: "From the start, The Long Ryders were all about hybrids of pure American styles of music, as mostly defined by 60s bands, both rock and country. That all distilled through skilled songwriting into more of the classic style that you hear on Native Sons [....] I think at the time The Long Ryders were at the very height of their songwriting powers, and ability to naturally hybrid cool styles into a single form." From the opening track, "Final Wild Son," a snarling paisley update of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," to "Wreck of the 809," a psych-drenched version of R.E.M.-style Jangle-Pop, to the brilliant single, "I Had a Dream," a song that manages to stand shoulder to shoulder with the band's formidable influences (Griffin's vocals can't help but recall Gene Clark) and to lay out a sonic blueprint that would keep Jeff Tweedy busy for the better part of a decade, Native Sons stands as The Long Ryders' masterpiece. State of Our Union was the band's second full-length and first major label release. While there is a palpable production sheen cast over the proceedings, it ultimately lends this brilliant set of songs a certain punchiness that serves the music well. The album kicks off with a stone-cold classic in "Looking for Lewis and Clark," a powerful political anthem that sets out to punch a few holes in Reagan's "morning in America" myth. Another standout is "Here Comes That Train Again," a gorgeously spacious piece of jangle-pop that repeatedly conjures the ghost of Gram Parsons. Although it is arguably over-produced, State of Our Union is one of the most beautiful and enduring albums to emerge from the paisley underground scene as well as one of the most eloquently political albums of the 1980s. Drummer Greg Sowders: "we wanted to control our own art and it was just a very do-it-yourself attitude that we learned from the punks. But ultimately we thought punk rock in L.A.- I do kind of exclude X because they were very musical- but a lot of them really sucked [....] But that do-it-yourself attitude and the 'we want to control everything ourselves and deal directly with the fans'- that's what we learned from the punks. Plus, we liked to play our songs kinda fast."

The Long Ryders - "Looking for Lewis & Clark" (1985) Old Grey Whistle Test

Great great paisley band, channeling The Byrds & the Burrito Bros...

Spiritualized - "Do It All Over Again" (2001)

This song perfectly captures the inside of my head right about now
 

Notes from the Paisley Underground: Rain Parade - Crashing Dream (1985/2009) / Beyond the Sunset (1985/2010) / Demolition (1991)

The aptly named Crashing Dream was fated to be Rain Parade's one and only full-length studio album after guitarist David Roback's departure from the band in early 1984, ostensibly to work on the Rainy Day project with his then-new flame, former Dream Syndicate bassist Kendra Smith. According to many accounts, Roback's departure was an acrimonious one; as fellow Paisley scene icon Steve Wynn recalls, "It would be like me being thrown out of Dream Syndicate [....] I never knew why it happened."  Roback's version: "It became a drag. I just had to get away and do something else [....] Musically it wasn't working out." Whatever the reason, Roback's exit left his former band-mates, including his brother Steven, at a crossroads in terms of what direction the band's sound would take without its lead guitarist. In addition, the band faced towering expectations from fans and record execs alike to replicate the brilliance of their classic debut, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. For the time being, Rain Parade decided to proceed as a four-piece and recorded the Explosions in the Glass Palace EP, which, while missing David Roback's deftly subtle touch in places and showing an occasional proclivity for adopting a more traditional approach to song structure than before, suggested that Rain Parade was not eager to relinquish its place as one of the leading bands of the Paisley scene. Fatefully, it was during this time that the band made its jump to the majors by signing with Island Records, a move that would lead to the band's demise only two years later. Rain Parade released two albums during it's tenure at Island: a live LP recorded in Japan, Beyond the Sunset, and their final studio album, the aforementioned Crashing Dream, which functions as a strange epitaph for this seminal Paisley band, as some see it as Rain Parade's escape from the commercial ghetto of psych-revivalism, while others view it as another example of a great band sent down the road to creative ruin by a major label taking control of the creative process.

