Der folgende Artikel zum Thema ist zwar etwas lang und in englischer Sprache aber trotzdem sehr lesenswert:
TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER:
The Paisley Underground Reconsidered
by John L. Micek
PopMatters Music Critic
If you ask Steve Wynn for one of his favorite memories from his days
playing on the Los Angeles club scene back in the early eighties, you
might be surprised by his answer.
It’s not sharing the bill with such legendary combos as The Rain Parade
or Green on Red, or touring the nation, or even recording an album in
1982 that’s come to be viewed as a seminal document of the time (The Days
of Wine and Roses — more on which later).
No, when Wynn, the former Dream Syndicate leader (now a solo artist),
thinks about the brief flowering of West Coast bands that became known as
The Paisley underground, he thinks about a day trip to Catalina Island
off the coast of Southern California.
The year is 1982. It’s a glorious Fourth of July weekend, and members of
the Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, Salvation Army and the Bangles (before
the big hair and „Walk Like an Egyptian“) are all in attendance. It is a
day of sun, surf, barbecue and camaraderie.
„It was the defining moment,“ Wynn recalled not long ago. „We were all
just happy together. We were all into the moment.“
So why should one memory, now 20 years gone, still hold any importance?
Why should the activities of a semi-obscure group of bands still hold
sway two decades after they first took up their instruments and committed
songs to tape?
The answer is twofold.
First, Wynn’s story should resonate with anyone who even vaguely
remembers their early 20s: that magical time when your friends are your
family, when every sensation is the first one, and (if you’re a musician
just starting out) rock is the food and drink that gets you through the
day.
„It was a surprisingly supportive scene,“ said Steven Roback, who
co-founded the Rain Parade with brother David. „Part of it was
preestablished friendships between David and I and the Hoffs family. We
grew up together, lived two blocks from each other. In fact, I performed
in seventh grade musical with Sue [Susannah Hoffs of the Bangles] as the
lead.“
The camaraderie between the bands was at least as important as the music
they were making. For a period of several years, the Paisley Underground
groups crossed paths on tour, shared the same booking agents, and worked
on each other’s projects.
The epicenter for the scene was the two-story, Los Angeles apartment kept
by desert rockers Green on Red. The band’s barbecues provided a place to
schmooze, drink and swap musical ideas. It is a place recalled with great
fondness by the Paisley Underground’s various members.
Rain Parade guitarist Matt Piucci puts it this way: „We met the Dream
Syndicate through a (Green on Red) barbecue,“ Piucci recalled. „They had
this place up in Hollywood. From there, we met the [Bangles‘] Peterson
sisters — Ooh yeah! They were very sweet girls.“
The bands that made up the Paisley Underground provide a direct link
between the early American underground and the modern alternative rock
and alt.country that was to follow a decade later.
„It was a marriage of classic rock and punk,“ explained Pat Thomas,
co-owner of San Francisco indie Innerstate Records and the Underground’s
unofficial historian. „It was a precursor to SubPop and the whole
alternative country movement. You’ve got bands like the Long Ryders.
Fast-forward 10 years, and everyone thinks that Son Volt is God’s gift to
country rock.“
Indeed, the harsh guitar noise of the Dream Syndicate echoed later in the
Pixies and Nirvana (Kurt Cobain once cited the Syndicate as an influence)
and the twangy guitars of the Long Ryders and Green on Red later provided
a blueprint for alt.country pioneers Uncle Tupelo.
„Uncle Tupelo started as we were unraveling,“ former Long Ryders bassist
Tom Stevens said. „We played St. Louis once, and I don’t know if (Uncle
Tupelo leaders Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar) were out in the audience
taking notes or what.“
Although they disagree about exactly when they were officially christened
(listening to the various musicians tell stories about the era is not
unlike playing a child’s game of telephone), Wynn and the others do agree
that it was former Salvation Army leader Michael Quercio who gave the
movement its name.
Quercio — who later went on to form the Three O’Clock and Jupiter Affect
– — jokingly dropped the Paisley Underground reference during an
interview. It stuck. And again, depending on whom you ask, the communal
moniker was either a godsend or an albatross.
„We viewed it as joke,“ Stevens said. „We didn’t like to be pigeonholed
on the one hand. On the other, if people were writing about us and
spelling our names right, it was okay.“
Wynn is slightly more charitable.
„I don’t think [Quercio] thought it would stick like it did“, he said.
„As dopey as it was . . . it was helpful to have a banner over it. It
didn’t really hurt anyone.“
Those involved in the scene also agree on something else: the umbrella
label failed to take into account the diverse bands that made up the
Paisley Underground scene.
On the one hand, there was the desert rock of Green on Red and the
country-punk of the Long Ryders. On the other was the dreamy pop of the
Rain Parade and the Salvation Army/3 O’clock. The Dream Syndicate,
meanwhile, blended psychedelia with the anger of punk and the mystique of
the Velvet Underground.
