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- Date Released: January 1, 1981
- Genre: Blues
- Label: Last Call Records / Believe Digital
The invention of punk blues remains its high-water mark.
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We Say...
It's hard to think of a more auspicious beginning than the first song on the Gun Club's debut, the wonderfully nihilistic "Sex Beat." Ward Dotson's slide guitar chops like a dozen machetes and Jeffrey Lee Pierce sings like Elvis's demented zombie while the rhythm section — Rob Ritter and Terry Graham, formerly of first generation L.A. punk act the Bags — holds it all together. A reggae-obsessed, portly junkie who passed away from complications of hepatitis and AIDS in 1996, Pierce sounds like Teen Wolf stuck in lycanthropic transition. On the otherwise sublime "For the Love of Ivy," a revved-up paean to Lux Interior from the Cramps, Pierce adopts the persona of a redneck, howling "I was huntin' for n***ers down in the dark." Such sentiments may seem lazily offensive today, but back in the day they were powerfully transgressive.
Like their contemporaries X, the Cramps and the Blasters, the Gun Club used roots music as a springboard to both the past and the future. We'd not have a White Stripes, King Khan (or most of the bands on the Sympathy for the Record Industry and In the Red labels) without them. Many bands in the late '70s seemed to tinker with the wheel of rock music enough that surely, for example, the Swell Maps, Pere Ubu and Raincoats must have sounded incredibly original. But not all punk acts were that "original" by any means — the music of the Clash and Sex Pistols (and the Blasters and X) was often merely a sped-up version of Chuck Berry tunes. And punk's sound was remarkably blanched. This was of course a direct response to the wanky, tepid blues-jam structures that dominated so much stadium rock back then. The Gun Club blatantly pointed to rock's black blues foundation, whether by copping ancient licks or outright covering Son House's wonderful rant against religious hypocrisy, "Preachin' Blues." In so doing, they basically invented the concept of "punk blues," and this masterpiece remains that music's high water mark. -
They Say...
The Gun Club's debut is the watermark for all post-punk roots music. This features the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce's swamped-out brand of roiling rock, swaggerific hell-bound blues, and gothic country. With Pierce's wailing high lonesome slide guitar twinned with Ward Dotson's spine-shaking riffs and the solid yet off-the-rails rhythm section of bassist Rob Ritter and drummer Terry Graham, the Gun Club burst out of L.A. in the early '80s with a bone to pick and a mountain to move -- and they accomplished both on their debut album. With awesome, stripped to the frame production by the Flesh Eaters' Chris D., Fire of Love blew away all expectations -- and with good reason. Nobody has heard music like this before or since. Pierce's songs were rooted in his land of Texas. On "Sex Beat," a razor-sharp country one-two shuffle becomes a howling wind as Pierce's wasted, half-sung half-howled vocals relate a tale of voodoo, sex, dope, and death. The song choogles like a freight train coming undone in a twister. Here Black Flag, the Sex Pistols, Son House, and the coughing, hacking rambling ghost of Hank Williams all converge in a reckless mass of seething energy and nearly evil intent. As if the opener weren't enough of a jolt, the Gun Club follow this with a careening version of House's "Preachin the Blues," full of staccato phrasing and blazing slide. But it isn't until the anthemic, opiate-addled country of "She's Like Heroin to Me" and the truly frightening punk-blues of "Ghost on the Highway" that the listener comes to grip with the awesome terror that is the Gun Club. The songs become rock & roll ciphers, erasing themselves as soon as they speak, heading off into the whirlwind of a storm that is so big, so black, and so awful one cannot meditate on anything but its power. Fire of Love may be just what the doctor ordered, but to cure or kill is anybody's guess.
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| 01. |  |
Sex Beat |
2:45 |
|
| 02. | |
Preaching The Blues |
3:58 |
|
| 03. | |
Promise Me |
2:35 |
|
| 04. | |
She's Like Heroin To Me |
2:33 |
|
| 05. | |
For The Love Of Ivy |
5:31 |
|
| 06. | |
Fire Spirit |
2:52 |
|
| 07. | |
Ghost On The Highway |
2:43 |
|
| 08. | |
Jack On Fire |
4:40 |
|
| 09. | |
Black Train |
2:11 |
|
| 10. | |
Cool Drink Of Water |
6:10 |
|
| 11. | |
Good By Johnny |
3:47 |
|
11 Total Tracks, 39:45 Total Length
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Credits
- Gun Club - Main Performer // Gun Club - Main Performer // Pat Burnett - Engineer // Chris D. - Vocals (Background) // Chris D. - Producer // Chris D. - Photography // Chris D. - Cover Design // Ward Dotson - Guitar // Ward Dotson - Vocals // Ward Dotson - Vocals (Background) // Ward Dotson - Slide Guitar // Lois Graham - Vocals // Lois Graham - Vocals (Background) // Terry Graham - Drums // Tito Larnia - Violin // Tito Larriva - Violin // Tito Larriva - Producer // Tito Larriva - Remastering // Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Guitar // Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Arranger // Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Vocals // Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Vocals (Background) // Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Slide Guitar // Rob Ritter - Bass // Noah Shark - Engineer // Chris Stein - Engineer // Ed Colver - Photography // Hermann Deutsch - Photography // W.B. Seabrook - Photography // Judith Bell - Illustrations // Judith Bell - Drawing // Ed Clover - Photography
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