River ,'Ariel'
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
That'll be one less heavenly pop song waiting for you in the afterlife, y'know.
I might do 'em anyway. I love that record with deep geekly love. How could I not with lyrics about sitting around reading Swamp Thing while listening to The Byrds? We're already covering one of their albums (Brave Words) and only a select few musicians are gettings doubles (Mekons, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Graham Gouldman/10cc, Sparks, Feelies/Yung Wu).
Hey, I'm part of two of those doubles! Excellent.
I love that record with deep geekly love.
I love Brave Words more. But that might be because the first time they played in the US I saw them at TT's and then Maxwell's the next night and they were playing stuff from that as-yet-unreleased LP and it Moved. My. World.
Gun Club mostly done.
the get a good review?
Maxwell's: Just had to defend my description of The dBs as part of "The Hoboken Scene" of the early 80s to my co-editor. "But aren't they from North Carolina? I associate them with North Carolina."
Yeah, but they didn't form The dBs until they all moved to NYC. Did you know Stamey toured with Alex Chilton for a year? That must've been that stretch where Alex went to the UK and had the Softboys back him. Also when Richard Lloyd played some live dates with him, and when The dBs backed Kimberly Rew.
Among my pop rarities, I've got both The Sneakers CD (pre-dBs band with Mitch Easter and Chris Stamey) and The Bible of Bop (Kimberly Rew backed by Softboys, dBs and Waves).
the get a good review?
Everything in the book gets a rave, since the point is to identify great records which have been lost or underrated. But yes, I give a stellar review to Fire of Love.
Opening line: "This isn't southern gothic; it's feral white trash."
"This isn't southern gothic; it's feral white trash."
Very nice.
Very nice.
There's also a metaphor about guitar playing based on truck lot whores and a reference to "a black pubic hair caught in a crust of blood on polyblend panties." So you can see I have not stinted on the Nasteee while describing The Gun Club's punk blues.
"she's like heroin to me" was my favorite love song for a while....
edit: i just love fire of love.
"she's like heroin to me" was my favorite love song for a while....
Have you heard the Congo-Norvell version of this song? They do it as a very slow, narcotic duet. It's amazing. Just gorgeous and it highlights the lyrics, and Kid Congo plays fantastic guitar on it.