The Compilation

How obscure is the compilation Don’t Shoot? One measure is that this document isn’t reviewed at Trouser Press, dwelling of the self-proclaimed Bible of Different Rock. This document isn’t various rock as a lot as various nation, however Trouser Press has reviewed various nation, together with the artists collected right here. These artists are, or had been, indie/various rock performers who explored the roots of rock, together with people, nation, and rockabilly. They’re, so as of look on Don’t Shoot: Danny & Dusty, High Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs, Stephen McCarthy, John Doe, Julie Christensen, Divine Horsemen, Tony Gilkyson, Jack Waterson, the Band of Blacky Ranchette, Clay Allison, and the Romans.

At this level, you could be saying, “Oh, wow!” Or you could be asking, “Who?” Whether or not these names signify for you’ll in all probability decide whether or not you’ll care about this album. These indie/various artists’ takes on people, nation, and rockabilly vary from advantageous to fairly good to wonderful. “Simply have a look at this album,” the music producer, publicist, government, and journalist Invoice Bentley writes in his liner notes, “as a wild fling by some outsiders who weren’t actually trying to get in… however as an alternative took a flying leap of religion by taking part in songs that caught to their bones”. 

Repeated performs reveal the music’s appreciable charms. No one telephones it in or throws it away; all of the taking part in and singing sounds heartfelt. The manufacturing is uniformly clear, not electronically mucked up or glossed up as you may anticipate from a 1986 launch.

Los Angeles connects practically all of the artists on Don’t Shoot. Simply as that metropolis had spawned one of many earliest punk scenes, so it grew to become an indie-rock pressure. By 1984‒1985, when these tracks had been recorded, the Los Angeles punk rockers had develop into indie rockers and embraced Americana, making rootsy music in their very own photographs.

Don’t Shoot, a set of such efforts, was launched on LP by a small English label, Zippo Information. Zippo—like its dad or mum, Demon Information, and sibling, Edsel Information—specialised in lower-key pop-rock that drew prominently from American sources. Zippo began as a London document store that bought albums in any other case exhausting to search out, corresponding to by the Los Angeles indie rockers.

By 1984, the Zippo store had spawned the document label, which launched albums by those self same LA rockers, and by 1986, the label was related with lots of the artists on Don’t Shoot. Launched on vinyl solely and by no means rereleased in any official type, the LP now supplies a window into what a handful of individuals on Earth at the moment thought of cutting-edge.

The recordings on Don’t Shoot in all probability received’t change your life. Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties they may have, or a minimum of despatched you trying to find musics in numerous instructions: into the previous, in that second, or into the longer term. In 2024, in contrast, these recordings may not even ship you searching for the artists’ different work, although typically you could be greatest off beginning with their best-known music to have context for what’s right here.

Provided that judgment, why are we right here, wanting again? This music issues largely for its place within the historic document of indie/various rock and various nation. This document will probably be of curiosity to the individuals who cared about these artists and artists like them. Perhaps you’re a kind of folks, or maybe you’re curious and studying. In any case, saddle up for a tour by means of what these Los Angeles artists had been doing on the time and what they did this one time.

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The Artists

Take John Doe. If you happen to’re unfamiliar with him, meet John Doe, greatest identified for co-fronting (with Exene Cervenka) the Los Angeles punk band X. In 1984‒1985, X had been introducing roots music into their combine and had developed an alter ego: the folk-country group the Knitters, whose lead guitarist was Dave Alvin, of the roots-rock devotees the Blasters.

Doe’s contribution to Don’t Shoot is Alvin and Doe’s “Wreckin’ Ball”, a primarily solo model of “The Name of the Wreckin’ Ball”. That rockabilly unique appeared on the Knitters’ first album, Poor Little Critter on the Highway, launched in 1985 on the visionary indie label Slash Information and a must-hear if this sort of music speaks to you. (Additionally take a look at the primary 4 X albums, all sensible amalgams, and the band’s 1995 stay acoustic recording, Unclogged.)

Doe’s solo “Wreckin’ Ball” recording feels like a tight-limbed demo for the Knitters’ model. The salient characteristic right here is the singer’s makes use of of the phrase “fuck”. The f-word had, as a joke, been virtually efficiently bleeped out on the Poor Little Critter on the Highway model, because it might need been on a TV or radio look. Report-company folks might need, for actual, executed such a factor on a distinct form of document, on a distinct label, at a distinct level in historical past.