 Taken on its own terms, Crashing Dream is a consistently good, and occasionally brilliant, slice of late-eighties psych-pop that from the opening track, "Depending on You," suggests the band is looking to cut ties with the hazy psychedelia of its debut. The song's slick production and reliance on studio synthetics is a bit shocking initially given Rain Parade's psych-rock pedigree, but as soon as the vocals and lead guitar appear in the mix, the song begins to take form as a nice piece of shiny Power-Pop. The next track, "My Secret Country," moves in more of a country-rock direction, sounding not unlike a slower number by The Long Ryders, and by all rights, it should have become one of the most memorable anthems of the Paisley scene, but its emotional impact is marred by a meandering bridge and the production, which robs the song of much of its grit. Crashing Dream was unjustly ignored upon its release, and Rain Parade decided to call it quits soon thereafter. Steven Roback: "Our hearts weren't really into it, and we didn't want to abuse the identity of the Rain Parade, so we let it go." However, they did briefly reform in 1988 to record a double album, which never materialized until the release of Demolition in 1991. The first half of Demolition is comprised of an alternate ("as originally intended") version of Crashing Dream, which, if nothing else, suggests that Rain Parade were not as eager to leave their psych-rock roots behind as the over-produced Island version seemed to indicate. As the true epitaph to this legendary L.A. band, Demolition is both a revelation and a further reason to grieve over the untimely demise of a band that deserved a much better fate.

Notes from the Paisley Underground: The Salvation Army - Happen Happened (1982/1992)

Michael Quercio was one of the pivotal figures of the paisley underground, not only because he gave the scene its moniker (which most, including himself, eventually came to hate because of its emphasis on image over musical substance), but also as the leader of The Salvation Army, a punky garage-pysch band who would later become the more overtly psychedelic and equally important Three O'Clock. If you're only familiar with the latter, then Happen Happened will come as something of a surprise because The Salvation Army had a much darker, grittier sound than the later, renamed version of the band, and the album itself happens to be one of the most vivid documents of the early days of the paisley scene in L.A., and some, including Rain Parade guitarist Matt Piucci, consider it the finest slice of neo-psych to emanate from the paisley underground. The origin of The Salvation Army begins with Quercio, then using the pseudonym Ricky Start, sending some home demos of his fledgling band in to Rodney Bingenheimer, the legendary Los Angeles-area disc jockey and unofficial curator of the growing alternative music scene that was soon to explode in the U.S. Inspired by Bingenheimer's enthusiasm for the band's sound, Quercio and band-mates Troy Howell and Johnny Blazing recorded a few professional-quality demos at a local studio, which ended up netting them their first big break. Quercio: "Our original 45 was released in the fall of 1981. We were all still in high school or just graduated. It was on the Minutemen’s label which was called New Alliance. There was a place where a lot of bands played called Alpine Village in Torrance that’s kind of like a German biergarten. Anyways, D. Boon from the Minutemen saw us there and after our show he came up and asked if we had anything and we had just made this little demo tape that we made with money we saved up from our parents and stuff. He liked two of the songs and said he wanted to put them out and he put them out on his label as a 45."

Michael Quercio

Soon after the release of The Salvation Army's debut single, Blazing was kicked out of the band (for flubbing up the photo session for the picture sleeve of the 45) and was replaced with Gregg Louis Gutierrez, a guitarist whom Quercio knew from his college days. With the new lineup in place, the band recorded a follow-up EP; however, it never saw the light of day because fate came knocking before it could be officially released. Quercio had sent Rodney Bingenheimer an advanced copy of the EP, which the disc jockey began promoting on KROQ. Lisa Fancher had just started her own record label, the seminal L.A. underground mecca Frontier, when she heard one of Salvation Army's songs on Bingenheimer's show Rodney on the Roq. She signed the band immediately and put them in a studio to work on a full album. It was during these sessions that Danny Benair, former drummer for The Quick and Choir Invisible, would join the band, replacing Troy Howell, whose limitations behind the drum kit were becoming more and more apparent. The compilation Befour Three O'Clock collects the first single, unreleased EP, and the result of the sessions for Frontier, Happen Happened, The Salvation Army's final recording before changing their name to The Three O'Clock. It begins with one of Quercio's earliest recording sessions, which yielded the excellent 1981 "Happen Happens / Mind Gardens" single. This early version of "Mind Gardens" is built around a simple Punk-inspired chord progression and Quercio's snarling vocals, and represents quite a contrast to the album version recorded the following year, which loses much of its directness beneath all the reverb and jangle. Despite this, The Salvation Army's sole original album is full of great Nuggets-inspired tracks such as the blues-psych cover of The Great Society's "Going Home," a song featuring a swaggering guitar-based hook and one of Quercio's better early vocal performances. Happen Happened is one of the most essential releases related to the paisley underground, as it both a great album and a rare snapshot of the scene's early roots in the L.A. hardcore/punk movement.

