Dream syndicate5/20/2023 ![]() ![]() He stuck around for their second long-player, Medicine Show (which received mixed reviews and was considered a disappointment), and an EP, This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album… before moving on. Despite intra-band tensions, Karl Precoda managed to hang on. Unfortunately, Kendra Smith ditched the band not long after the release of Days… teaming with ex-Rain Parade visionary Dave Roback. In turn, the record ended up influencing the next wave (Pixies, Nirvana and American Music Club) as well as recent bands like Parquet Courts, Ought and Nap Eyes. Their guitar-driven squall paid homage to heroes like Lou Reed and Tom Verlaine, but it also rather clearly forged its own path. That album, The Days Of Wine And Roses arrived in late 1982, and it was a revelation pairing tough, literate lyrics with instrumentation that wasn’t afraid to skronk, squeal and feedback. It seemed wholly appropriate that he produce their full-length debut. Flesh Eater front-man Chris Desjardins had started as a writer for Slash magazine and as their A&R rep, he signed The Dream Syndicate. Home to seminal bands like X, the Germs, the Flesh Eaters and the Blasters, they were one of the first labels to partner with a major, (Warner Bros.) to handle distribution. Slash began life as a fanzine/magazine that documented the city’s burgeoning Punk scene. Pretty soon they were signed to L.A.’s preeminent indie label Slash. The Dream Syndicate recorded and self-released Down There, a four song EP that had the critics buzzing. Michael Querico of the Three O’ Clock characterized the bands’ collective style as the Paisley Underground and the appellation stuck. While those bands were influenced by ‘60s Garage Rock and Psychedelic sounds of the Byrds, Love and the Merry-Go-Round, The Dream Syndicate drew inspiration from darker, more subterranean sources like Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground, Television and Neil Young’s epic collaborations with Crazy Horse. The Dream Syndicate began gigging around town and found kindred spirits in bands like the Three O’ Clock, Bangles Green-On-Red and Rain Parade. The music scene became as sprawling as the city itself. ethos was in full effect, and while some bands embraced the primitive cool of Punk, others took that template and added disparate colors and textures that incorporated Blues, Country, Rockabilly, Jazz and R&B. Perhaps the potent combo of smog and sunshine added an invigorating blast of vitamin D. Although Punk Rock was invented in the bowels of New York and exploded in Great Britain, it flourished in the City Of Angels. Those desperate for Tom Verlaine's next one might conceivably settle for Sandy Pearlman's ampliclarification of Karl Precoda's guitar, but now that Steve Wynn is flexing his literary imagination we know where the interpersonal vignettes on the debut came from: when he grows up, Steve wants to write new journalism about adolescent anomie for California magazine.The year was 1981 and Los Angeles was experiencing a musical renaissance. Very subtle-the sharper you listen the duller it sounds. But Steve Wynn's take on the usual world-weary table topics is gratifying matter-of-fact and no more, and music like this-music where the fun is in the no-fun-feels incomplete when it stops there. Punctuated as well as buoyed by drummer Dennis Duck, Karl Precoda shapes a guitar master's trick bag of basic chords and ungodly electric accidents into drones that won't quit, so abrasively tuneful I get off on this album strictly as a groove-the way I get off on perfectly mindless funk like, say, the Gap Band singles. Denying the Velvets ever cross his mind is a nice conceited Loulike touch, though. Karl Precoda has the feedback down, and Dennis Duck simulates Mo's style while intensifying her groove and doubling her drive, but Steve Wynn needs to work on his Lou-he projects too much.
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