Think about that in 1978, Chrysalis Information bleeped out the profanities on some pressings of Jethro Tull’s Dwell—Bursting Out. If Jethro Tull should not secure from such censorship, no rock music is. That’s what the Knitters had been getting at, as if they’d made a pleasant old-timey folk-country album.

Tony Gilkyson was instantly related to John Doe within the mid-Nineteen Eighties. In 1985, he performed guitar with the Americana pioneers Lone Justice; by 1986, he performed with X. Gilkyson sings his “Tear It Down” on Don’t Shoot. He’s accompanied by Lone Justice’s lead singer, Maria McKee, who brings her mellifluousness to his plain singing model.

Far quirkier are Danny & Dusty. This aspect challenge’s title “characters” had been the leaders of two outstanding indie-rock bands: Dan Stuart, of Inexperienced on Purple, and Steve Wynn, of the Dream Syndicate. They had been joined by musicians from their very own bands and others, together with the Lengthy Ryders.

Inexperienced on Purple began out mixing storage rock and psychedelia however took a rustic activate the 1985 EP No Free Lunch. The Dream Syndicate’s debut album, 1982’s The Days of Wine and Roses, impressed a lot love with its psychedelic tackle the Velvet Underground when that concept was nonetheless recent (it was a distinct world, folks).

Nonetheless, their second album, 1985’s Medication Present, garnered a lot distaste with its sudden and subsequently undesirable, if not unwarranted, flip towards twisted Americana through Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Tv, and Bruce Springsteen. The Lengthy Ryders rose to some prominence with an indie mixture of the Byrds, Dylan, nation, and storage rock—proper up till they acquired a lot derision for showing in a 1986 TV industrial for Miller beer (once more, it was a distinct world, the place “promoting out” alienated purists).

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In the meantime, in 1985, the Danny & Dusty outgrowth from these teams launched The Misplaced Weekend album. That recording delivered a ground-breaking and ear-opening combine that got here to be referred to as country-punk, cowpunk, and finally—as soon as indie had been rebranded as various—various nation. Accordingly, Don’t Shoot opens with Danny & Dusty’s monitor, which mines that similar twang-laden vein. Stuart and Wynn’s “Bend within the Highway”, a dialogue between Danny and Dusty, suggests Tv’s Tom Verlaine, with a contact of Dylan, taking part in with Western mythology.

Talking of Dylan: One can’t legitimately talk about music of this type—indie rock or various nation that sprang from it—with out acknowledging Dylan’s presiding spirit. In additional methods than this sentence can do justice to, Dylan was the god of those artists and ones like them, and Hank Williams was his prophet. Elvis Costello, whose data had been launched in England on Demon Information, might be seen as a patron saint. The Byrds had been angels floating round, or one thing like that.

A Byrds acolyte, the guitarist and singer Stephen McCarthy was a member of Danny & Dusty, however his full-time gig was the Lengthy Ryders. McCarthy’s “I’ll Get Out Someway” isn’t performed by the Lengthy Ryders however feels like a mellow Lengthy Ryders monitor with pretty guitar (by one Dave Pearlman, founding father of a recording studio charmingly named Rotund Rascal).

Jack Waterson is greatest often known as the bassist for Inexperienced on Purple. Right here he tackles a mighty tune, Hank Williams’s “By no means Get Out of This World Alive”, given a convincingly honky-tonk therapy. Musicians on this monitor embody three members of the Rain Parade, a band outstanding in Los Angeles’ psychedelic-pop-rock scene, the so-called Paisley Underground. They’re fiddler Will Glenn, who’d additionally performed with the Three O’Clock from that scene; guitarist Matthew Piucci; and bassist Steve Roback. Stellar pianist Chris Cacavas had performed with or would ultimately play with practically all of the teams represented on Don’t Shoot, together with Inexperienced on Purple, the Dream Syndicate, Danny & Dusty, the Divine Horsemen, and the Band of Blacky Ranchette. 

The Band of Blacky Ranchette had been, like Danny & Dusty, a aspect challenge. It’s the ringer on this assortment, hailing not from Los Angeles however from Tucson, Arizona. Howe Gelb, of the indie-rock band Large Sand, explored nation abetted by the guitarist, singer, and songwriter Rainer Ptacek and others. On Don’t Shoot, Gelb’s “Blind Justice” presents a slower, woozier model of the honky tonk delivered by Waterson.

