The Compilation
How obscure is the compilation Don’t Shoot? One measure is that this record isn’t reviewed at Trouser Press, home of the self-proclaimed Bible of Alternative Rock. This record isn’t alternative rock as much as alternative country, but Trouser Press has reviewed alternative country, including the artists collected here. These artists are, or were, indie/alternative rock performers who explored the roots of rock, including folk, country, and rockabilly. They are, in order of appearance on Don’t Shoot: Danny & Dusty, Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs, Stephen McCarthy, John Doe, Julie Christensen, Divine Horsemen, Tony Gilkyson, Jack Waterson, the Band of Blacky Ranchette, Clay Allison, and the Romans.
At this point, you may be saying, “Oh, wow!” Or you may be asking, “Who?” Whether those names signify for you will probably determine whether you’ll care about this album. These indie/alternative artists’ takes on folk, country, and rockabilly range from fine to quite good to excellent. “Just look at this album,” the music producer, publicist, executive, and journalist Bill Bentley writes in his liner notes, “as a wild fling by some outsiders who weren’t really looking to get in… but instead took a flying leap of faith by playing songs that stuck to their bones”.
Repeated plays reveal the music’s considerable charms. Nobody phones it in or throws it away; all the playing and singing sounds heartfelt. The production is uniformly clean, not electronically mucked up or glossed up as you might expect from a 1986 release.
Los Angeles connects nearly all the artists on Don’t Shoot. Just as that city had spawned one of the earliest punk scenes, so it became an indie-rock force. By 1984‒1985, when these tracks were recorded, the Los Angeles punk rockers had become indie rockers and embraced Americana, making rootsy music in their own images.
Don’t Shoot, a collection of such efforts, was released on LP by a small English label, Zippo Records. Zippo—like its parent, Demon Records, and sibling, Edsel Records—specialized in lower-key pop-rock that drew prominently from American sources. Zippo started as a London record shop that sold albums otherwise hard to find, such as by the Los Angeles indie rockers.
By 1984, the Zippo shop had spawned the record label, which released albums by those same LA rockers, and by 1986, the label was connected with many of the artists on Don’t Shoot. Released on vinyl only and never rereleased in any legitimate form, the LP now provides a window into what a handful of people on Earth at that time considered cutting-edge.
The recordings on Don’t Shoot probably won’t change your life. In the mid-1980s they might have, or at least sent you searching for musics in various directions: into the past, in that moment, or into the future. In 2024, by contrast, these recordings might not even send you in search of the artists’ other work, though in most cases you might be best off starting with their best-known music to have context for what’s here.
Given that judgment, why are we here, looking back? This music matters mostly for its place in the historical record of indie/alternative rock and alternative country. This record will be of interest to the people who cared about these artists and artists like them. Maybe you’re one of those people, or perhaps you’re curious and learning. In any case, saddle up for a tour through what these Los Angeles artists were doing at the time and what they did this one time.
The Artists
Take John Doe. If you’re unfamiliar with him, meet John Doe, best known for co-fronting (with Exene Cervenka) the Los Angeles punk band X. In 1984‒1985, X were introducing roots music into their mix and had developed an alter ego: the folk-country group the Knitters, whose lead guitarist was Dave Alvin, of the roots-rock devotees the Blasters.
Doe’s contribution to Don’t Shoot is Alvin and Doe’s “Wreckin’ Ball”, a mainly solo version of “The Call of the Wreckin’ Ball”. That rockabilly original appeared on the Knitters’ first album, Poor Little Critter on the Road, released in 1985 on the visionary indie label Slash Records and a must-hear if this kind of music speaks to you. (Also check out the first four X albums, all brilliant amalgams, and the band’s 1995 live acoustic recording, Unclogged.)
Doe’s solo “Wreckin’ Ball” recording sounds like a tight-limbed demo for the Knitters’ version. The salient feature here is the singer’s uses of the word “fuck”. The f-word had, as a joke, been almost successfully bleeped out on the Poor Little Critter on the Road version, as it might have been on a TV or radio appearance. Record-company people might have, for real, done such a thing on a different kind of record, on a different label, at a different point in history.