„These bands in L.A. had extremely diverse musical personalities. Some of
them were extremely hard rocking, and that’s why the Paisley Underground
is truly a misnomer,“ Roback said. „The whole thing was a spontaneous
resynthesis of many influences, which happens periodically, colored by
the personalities of the people and the times. Rain Parade was very much
a recasting of our punk interests in more musical terms, inspired by our
fascination with music history.“
Indeed, if you spend any time talking with its constituents, it rapidly
becomes apparent that the Paisley Underground’s members are music junkies
in the truest sense of the word. Wynn and Piucci, in particular, are
repositories of vast stores of rock history. Combine that knowledge with
a punk D.I.Y ethic, and the scene explodes.
„We all came out of punk,“ Wynn said. „We had a huge musical awakening in
1977, and it just blew everything else away. In 1975, you couldn’t do
that. But by 1982, it was second nature.“
That melding of styles also lends the music a certain timelessness that
is lacking in other records of the period. Indeed, the Dream Syndicate’s
The Days of Wine and Roses or Rain Parade’s stellar debut, Emergency
Third Rail Power Trip, still sound refreshingly modern and could easily
occupy the same indie airspace as the Strokes or the Anniversary.
„I think it’s because they wrote good songs,“ Chicago Sun-Times rock
critic Jim DeRogatis said of the scene’s staying power. „It’s
illuminating to compare the ’60s revivals of the era — the West Coast
Paisley Underground and the East Coast garage scene. The bands from the
former stay with the fans much more than the latter because they wrote
strong material that stood the test of time, while the latter were
largely devoted to covers and style (and fashion) over songwriting.“
But by 1985, the scene had disintegrated amid personnel changes, disputes
over songwriting, and the old demon: record deals gone bad.
„Unfortunately, they were all united by the fact that they all took turns
for the worse when they were signed to major labels,“ DeRogatis wrote in
his seminal work on the scene, Kaleidoscope Eyes.
„In the days before Nirvana, they proved there was money to be made if
the bands were left to their own devices,“ DeRogatis wrote. „It’s
possible that corporate meddling was to blame. The bands may have lost
heart as, with the sole exception of R.E.M., American guitar music was
unable to achieve both critical and commercial success.“
For a brief, flashing moment, it appeared that the American underground
had conquered rock. And through the prism of two decades, the members of
the Paisley Underground remain fiercely proud of their legacy.
„The reason the L.A. scene has endured is because the music was really
good,“ Roback said. „I mean things did get a little absurd when these . .
. A&R people started showing up at gigs and throwing money around. But
these people were all very talented, and regardless of the label, capable
of great things. For about three or four years, all of those bands were
on a serious roll, producing great music, which was all different . . .
The rest is mainly hype.“
But the artistic achievement was important enough for Innerstate’s Thomas
(whose own New York band, the Rochester-based Absolute Gray, provided the
Underground with its East Coast branch office) to spend several fruitless
months attempting to compile a still-unreleased Paisley Underground boxed
set.
He began compiling the set in 1997 at the behest of executives at
Rykodisc in England. „I got a phone call out of the blue“, he recalled.
„And they were looking for the phone numbers for some of the key members.
I was working at a record store and the owner was good friends with the
head of A&R at Ryko and he convinced him why I should have the job.
Finally, they flew someone out to meet with me, and by 1998, I had the
job.“
What followed is a textbook example of the whims of the record business.
After spending six months compiling photographs, tracking down old
B-sides and compiling live cuts, the rug was suddenly pulled out from
under him.
„Ryko got bought out by Island, and they fired the big bosses,“ he said.
„Pretty much every project got canceled. Every few months, someone from
Ryko will call and ask what’s up, but I’d be surprised if it ever sees
the light of day.“ He’s briefly toyed with releasing the set on his own
label, but the costs of such a project would make it prohibitive. „To do
it all top-notch would cost about $30,000,“ he said. „If we were to do it
ourselves, it would cost about $10,000. What needs to happen is that
someone needs to take the bull by the horns. I’ll get excited when and if
that happens.“
Several hundred miles north of Thomas‘ Oakland offices that has already
begun to happen.
Founded little more than a year ago, the Portland, Oregon-based indie,
the Paisley Pop Label, has dedicated itself to keeping the spirit of the
Underground alive. In its brief existence, the label has released demos
and outtakes by former Windbreaker s Bobby Sutliff and Tim Lee, an
Absolute Grey live set, and, more recently, a collection by former True
West members Gavin Blair and Richard McGrath called The Foolkillers.
Label owner Jim Huie (himself a frequent collaborator with former True
West guitarist Russ Tolman) also moderates a Paisley Underground mailing
list. It is, he says, his way of keeping the faith.
„If the Paisley Underground built upon the ’60s, then it’s certainly
possible that a younger crowd might take inspiration from the Dream
Syndicate and the Long Ryders.“
For his part, Wynn said he’s glad that the Paisley Underground’s legacy
has endured and picked up new fans.
„It’s attached to a lot of strong feelings from people“, he said. „I
don’t know how many are people who were there at the time and how many
are 25-year-old kids who are discovering it for the first time . . . I
think it still sounds kind of non-formulaic in ways that other music does
not. It still does stand out.“
30 April 2002
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Captain Beefheart to audience: Is everyone feeling all right? Audience: Yeahhhhh!!! awright...!!! Captain Beefheart: That's not a soulful question, that's a medical question. It's too hot in here.