The Three O'Clock- "With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend" (1982)

It's strange how something as seemingly innocuous as a video show can potentially change your life. My parent's had just been divorced, and now, living with my mom in a small apartment, completely isolated and without friends, I began to disintegrate into dust. One day, after school, flipping through channels on the TV, I discovered a video show called MV3. What was unusual about this show was that it focused mainly on alternative and independent artists, as it was hosted by, among others, local KROQ DJ Richard Blade. The American Bandstand-style dance sequences were often painful to watch, but over the course of the coming weeks and months, my ears and eyes were opened to the only music that had ever really spoken to me, music that told me I was not really alone and that being different was a sign of sanity, even in those moments when I felt like I was falling down the rabbit hole. This was the first time I discovered that music would always be there to save me. Another great aspect of the show was the live performances by local L.A. bands, many of whom comprised the paisley underground scene that was just hitting its stride at the time. Among these was an appearance by The Three O'Clock, which really made an impression on me at the time. However, I admit, the hosts are pretty lame, although I think I had a crush on the devotchka speaking at the end of the clip- what can I say? I was a kid, ha. Seriously though, I always wanted a cantaloupe girlfriend, but it took oh so long to find her......

p.s. this clip might have been the beginning of my love affair with red Rickenbacker guitars as well

Notes from the Paisley Underground: True West - Hollywood Holiday Revisited (2007)

Along with bands such as The Dream Syndicate, Game Theory, and Thin White Rope, True West originally hailed from the small but very influential music scene that thrived in the college town of Davis, CA. during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and like those other bands, they ended up gravitating to the paisley underground scene based in L.A. in order to find a wider audience and a record deal. True West's sound was a fertile blend of psych-tinged roots-rock, jangle-pop, and a touch of the dark, spidery dual-guitar interplay of Television, a combination of influences that made them quite unique among the paisley crowd. After a brilliant self-released EP (which would eventually be grouped with additional tracks and released as the even more brilliant Hollywood Holiday), the band was invited by EMI to record some demos at the legendary Bearsville studio in New York with none other than former Television visionary Tom Verlaine; however, the sessions didn't go well, and EMI passed on them. Russ Tolman: "What about Verlaine? Well, he seemed real strict and stern. We jokingly called him 'the schoolmaster.' I think he got along better with other people in the band than me, and I was the big Verlaine fan, which was kinda funny. But I was real worried about things getting over-produced so I was kinda playing the sullen adversary sort of role, so he and I never really hit it off until the recording was over and we gave him a ride back to New York in our van  and at that point he turned into plain old Tom Miller, a pretty nice guy from Delaware, instead of Tom Verlaine, the artiste [....] I asked him all the questions I always wanted to know about Television and about Richard Lloyd, and it was a lot of fun."  By the time True West finally released their first proper LP, the slightly less brilliant but still quite enjoyable Drifters, they were beginning to undergo personnel changes that would eventually rob the band of much of their momentum.

Though a third album appeared a few years later, True West were never again able to hit the significant heights of their earliest recordings. Because these recordings remained out of print for more than twenty years, Hollywood Holiday is very much one of the forgotten masterpieces of the paisley scene. While its production sounds a bit thin in places, the austerity serves True West's aesthetic well, as their later recordings tended to polish the dark post-punk grime out of their sound, thus making them seem, at times, like just another jangle-pop outfit. A perfect example of what made True West so distinctive is their cover of "Lucifer Sam" from Pink Floyd's psychedelic masterpiece, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which manages to capture both the twisted whimsey of the original and to inject it with a little early-eighties paranoia courtesy of lead vocalist Gavin Blair, whose voice possesses none of the child-like naivete of Syd Barrett's. Coupled with the intertwining guitars of Russ Tolman and Richard McGrath, the song traverses new-found depths of acid-drenched darkness. "And Then the Rain," True West's signature song and easily one of the best things to come out of the paisley scene, is a tense piece of jangly melancholia that wallows beautifully in its doom-filled verses. My personal True West favorite is "Look Around," the lead track on Drifters, which features a devastating power-pop-style hook and some memorable, inspired vocals from Blair. Although the phrase "lost classic" is used far too often by music reviewers, Hollywood Holiday and Drifters exemplify this notion. Eerily similar to the fate of Big Star ten years earlier, True West was as talented as any neo-psych band of the era, but commercial success would prove frustratingly elusive and, as is so often the case, an early demise soon followed.

