Title:        THE POP LIFE; THE GUN CLUB, ON STAGE AND ON THREE ALBUMS
Author:       Robert Palmer
Source:       The New York Times
Date:         August 22, 1984


   The Gun Club was performing recently at the Pyramid, a long, narrow,
dimly lit club on Avenue A, and several members of the audience were
yelling "Get serious!" They were yelling specifically at Jeffrey Lee
Pierce, who was doing what could have been an impersonation of one of his
idols, the late Jim Morrison, lead singer and lyricist with the Doors.
Like Mr. Morrison at many later Doors concerts, Mr. Pierce was wandering
about the stage, sometimes singing into the microphone, sometimes not, and
consistently throwing off the timing of his fine, steady band.
    Members of the audience were angry, and saying so, because for people
who follow the Gun Club, the band has always been special. They were
particularly incensed that Mr. Pierce was making slapstick comedy out of
"Preachin' the Blues," an old Mississippi blues song recorded by Son
House and Robert Johnson, and given new life by the Gun Club's version on
the band's first album, "Fire of Love" (Ruby Records, 1981).
   Mr. Pierce's arrangement of the song, which alternates sinister pauses
and sudden bursts of wildly flailing slide guitars and drums played at a
manic tempo, is already a rock classic, and when listeners began to
complain that it was not being performed seriously, Mr. Pierce stopped and
squinted out at the crowd. "Oh, you want us to be serious," he said, and
as he kicked into the next verse, howling like a banshee, it was evident
that tonight, at least, "Preachin' the Blues" was going to be as serious
as the Gun Club could make it. It was a wailing, inspiring performance,
the sort the Gun Club is capable of giving every night.
   Mr. Pierce first made contact with new-wave rock when he was a teen-
ager, by starting a fan club for the rock group Blondie. A few years later
he began writing for Slash, the Los Angeles punk-rock newspaper that
printed some wonderful criticism and reviews before its principals stopped
publication and founded Slash Records several years ago. Mr. Pierce was
one of the most interesting critics published by the magazine because he
tried to expand his audience's awareness of music other than punk rock
that had a similar power and punch, from Louisiana Zybeco to blues and
reggae.
   But when he first started his own band, it was difficult even for some
of his friends on the Los Angeles scene to take him seriously - this short
overweight kid, posturing and thrashing around in a frenzy. A performance
by the original Gun Club that this reviewer saw in Los Angeles in 1981
was, frankly, terrible.
   But this terrible band has always made exciting records, beginning with
its first album. Its new, third, album, "The Las Vegas Story"
(Animal/Jem), is the best yet, a collection of searing guitar-rock with
finely crafted songs and a tough, stabilized personnel. The guitarist Kid
Congo Powers, recently returned from a fill- in stint with the Cramps, has
developed into a player of stunning force and imagination, and the rhythm
section of Patricia Morrison on bass and Terry Graham on drums is tight
and ferocious.
   On "The Las Vegas Story" the Gun Club performs a Pharoah Sanders jazz
tune and Gershwin's "My Man's Gone Now," and although the guitar
improvisations at the Pyramid Club were inconclusive, Mr. Pierce did say
recently that the band was becoming more and more interested in jazz.
Certainly the talent is there, and reports from the road have the Gun Club
giving coherent exciting performances. Perhaps the Pyramid Club show was
an off-night, although it was distressingly reminiscent of the 1981 Gun
Club performance that this reviewer saw. Perhaps we'll get to the bottom
of this on Sept. 8, when the group returns to New York to play the Ritz.
This is a band that deserves to be taken seriously - by its leader, as
well as by its growing number of fans.


© 1984 The New York Times Company.


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