1984 Music: The Dream Syndicate, Medicine Show; Rain Parade, Explosions in the Glass Palace (mini-album)

Release dates: both unknown, but Medicine Show was likely in May on the basis of the Melody Maker review quoted below 

Was I listening to these albums in the 1980s? I had The Dream Syndicate’s first record, The Days of Wine and Roses, but not this one, which was their second; similarly, I had the Rain Parade’s 1985 live album Beyond the Sunset, but not this 1984 mini-album. 

Both these groups formed part of LA’s Paisley Underground movement, who looked to 60s psychedelia for inspiration (generally in its West Coast incarnations), though as is often the case with ‘movements’ identified by critics, the groups themselves were often touchy about being labelled. Nonetheless, there’s an identifiable shared influence and a common location.  

Here’s an oral history of the scene from The Guardian in 2013. 

I bought several Paisley Underground albums on the basis of a report on BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, which is up on YouTube in a rather fuzzy rip, which dates it to 1985. A clueless Richard Skinner here doing a fair impression of DJ Smashie in a hideous Hawaiian shirt: 

Or at least, I thought this report was my impetus, and it does include a great live version of ‘No Easy Way Down’, the Rain Parade’s best song, but it doesn’t mention Green on Red or The Dream Syndicate or The Bangles, and most of the groups it does feature are now unfamiliar to me. The Bangles, The Long Ryders, the Rain Parade and Green on Red all visited the Whistle Test studios during 1984–5 when they were touring the UK – perhaps at the behest of Andy Kershaw, who was one of the scene’s most vocal enthusiasts in the UK. But why did I buy The Days of Wine and Roses? Perhaps there was additional Whistle Test coverage/discussion besides the footage posted above. 

In any case, The Dream Syndicate’s first album was a good buy, as it was the best Paisley Underground record. Its closest equivalent in my collection at the time was probably Hallowed Ground – but only the more abrasive tracks from the latter album. At the time, The Days of Wine and Roses felt like the expression of a sneering cynicism I found both unsettling and exhilarating, e.g. the blasé frustration of the narrator of the title track at his girlfriend’s threatened suicide. 

The word from outside 

Is she’s on the ledge again 

Drawing a crowd 

And threatening everything 

I’m here wondering 

Just where I fit in 

 

The debt to The Velvet Underground is very blatant: as previous blog posts have made clear, they were an almost-ubiquitous reference point for music criticism in 1984, but in practice their more conventional later albums seem to have had more of an influence than the experimental records with John Cale. Here even the rudimentary thudding of Dennis Duck on drums seems to replicate Moe Tucker. But there’s a real energy to the Syndicate’s music that’s partly attributable to its air of simmering violence. 

After releasing The Days of Wine and Roses on an independent label, the Syndicate signed to a major and created their second album in a proper studio with a name producer: Sandy Pearlman of Blue Oyster Cult. The recording process was apparently gruelling, with take after take – in contrast to the spontaneous feel of the first album, recorded in three days – and frontman and main songwriter Steve Wynn was unhappy and drinking heavily. The songs are great, but the album sounds airless – the worst kind of ‘professional’ sheen, with every hint of personality and idiosyncrasy suppressed – and the versions of the songs on the later Live at Raji’s, from 1989 are arguably superior:

Most of the independent Paisley Underground releases came out under licence on Zippo in the UK – where there was a larger fan base. Because of the national coverage of the music press, and on Radio One (not just John Peel, but Janice Long, Annie Nightingale and Kid Jensen), it was sometimes easier for American bands to gather an audience here than at home (following in the footsteps of 60s acts like Jimi Hendrix and The Walker Brothers). The Days of Wine and Roses was freely available in Liverpool in its Zippo iteration (I bought it from HMV), but I don’t remember seeing the group’s second album at all. I note that the following review by David Fricke from Melody Maker on 26 May describes it as a ‘US import’, and I wonder if it even had a proper UK release, which would be ironic, given that the move to a major was intended to broaden the group’s reach. 

Unlike R.E.M., who continue to maintain a playful, almost exotic separatism, the band has plunged headlong into the belly of the big money beast, armed only with their dangerously raw, eccentric guitars and Steve Wynne’s [sic] nervous reedy rant … But at the very least “Medicine Show” is a great guitar album, Blue Oyster Cult without the motor cycle fantasies, The Clash without the self-important rebel yap. Pearlman’s production – which includes the introduction of a few brassy keyboards and boyish vocal harmonies – has forced lead guitarist Karl Precoda to at once tighten up his serrated modal buzz and drive it to even further extremes. In songs like “Still Holding On To You” and the long “John Coltrane Stereo Blues”, with its awkward punky pillow talk and spooky “Born On The Bayou” riff, Wynne and Precoda almost seem to argue with each other, building into frenzied crescendos that don’t let go even in the fadeouts. … “Medicine Show” is not as immediately exciting as the last album’s garage meltdown yet it is strangely more absorbing in its fattened sound and offbeat clutter.

By 1984, other groups from the scene had signed with majors as well: The Bangles with Columbia, and the Rain Parade with Island. I bought the latter group’s live album rather than any of their studio releases – I suspect it was cheaper – but it features several of the songs from their 1984 mini-album Explosions in the Glass Palace, including the epic ‘No Easy Way Down’:

I also bought Green on Red’s 1983 album Gravity Talks, but this last suffered an ignominious fate. Since I was unimpressed with it, I took it back to HMV on the basis it had a ‘scratch’, and while I was browsing the racks trying to decide what to exchange it for, This Is the Sea by The Waterboys came on …