Mazzy Star- "I've Gotta Stop" (2013)

Hope Sandoval seems to be really resonating with Voix and I this week. This is a gorgeous track off of Mazzy Star's newest album. I was unfortunately unable to find a live performance or video for the song, but it needs to be heard anyhow.

 

Unreflected - A Genealogy of Mazzy Star in Five Chapters: Chapter I- Rain Parade

 

"We thought it was way more punk to play slow, spooky, sometimes gentle, sometimes hard, but always melodic music, because punk was about doing your own thing and fuck everybody else." - Rain Parade guitarist Matt Piucci

The story of Rain Parade, and in many ways, the paisley underground scene itself, begins in a Pacific Palisades neighborhood in West L.A. during the mid-1970s, where a pair of brothers, David and Steven Roback lived on the same block as a friend and schoolmate named John Hoffs, who happened to have a younger sister named Susanna. What would eventually bring David and Susanna Hoffs together was a mutual love of sixties-era music and Roback's alienated intellectual tendencies. David Roback: "I was fairly different from the other kids, I didn't get on with them [....] We didn't have many common interests. My hobbies were psychiatry and history. I'd psychoanalyze my friends." Eventually, David formed a band with Susanna and John Hoffs called The Unconscious, though the it was destined to be short-lived. David Roback: "There's an old film of us playing in that band, it's pretty interesting but we moved on because we were holding each other back. We didn't want to sing together, we didn't like the sound of male and female voice together." Susanna Hoffs has a different recollection: "What happened was my brother was sort of irritated with David and I for becoming a couple. I was his kid sister, and suddenly I’m stealing his best friend away. So then it was just David and I, and we never did get a bass player or a drummer. We never did a show, and all we did was make some living–room tapes.” By the time the summer of 1977 had rolled around, David had already gone off to college in Minnesota where he, quite by chance, met a guitar player named Matt Piucci, whom he eventually shared a dorm room with and formed a short-lived punk band called The Beatnicks. As if beckoned by fate, Piucci would end up following David back to L.A. several years later. Meanwhile, Steven had immersed himself in the burgeoning L.A. punk scene and was listening to New York art-punks like the Talking Heads and Television. However, it was an L.A. band called The Last, whose sound was defined just as much by melodic power-pop as it was punk aggression, that had a lasting influence on him. After David had returned from college, they formed The Sidewalks and began playing obscure L.A. clubs as an electric folk band; however, it would not be until the arrival of David's college buddy Matt Piucci at the dawn of a new decade, the 1980s, that a new direction for their music would come into focus. Matt Piucci: "I finally moved to LA in 1981 and we formed a band. By then the LA punk scene, which was never any good besides X and the Circle Jerks, had become this fascist thing, much like hip hop today where it was the only allowed style of music considered to be cool. Most of these bands could not play worth shit and had no melodies or songs either. We got REALLY into Television and Love, as well as, of course the Byrds and Beach Boys, pretty much anything that began with B."

Along with keyboardist Will Glenn and drummer Eddie Kalwa, the Roback brothers and Piucci formed Rain Parade in 1981. Piucci: "It did seem like we were completely on our own. I moved out in April of 1981 and we didn't play live until May of 1982, by then we had recorded out first single. Meeting Green on Red and the Dream Syndicate was nice in that they appreciated what we were trying to do, although they didn't sound much like us. We already knew the Bangles." The band recorded their first single in early 1982 at Ethan James' Radio Tokyo studio in Venice, and it didn't take long for it to garner immediate attention from indie communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Nigel Cross of the UK indie mag Bucketfull of Brains: "That first 45 on the Llama label 'What's She Done to Your Mind' b/w 'Kaleidoscope' was one of life's epiphanies- not only one of the great 7"-ers of all time but one of the first signs that psychedelic music was about to have its second flowering. Hearing those two songs filled me with a missionary zeal [....] I wanted to tell the stupid world that there was was this absolutely beautiful, mind-altering music being made again on the West Coast- as good as anything that LA had offered up in the mid-60s. The chiming electric 12-string guitars, the delicate acoustic guitar strummings, wispy organ sounds that could carry your heart, mind and body away from a grim Cold War world."  After recording some demos at Lyceum Sound (a makeshift studio created out of a two-car garage and run by The Last), which ultimately came to light on the compilation Warfrat Tales, Rain Parade found themselves at the center of a quickly growing and unusually coherent music scene, which Michael Quercio of The Three O'Clock would soon dub "the paisley underground" in a magazine interview. Guitarist of The Long Ryders Sid Griffin: "For what its worth, the original Paisley Underground was the Dream Syndicate, Three O'Clock, the Rain Parade and Bangs [....] All these bands drank beer together and lent each other amps. If one of my strings popped during a gig, I'd just hand the guitar to Karl Precoda of the Syndicate and he'd fix it. Nobody had roadies, and nobody was trying to do each other down. The whole thrust of the thing was more social than musical. Okay, so all the groups were vaguely sixties-influenced guitar-pop bands who'd moved on from punk, but the main thing about the scene was that everybody hung out. I mean, face it- the Bangs were pretty terrible when they started out."

