The Gun Club (Post Punk)

(see also the english review below)

The Gun Club was a band formed on the West Coast of the United States in 1978. Always led by the very charismatic Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the band released its first album, Fire of Love, in 1981 on Slash Records. As a side note, the band’s name was the idea of Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s roommate, who was none other than Keith Morris, the singer of the legendary Black Flag.

When people talk about a band’s influences, they usually mean the sounds borrowed from the great references that resurface in post-X albums. Nothing of the sort with The Gun Club. Here the band’s influences reflect another way of doing things. I have no doubt that when Lou Reed first heard the Gun Club, he must have admired this other way of doing things. The Gun Club shows a new path for pop, for Punk, for rock’n’roll. The Gun Club, like the Velvet, showed that it is possible, when the will and the talent are there, to make new music that does not settle for synthesizing the past. Art is admittedly an eternal new beginning, and no renowned artist would deny that their creations are necessarily inspired (in part) by what already Exists, by common thought, by the Jungian collective unconscious. Only some manage, through their tiny contribution to an art, to become one of those who will influence future generations. Others never do.

There is undeniably Punk Blues in Fire of Love. It is exciting, because it is hard if not impossible to think of another band that fits this precise genre (granted, Country Teasers’ Punk Country is sometimes not far off, but still). But above all, Gun Club’s music is real Post Punk. This label should not be understood in the sense it would take on later with bands such as Wire and Pere Ubu. No, Gun Club’s Post Punk answers to its original notion, the one where the music borrows Punk’s rage and simplicity while bringing it the structural variations the original genre did not care about.

The Gun Club never reached the general (or even the semi-general) public. Blame it on songs that were too experimental, too avant-garde. In the end, only the Velvet truly managed to rise to the status of rock legends without ever dropping their musical innovation. Only the Velvet were also an image, a brand. The Gun Club could not benefit from that aura, and so here I am singing its praises, because too few people do.

And yet Fire of Love is not short of hits. The album opens with “Sex Beat“, where you understand that Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s beat is inimitable. “Promise Me” is the first appearance of the ghost of the VU. There is a reference on “She’s Like Heroin To Me“. “For The Love Of Ivy” (a track written by Kid Congo Powers) is the first track that won me over to the Gun Club. This track will remain one of the best of its decade, because it is violent and creative, because its changes of rhythm can never be tamed. “Preaching The Blues“, a Robert Johnson song, plays in the same league. In a more ’77 Punk style, there are “Ghost On The Highway” and “Black Train“. “Jack on Fire” returns to Lou Reed’s flow. This musical piece turns into a formidable psychedelic incantatory chant, The Jesus and the Mary Chain style.

In the end, the Gun Club’s music holds a very special importance in music history, a world away from the band’s anonymity. The Gun Club is regularly cited in obscure DIY bar discussions as the holy of holies of the early ’80s. Jack White himself asks the question: “‘Sex Beat’, ‘She’s Like Heroin To Me’, and ‘For The Love Of Ivy’…why are these songs not taught in schools?“. This album appears in many rankings. Let us mention Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981-1996. It is also regularly described as one of the most underrated albums of all time. Without it, the Los Angeles scene would probably never have experienced the rapid rise it had in the ’80s, at a time when New York was still crushing the rest of the United States.

For me, The Gun Club will always be the epitome of the underground. An underground that stayed underground to the very end. I do not believe at all that the Gun Club will one day get all the recognition they deserve. On the other hand, I am deeply convinced that The Scene will end up acknowledging all its merits. In other circumstances, the Gun Club could have teamed up with an Andy Warhol-style guru who would have popularized the band until it was spread across T-shirts all over the world. After all, Basquiat represented visually what the Gun Club did in music. The combo would have been one of the most powerful ever created. But enough rewriting history.

Review by Mazz

(english only)

Rarely is an album name as appropriate as it is for the Fire of Love. This album is a blazing masterpiece. It grabs you from the swampy introductory notes on “Sex Beat” to the honky tonk poetry slam that is “Jack on Fire“. Gun Club’s Delta Blues inspiration does not come off as forced or fake but is as real and haunting as the blackened tattered soul of the South.

Fire of Love is raw musical energy, stripped down, moody, and sometimes writhing in agony. It’s one of those rare punk rock album that differs from most punk records where guitars dominate. The guitar here is only one piece of band’s overall harmony where Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s quivering drawling and howling are the centerpiece. The bleak lyrics and music of songs like “Jack on Fire” and “For the Love of Ivy” conjure mixed images. The song lyrics are wrought with satire about stereotypes (“Preaching the Blues” and “Jack on Fire”) and Southern folks (“For the Love of Ivy”) and also deeply personal (themes of drug addiction and heartbreak pervade basically every track on the album). Yet despite this darkness the album has always been a great unifier in my experience. It once brought together those who formerly donned vintage velvet blazers over hoodies and exclusively smoked bali shag with their under-moneyed house and crust punk counterparts. Even the most reluctant eye-rolling millennial will find themselves jamming to this marvelous record if they like rock n roll. Its inevitable. You can feel the pulse of this record down to the tips of your fingers as if you yourself are plucking the steel string on “Ghost on the Highway”.

I have one particularly good example of the power of this record. Last year I found myself at a house party filled with detroit ex-pats. Many were significantly younger than me, feeling old and uninvited (note: I was not invited). I strayed upstairs into an open bedroom from where I faintly heard the crescendoing guitars of a Tyvek song. Everyone there was a stranger that was also drunk or high and also incredibly happy to see me. I immediately noticed the record collection, stepped up to the shelves of musty LPs and began thumbing through the collection. As soon as I found Fire of Love I pulled it out, opened it up, and asked if I could put it on. Nobody seemed to know whose room we were in. Within seconds of the needle dropping everyone in the room suddenly perked up and most began singing along. It was a beautiful moment that lived on for the length of side A.

If you have not yet heard this record I highly recommend it. It strongly reminds me of Tav Falco, the Cramps, and even Hazil Adkins but moody, complicated, less tongue-in-cheek and yet still satirical.

Related links:

Anachronistic article on Country Teasers

Link to ALL the anachronistic articles