Making up for Blacky Ranchette’s outside-Los Angeles standing, High Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs loved such a excessive profile in Los Angeles on the time that they achieved two distinctions: the Rhythm Pigs had been name-checked by the Knitters, on their “soul coal”-powered model of “Rock Island Line”, by the folk-blues large Lead Stomach; and High Jimmy was celebrated by means of Van Halen’s “High Jimmy”, on the album 1984. Sure, you learn that proper—the music’s about this man, of whom David Lee Roth was a fan and pal.

On Don’t Cease, masking Willie Nelson’s “Good day Partitions”, High Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs acquit themselves in soulful nation model, however this slower quantity doesn’t show the hearth of their stay exhibits or their one album. That album, 1987’s Pigus * Drunkus * Maximus, options an virtually fully totally different set of musicians. Bassist Gil T. (no final title) seems in each locations, however right here Tony Gilkyson (who may have been referred to as T. Gil however appears to not be Gil T.) performs guitar, and Keith Mitchell, who’d been in Inexperienced on Purple, performs drums.

Mitchell seems twice extra on Don’t Shoot. The primary time, he performs “rice in can” percussion on a monitor by his fundamental band, Clay Allison. This group additionally included the bassist and singer Kendra Smith, the guitarist and singer Dave Roback, and the guitarist Juan Gomez. In 1984, Clay Allison launched a handful of ultra-indie psychedelic recordings, together with one masterpiece, the gorgeous “Fell from the Solar” (which Mitchell doesn’t play on). By 1987, they’d misplaced Gomez, modified their title to Opal, and launched the classic-to-a-select-few psychedelic LP Comfortable Nightmare Child.

Right here, Clay Allison performs the folks legend Elizabeth Cotten’s ultra-spare “Freight Practice” with acoustic guitars and a determined lack of have an effect on, although Smith’s voice is fairly. By 1989, by the way in which, Smith had left Opal. Mitchell and Roback recruited singer Hope Sandoval, and as Mazzy Star they made a reputation for themselves, in all probability the best-known title of any artist related to this document.

On Don’t Shoot, Mitchell and Gomez reappear as members of the Romans. This indie-rock group, led by bassist and vocalist Michael Uhlenkott, had launched one album in 1983 and would launch a second in 1986. Right here, having enjoyable performing Uhlenkott’s “Tear It All to Items”, they counsel a countrified Feelies or country-fried Devo.

Julie Christensen was married to Chris D. (for Desjardins), chief of the Divine Horsemen. Produced by Chris D., Christensen’s monitor is a canopy of “Nearly Persuaded”, a large hit in 1966 for David Houston. Written by Billy Sherrill and Glenn Sutton, this music lets Christensen convey the wonder, to the purpose that, should you’re going to hunt out one monitor from Don’t Shoot, this ought to be the one if magnificence appeals to you.

Complemented by the piano and pedal metal glories of country-rock stalwarts Pete Wasner and Greg Leisz, respectively, plus outstanding acoustic guitar by somebody named Bob Hawkins (this music is his solely Discogs.com credit score), Christensen avoids Houston’s melodrama. She hits the vocal and maybe emotional midpoint between Maria McKee and the singer-songwriter Syd Straw (a kindred spirit to everybody right here) and that’s a mighty candy spot. 

Christensen sings on the Divine Horsemen’s monitor, making up for her husband’s vocal shortcomings. Written by Chris D., Robyn Jameson, and the Divine Horsemen, who on this recording consist additionally of guitarist Matt Lee and fiddler Brantley Kearns, “Tears Fall Away” begins off roughly and builds to actual energy. Via sheer Dylanesque willpower, Chris D. had growled and barked his method by means of recordings by his punk band the Flesh Eaters (see, for instance, 1982’s Without end Got here Immediately, particularly the six and a half ferociously metallic minutes of “Drag My Title within the Mud”).

Nonetheless, a natural-born singer he’s not. You would hear his vocalizing as a form of brutal honesty and subsequently as nation—certainly, country-punk—in spirit. In that sense, Chris D.’s voice represents all of Don’t Shoot and its subgenre.