The Dream Syndicate

All Music Guide:

Dream Syndicate are at the foundation (alongside the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and R.E.M.) of contemporary alternative music simply because at the time when most bands were experimenting with new technology, the Syndicate deigned to bring back the guitar. Fronted by Steve Wynn (b. Feb. 21, 1960) and including Karl Precoda (guitar), Dennis Duck (drums), and Kendra Smith (bass), the band formed in Los Angeles after Smith and Wynn had relocated there from Davis, CA. They debuted with a self-titled, unbelievably Velvet Underground-like EP on Wynn's own Down There label. It was shortly off to Ruby/Slash for Days of Wine and Roses, the most lauded record on the college charts that year. The record has been cited as influential from artists as diverse as Kurt Cobain to the Black Crowes' Chris Robinson. Live, they had developed into an assaultive guitar band prone to jamming, which helped earn them the tag as leaders of L.A.'s paisley underground movement.

Released in 1984, Medicine Show was met with mixed response by the college crowd. By this time, Smith had left the band and was replaced by Dave Provost on bass and Tom Zvoncheck on keyboards. Wynn took his cues from Neil Young & Crazy Horse on the record rather than Lou Reed (who was considered a preferable source at the time), and the rootsier sound caused a backlash with the fan base. As the band label-hopped, a new lineup and falling morale spawned Out of the Grey (Big Time) in 1986 and the Elliot Mazer-produced Ghost Stories (Enigma) in 1988. The band had realigned to include Mark Walton on bass and Paul B. Cutler on guitar. They recorded Live at Raji's in 1989 as their swan song.

Wynn has since recorded albums as a leader and with Gutterball (featuring the House of Freaks and Silo Bob Rupe) and is continuously collaborating with other musicians. His 1996 solo record had him backed by the Boston band Come. Smith went on to work in Opal with David Roback, a prototype version of his Mazzy Star, and has since recorded solo albums as well. After a long hiatus from music, Karl Precoda reappeared in 1997 fronting the Last Days of May, a neo-psychedelic instrumental trio. Duck continued to work with Wynn as a touring drummer and bassist Mark Walton played with the Continental Drifters. A documentary of Dream Syndicate's last tour, Weathered and Torn, has been released on DVD.

Wikipedia:

The Dream Syndicate was an alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California, active from 1981 to 1989. The band was associated with the Paisley Underground music movement; of the bands in that movement, according to the Los Angeles Times, it "rocked with the highest degree of unbridled passion and conviction". Though never commercially successful it met with considerable acclaim, especially for the songwriting and guitarplaying. Wynn brought the band back together for a festival in Spain in 2012, and the band was slated to tour the US and Europe in 2013.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

History[edit]

While attending the University of California, Davis, Steve Wynn and Kendra Smith played together (with future True West members Russ Tolman and Gavin Blair) in a band called the Suspects, the first 'New-Wave'-influenced band in the Davis music scene. After he moved back to Los Angeles, Wynn recorded a single called "15 Minutes" as his intended farewell to music. But while rehearsing in a band called Goat Deity (with future Wednesday Week sisters Kelly and Kristi Callan), Wynn met Karl Precoda, who had answered an ad for a bass player, and the two joined to form a new group, with Precoda switching to guitar. Smith came to play bass and brought in drummer Dennis Duck (Mehaffey), who had played in the locally successful Pasadena-based band Human Hands.

Duck suggested the name "The Dream Syndicate" in reference to Tony Conrad's early 1960s New York experimental ensemble (better known as the Theater of Eternal Music), whose members included John Cale.

On February 23, 1982, the Dream Syndicate performed its first show at Club Lingerie in Hollywood. A four-song EP was recorded at the home of Tom Mehren in Pasadena, with Paul B. Cutler engineering and producing, and released on Wynn's Down There label, and the band quickly achieved local attention for its often aggressively long, feedback-soaked improvisations. Influences on the band, which was soon deemed "a seminal force in the city's '80s underground rock evolution", were The Velvet Underground, Neil Young, and Television.

The band was signed to Slash Records, whose subsidiary Ruby Records released its debut and by far best-known album, The Days of Wine and Roses, in 1982. The next year saw the UK (Rough Trade Records) release of the album's lead track, "Tell Me When It's Over," as the A-side of an EP which also included a live cover of Neil Young's "Mr. Soul." Days of Wine and Roses "sent shockwaves through the American underground in the early 1980s", but MTV favored a different kind of music.

Kendra Smith left the band and joined David Roback, formerly of the band Rain Parade, to form Opal. She was replaced in the Dream Syndicate by David Provost.

The Medicine Show was recorded in 1984 in San Francisco with producer Sandy Pearlman. The commercial failure of the album contributed towards the group's temporary breakup. They opened tours for R.E.M. and U2 and released the 5-song EP This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album - Live (1984), the last record to feature Karl Precoda on guitar (who soon after left to pursue a career in screenwriting) and the first appearance of bassist Mark Walton. The band left A&M after the label rejected its demo for "Slide Away", later released on the semi-official It's Too Late to Stop Now.

In 1985, Wynn and Dan Stuart of Green on Red wrote 10 songs together which were recorded with Dennis Duck, among others, and released by A&M as Danny and Dusty: The Lost Weekend.

Final recordings[edit]

After a brief hiatus and, in the words of one reviewer, having taken "a trip through the major-label meat grinder", Wynn, Duck and Walton joined with Paul B. Cutler, who had produced the group's first EP and played guitar in the proto-Goth 45 Grave, to form the final version of The Dream Syndicate. They recorded two more studio albums, Out of the Grey (1986), produced by Cutler, and Ghost Stories (1988), produced by Elliot Mazer. A live album, Live at Raji's, was recorded in 1988 (also by Mazer) before Ghost Stories but released afterward. The band ceased to exist in 1989.

Posthumous releases include 3½; The Lost Tapes 1985–1988, a collection of unreleased studio sessions, and The Day Before Wine and Roses, a live radio performance recorded just prior to the release of the band's first album.

Since then, Steve Wynn continued on as a solo artist. Mark Walton went on to play with the Continental Drifters. The band played again on September 21, 2012, at Festival BAM, in Barcelona and was slated to tour the US and Europe in 2013.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

DVD[edit]