About ten years ago, I was a great big Nick Cave and all things Nick Cave fan. As such, I wasted hours online participating in an all things Nick Cave email discussion list.

After exhausting the local record stores, which were few, yet yielding of the occasional gem, of all the Nick Cave, and Nick Cave-related Birthday Party, Rowland S. Howard, and Einsturzende Neubauten records I could find, I wanted more, and decided to check out a band oft mentioned on said email discussion list. The Gun Club. Aside from one ex-Bad Seed being a frequent Gun Club member, and long-time Bad Seed, Blixa Bargeld popping up on one track on one album, I don't see the Bad Seeds/Gun Club connection, but that's irrelevant.

The album I bought, Mother Juno, was one of the most engaging collections of music I'd heard at that time. The songs were strong, but the singer had a vulnerability about him. Not quite Morrissey. More like Hank Williams on a lot of dope. He sang with the wild abandon of a man near crazy, but sane enough to hurt. I soon found out that around the time I was buying Mother Juno, singer Jeffery Lee Pierce, was falling into a coma. He died shortly thereafter, a self-victim of too many bad habits.

Then I bought the 1981 classic first album, Fire of Love. Like the second Stooges release, it lit my ass up. The way Jeffery Lee, Ward Dotson, Rob Ritter, and Terry Grahm took the American blues idiom and ran it through up-tempo punk rock was pure genius. Primal. Of course, that was a time when anything weird was punk rock, before the stultifying rule book was put in place. But I digress.

Along with Black Sabbath, the Stooges, Coltrane, and the Birthday Party, it got me through some very weird years in Lubbock,TX. Sure, I had plenty of other favorites, but certain music for certain times, right? Fire of Love always cut through the ennui around me to stir up some fierce excitement, if only between my headphones.

It's still...

About ten years ago, I was a great big Nick Cave and all things Nick Cave fan. As such, I wasted hours online participating in an all things Nick Cave email discussion list.

After exhausting the local record stores, which were few, yet yielding of the occasional gem, of all the Nick Cave, and Nick Cave-related Birthday Party, Rowland S. Howard, and Einsturzende Neubauten records I could find, I wanted more, and decided to check out a band oft mentioned on said email discussion list. The Gun Club. Aside from one ex-Bad Seed being a frequent Gun Club member, and long-time Bad Seed, Blixa Bargeld popping up on one track on one album, I don't see the Bad Seeds/Gun Club connection, but that's irrelevant.

The album I bought, Mother Juno, was one of the most engaging collections of music I'd heard at that time. The songs were strong, but the singer had a vulnerability about him. Not quite Morrissey. More like Hank Williams on a lot of dope. He sang with the wild abandon of a man near crazy, but sane enough to hurt. I soon found out that around the time I was buying Mother Juno, singer Jeffery Lee Pierce, was falling into a coma. He died shortly thereafter, a self-victim of too many bad habits.

Then I bought the 1981 classic first album, Fire of Love. Like the second Stooges release, it lit my ass up. The way Jeffery Lee, Ward Dotson, Rob Ritter, and Terry Grahm took the American blues idiom and ran it through up-tempo punk rock was pure genius. Primal. Of course, that was a time when anything weird was punk rock, before the stultifying rule book was put in place. But I digress.

Along with Black Sabbath, the Stooges, Coltrane, and the Birthday Party, it got me through some very weird years in Lubbock,TX. Sure, I had plenty of other favorites, but certain music for certain times, right? Fire of Love always cut through the ennui around me to stir up some fierce excitement, if only between my headphones.

It's still an album that lights me up today. So do most of the other Gun Club releases, though none as much as Fire Of Love. Anger, fire, whisky psychosis, sex, lust, vice, dope, tension, sin, redemption, they're all there. That fucking tension. Shit.

We can fuck forever but you will never get my soul.

Blues, is low down shaking chill / you ain't ever had them, I don't believe you will

I've been a real good tombstone, but now I'm blowing away

she's like Heroin to me / she cannot miss a vein

Gonna buy me a graveyard of my own / kill everyone who ever done me wrong / gonna buy me a gun just as long as my arm / kill everyone who ever done me harm

It stands up as one of the greats of the early Los Angeles punk rock scene, though its not recognized as such A few years ago, Exene Cervenka told me that she thought it was the best album to come out of that era. Hell! I think it's one of the greats to come out of the last century. As American a classic as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Robert Johnson, James Brown, or X.

Today's the tenth anniversary of Jeffery Lee's death. Still a ghost on the highway.