Consider that in 1978, Chrysalis Records bleeped out the profanities on some pressings of Jethro Tull’s Live—Bursting Out. If Jethro Tull are not safe from such censorship, no rock music is. That’s what the Knitters were getting at, as though they’d made a nice old-timey folk-country album.
Tony Gilkyson was directly connected to John Doe in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he played guitar with the Americana pioneers Lone Justice; by 1986, he played with X. Gilkyson sings his “Tear It Down” on Don’t Shoot. He’s accompanied by Lone Justice’s lead singer, Maria McKee, who brings her mellifluousness to his plain singing style.
Far quirkier are Danny & Dusty. This side project’s title “characters” were the leaders of two prominent indie-rock bands: Dan Stuart, of Green on Red, and Steve Wynn, of the Dream Syndicate. They were joined by musicians from their own bands and others, including the Long Ryders.
Green on Red started out mixing garage rock and psychedelia but took a country turn on the 1985 EP No Free Lunch. The Dream Syndicate’s debut album, 1982’s The Days of Wine and Roses, inspired much love with its psychedelic take on the Velvet Underground when that idea was still fresh (it was a different world, people).
However, their second album, 1985’s Medicine Show, garnered much distaste with its unexpected and therefore unwanted, if not unwarranted, turn toward twisted Americana via Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Television, and Bruce Springsteen. The Long Ryders rose to some prominence with an indie mix of the Byrds, Dylan, country, and garage rock—right up until they received much derision for appearing in a 1986 TV commercial for Miller beer (again, it was a different world, where “selling out” alienated purists).
Meanwhile, in 1985, the Danny & Dusty outgrowth from these groups released The Lost Weekend album. That recording delivered a ground-breaking and ear-opening mix that came to be called country-punk, cowpunk, and ultimately—once indie had been rebranded as alternative—alternative country. Accordingly, Don’t Shoot opens with Danny & Dusty’s track, which mines that same twang-laden vein. Stuart and Wynn’s “Bend in the Road”, a dialogue between Danny and Dusty, suggests Television’s Tom Verlaine, with a touch of Dylan, playing with Western mythology.
Speaking of Dylan: One can’t legitimately discuss music of this kind—indie rock or alternative country that sprang from it—without acknowledging Dylan’s presiding spirit. In more ways than this sentence can do justice to, Dylan was the god of these artists and ones like them, and Hank Williams was his prophet. Elvis Costello, whose records were released in England on Demon Records, can be seen as a patron saint. The Byrds were angels floating around, or something like that.
A Byrds acolyte, the guitarist and singer Stephen McCarthy was a member of Danny & Dusty, but his full-time gig was the Long Ryders. McCarthy’s “I’ll Get Out Somehow” isn’t played by the Long Ryders but sounds like a mellow Long Ryders track with lovely guitar (by one Dave Pearlman, founder of a recording studio charmingly named Rotund Rascal).
Jack Waterson is best known as the bassist for Green on Red. Here he tackles a mighty tune, Hank Williams’s “Never Get Out of This World Alive”, given a convincingly honky-tonk treatment. Musicians on this track include three members of the Rain Parade, a band prominent in Los Angeles’ psychedelic-pop-rock scene, the so-called Paisley Underground. They are fiddler Will Glenn, who’d also played with the Three O’Clock from that scene; guitarist Matthew Piucci; and bassist Steve Roback. Stellar pianist Chris Cacavas had played with or would eventually play with nearly all the groups represented on Don’t Shoot, including Green on Red, the Dream Syndicate, Danny & Dusty, the Divine Horsemen, and the Band of Blacky Ranchette.
The Band of Blacky Ranchette were, like Danny & Dusty, a side project. It’s the ringer on this collection, hailing not from Los Angeles but from Tucson, Arizona. Howe Gelb, of the indie-rock band Giant Sand, explored country abetted by the guitarist, singer, and songwriter Rainer Ptacek and others. On Don’t Shoot, Gelb’s “Blind Justice” presents a slower, woozier version of the honky tonk delivered by Waterson.