In March of 1983, the band entered Contour studios in Los Angeles to record their first LP, the esoteric title of which was dreamed up by David Roback: "I was going through a subway in San Francisco and I noticed it was written on a sign. I thought I've got to write this down because I'm so high, I'll forget it. It reads so well, I wrote it down on a matchbox and suggested it to the band and they liked it it a lot." What they ended up recording was one of the few definitive albums of the paisley underground scene. Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is an enduring and unassuming gem of post-sixties (neo) psychedelia. While certainly taking inspiration from purveyors of 1960s jangle-pop such as The Byrds and Love, as well as the darker, more claustrophobic psychedelic textures of bands such as The Doors and early Pink Floyd, Rain Parade's debut LP is much more than simply an homage to their psych-rock forefathers; rather, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip bristles with the desire for re-invention. Led by the fuzz-guitar interplay of David Roback and Matt Piucci and Steven Roback's shamanic basslines, Rain Parade successfully integrate the blissed-out jangle of songs such as their first single, "What's She Done to Your Mind," with the dark, thick haze of songs like "Look at Merri," which sounds like a blueprint for Jason Pierce's neo-psych excursions a decade later as Spacemen 3 and later Spiritualized. Matt Piucci recalling the recording sessions: "We really did our homework. Every sound on there is well thought out and we were pretty rigorous about it. By the time we recorded, most, but not all of the parts had been decided upon." Steven Roback: "The lyrical themes and song content have a sort of punk ethos to them [....] The state of mind we were all in was pretty dark, and it was like personal therapy for everybody in the band. We were all feeling kind of hopeless and helpless about things, and the band was this sort of idealistic attempt to create some space where we could all feel really great."

Rain Parade - "This Can't Be Today" (1984)

For fuck's sake, this is a rare find- a David Roback-era Rain Parade video. The first installment of the new series on Mazzy Star is coming soon. Chapter 1 will feature the Rain Parade and include excerpts from some rare early interviews. Stay tuned...

Notes from the Paisley Underground: 28th Day - The Complete Recordings (1985/2003)

Hailing from Chico, a small Northern California college-town that was one of the lesser-known corners of the 1980s-era paisley scene, 28th Day was several cuts above the plethora of neo-psych and jangle-pop bands that then littered the landscape, as they featured Cole Marquis' darkly evocative guitar-work (reminiscent of Karl Precoda of The Dream Syndicate) and a young Barbara Manning who would later go on to become a well-loved and semi-legendary fixture on the S.F. music scene. While 28th Day was fated to only remain together long enough to release a self-titled mini-album on Enigma Records (produced by Russ Tolman of True West), in doing so, they managed to leave behind what is simultaneously one of the best neo-psych albums of the 1980s, and one of the most under-appreciated albums associated (albeit marginally) with the paisley movement. 28th Day was Manning's first tour of duty in a band and Marquis was not much more than a neophyte himself as they set about searching for their distinctively folky post-punk, psych-drenched sound. Manning: "28th Day's first year was similar to any beginning band's first one. By this time Cole knew all our songs, being a fan of ours, so when our guitarist quit because he wanted to be a professional DJ, Cole stepped in and it was awesome. I was afraid our relationship would kill the band (as it did), but the magic really worked when we played together. We lived together. We went to school together. We wrote songs and helped to arrange them. But we were very bad at being faithful to each other."

