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The Gun Club
Miami/ Death Party/ Las Vegas Story
all Cooking Vinyl Records
Article written by
Ged M - Dec 10, 2009
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The Gun Club: Death Party
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On my iTunes, the genres allocated for the early Gun Club releases sum up their profligacy of influences. First album Fire of Love is “alternative”, Miami is “rock”, The Las Vegas Story counts as “blues” while the Death Party EP is just “unclassifiable”. Nowadays all sorts of independent bands draw on roots music but the Gun Club were trailblazers for a particular form of Americana – in their case a punk approach that incorporated blues, country, r’n’b and a wilder sort of jazz into their mythic America concept. With a couple of other likeminded bands, they set the scene for others to act out. To give just one example, there’d be no White Stripes without the Gun Club.
These three Cooking Vinyl releases, each with a bonus live recording from the same period, represent a core part of the Gun Club story. Formed in 1980, the first album (not part of this reissue series) was a masterpiece of blues-inspired voodoo-punk (just hear ‘Sexbeat’ on the live CD that comes with Miami) with Jeffrey Lee Pierce channelling the spirit of Jim Morrison without his bloody awful poetry.
The Gun Club: Miami
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Miami was their second album but lost some of its spark as a result of Chris Stein’s anodyne production. Yet their feral charge still burns its way to the surface, with some their earthiest, most primal songs, including the monstrous slide guitar on ‘Carry Home’ and the ferocious paganism of their version of Creedence’s ‘Run Through The Jungle’. Stein is co-credited on Death Party too, though his weak hand is less detectable. Like the original 12” EP, there are just five tracks but they’re some of my favourite Gun Club tunes, with a darkness to the lyrics that is Southern Gothic (but not “goth”, although Patricia Morrison's presence in the band at this time didn’t help that impression). ‘House On Highland Avenue’ has a great world-weariness about it while the live CD has a version of ‘Strange Fruit’ that shows Pierce willing to reinterpret in a very personal way works from the Great American Songbook.
The Las Vegas Story saw Kid Congo Powers rejoin the Gun Club (he’d left just before Fire of Love to join the Cramps - problems with working with JLP seem to be a feature of this band). This turned out to be a great album, upbeat, accessible and diverse, even with songtitles as bruised and crepuscular as 'Give Up The Sun' and 'Bad America’. The album title seemed to reflect a fascination with the seedy American underbelly beneath the glittering facade, while Pierce embraced that concept by selling his soul in the punkish ‘Walking With The Beast'. Even more than before, Pierce cast his net across the breath of American music, as he covered Pharoah Sanders' avant-jazz, Richard Berry's 'Louie Louie' and George Gershwin's 'My Man's Gone Now'.
The Gun Club: The Las Vegas Story
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While they’d make other good albums as a band and solo, the Gun Club wouldn’t make anything as powerful as this sequence again. The band split in 1984, reformed in 1986 and was finally laid to rest along with po’ Jeffrey when booze, drugs and hard living finished him off in 1996. The reissued albums have been released on CD before but the new versions with their live CDs allow us to reevaluate the importance of the Gun Club in American music - in the same way that Pierce had acknowleged essential artists who had gone before him. 25 years on from these records, and 13 since Pierce's death, these recordings sound more vital and relevant than ever.
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