Barbara Manning during her Chico State days

Marquis: "We were so green in the beginning, we could hardly play, but we all believed in what we were doing. We were having fun, and we didn't hold anything back. We made up for the lack of skill with energy, fear, alcohol and faith." What skill deficiencies the band may have had at the time seem completely irrelevant on songs such as "25 Pills," the lead track on 28th Day, a somber jangle-pop gem about drug addiction that pushes close to the brand of melancholia that Joy Division specialized in. And then there's the beautiful "Burnsite," featuring Marquis and Manning's hauntingly intertwined vocals and a paranoia-inducing arrangement (including screams from Manning) that it occasionally reminiscent of David Roback's Opal. Nevertheless, what sets 28th Day apart is their ability to mix in a song such as "Lost," a folky garage-rocker that should have become a paisley anthem, but instead was fated, like the band itself, to footnote status. Marquis: "We were a couple then. I was really into Joy Division at the time, Wire, The Beatles, The Doors, Dream Syndicate. Bobbie [Manning] and I were never that much into punk rock. I started writing these three chord songs like "25 Pills" or "Holiday," it just had that psychedelic sound 'cos that's what I  was listening to and it was easy to play for me." Manning: "How Do I explain it? We were very young. It was our first band. We thought we were the best band in the world. We started to hate each other. Isn't it only natural?"

Notes from the Paisley Underground: Various Artists - Warf Rat Tales: Unabridged (1983/2005)

At the dawn of the 1980s, the L.A. underground music scene was comprised of a heady mix of bands and styles that included punk, post-punk, cow-punk, neo-psych, power-pop, jangle-pop, rockabilly, and everything in between. In addition to its quite unprecedented musical diversity, what also set this underground scene apart from others before it and those since was the genre-defying camaraderie between the various bands involved. As such, it was not unusual to see someone like Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters- ferocious purveyors of an exceedingly dark blues-punk hybrid that made them legends among the hardcore crowd- befriend and support a band such as The Dream Syndicate, who were in the process of spearheading a psych-revival that would come to be known as the Paisley Underground. Many of these relationships were forged through shared ties with the indie record labels that mushroomed in and around the scene whose rosters often reflected the amazing variety of the L.A. underground itself, a phenomenon that helped give rise to the era of the indie compilation as the best way to promote the music.

A storied example of this was Warfrat Records, a tiny artist-run label, whose recordings were made in a (literally) makeshift studio called Lyceum Sound, which was actually a sound-proofed two-car garage (we're talking egg-cartons on the walls here) that had been rented out by members of The Last as a rehearsal space. The "studio" was originally conceived as a much preferred return to sonic austerity for The Last after having had their sound subjected to the sterilizing effects of the professional recording process on their debut LP, L.A. Explosion!  Eventually, Lyceum Sound played host to bands such as The Gun Club, Rain Parade, The Long Ryders and Savage Republic to name but a few, all of whom engaged in something like recorded rehearsals. As The Last's manager Gary Stewart remembers, the WarfRat record label was born out of necessity: "I didn't so much dream up the WarfRat label as I was forced to start it, as a way of releasing a single [...] that was getting some airplay on Rodney Bingenheimer's Sunday night radio show." The compilation WarfRat Tales was intended as a way to promote many of the bands who regularly passed through Lyceum Sound as well as to pay off some bills (according to Stewart, the album accomplished only one of these objectives).

The album itself is one of the better comps to emanate from the L.A. underground, and has the added advantage of being primarily comprised of unique "demo" performances that are often superior to the more polished versions available elsewhere. The opener, "Try to Rise," a creepy, campy psychedelic rocker by The Last that sounds a bit like Frankenfurter of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fronting The Doors, sets the tone for this consistently great and intensely moody set of songs. Another highlight is "Stop the Clock" by the Earwigs, a strange mash-up of punk, ska and early new-wave that functions as a tension-filled time-capsule of cold war paranoia. WarfRat Tales also features some wonderfully scruffy cuts from Paisley Underground mainstays Rain Parade, including a stunning rendition of "This Can't Be Today," later re-recorded for their debut LP, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. Perhaps the most essential track is "Creeping Coastlines of Light" by The Leaving Trains, a twangy, moody, transcendent slow-burner that is the equal of anything recorded by the scene's more well-known "roots" bands such as The Long Ryders and True West. WarfRat Tales is worth revisting because it offers a significant glimpse into an amazingly vibrant music scene long since gone; however, what makes it truly distinctive is the way its austerely-recorded tracks capture the passion and camaraderie that made the L.A. underground what it was.