Making up for Blacky Ranchette’s outside-Los Angeles status, Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs enjoyed such a high profile in Los Angeles at the time that they achieved two distinctions: the Rhythm Pigs were name-checked by the Knitters, on their “soul coal”-powered version of “Rock Island Line”, by the folk-blues giant Lead Belly; and Top Jimmy was celebrated through Van Halen’s “Top Jimmy”, on the album 1984. Yes, you read that right—the song’s about this man, of whom David Lee Roth was a fan and friend.
On Don’t Stop, covering Willie Nelson’s “Hello Walls”, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs acquit themselves in soulful country style, but this slower number doesn’t display the fire of their live shows or their one album. That album, 1987’s Pigus * Drunkus * Maximus, features an almost entirely different set of musicians. Bassist Gil T. (no last name) appears in both places, but here Tony Gilkyson (who could have been called T. Gil but seems not to be Gil T.) plays guitar, and Keith Mitchell, who’d been in Green on Red, plays drums.
Mitchell appears twice more on Don’t Shoot. The first time, he plays “rice in can” percussion on a track by his main band, Clay Allison. This group also included the bassist and singer Kendra Smith, the guitarist and singer Dave Roback, and the guitarist Juan Gomez. In 1984, Clay Allison released a handful of ultra-indie psychedelic recordings, including one masterpiece, the stunning “Fell from the Sun” (which Mitchell doesn’t play on). By 1987, they’d lost Gomez, changed their name to Opal, and released the classic-to-a-select-few psychedelic LP Happy Nightmare Baby.
Here, Clay Allison performs the folk legend Elizabeth Cotten’s ultra-spare “Freight Train” with acoustic guitars and a decided lack of affect, though Smith’s voice is pretty. By 1989, by the way, Smith had left Opal. Mitchell and Roback recruited singer Hope Sandoval, and as Mazzy Star they made a name for themselves, probably the best-known name of any artist associated with this record.
On Don’t Shoot, Mitchell and Gomez reappear as members of the Romans. This indie-rock group, led by bassist and vocalist Michael Uhlenkott, had released one album in 1983 and would release a second in 1986. Here, having fun performing Uhlenkott’s “Tear It All to Pieces”, they suggest a countrified Feelies or country-fried Devo.
Julie Christensen was married to Chris D. (for Desjardins), leader of the Divine Horsemen. Produced by Chris D., Christensen’s track is a cover of “Almost Persuaded”, a massive hit in 1966 for David Houston. Written by Billy Sherrill and Glenn Sutton, this song lets Christensen bring the beauty, to the point that, if you’re going to seek out one track from Don’t Shoot, this should be the one if beauty appeals to you.
Complemented by the piano and pedal steel glories of country-rock stalwarts Pete Wasner and Greg Leisz, respectively, plus prominent acoustic guitar by someone named Bob Hawkins (this song is his only Discogs.com credit), Christensen avoids Houston’s melodrama. She hits the vocal and perhaps emotional midpoint between Maria McKee and the singer-songwriter Syd Straw (a kindred spirit to everyone here) and that’s a mighty sweet spot.
Christensen sings on the Divine Horsemen’s track, making up for her husband’s vocal shortcomings. Written by Chris D., Robyn Jameson, and the Divine Horsemen, who on this recording consist also of guitarist Matt Lee and fiddler Brantley Kearns, “Tears Fall Away” starts off roughly and builds to real power. Through sheer Dylanesque determination, Chris D. had growled and barked his way through recordings by his punk band the Flesh Eaters (see, for example, 1982’s Forever Came Today, especially the six and a half ferociously metallic minutes of “Drag My Name in the Mud”).
However, a natural-born singer he is not. You could hear his vocalizing as a kind of brutal honesty and therefore as country—indeed, country-punk—in spirit. In that sense, Chris D.’s voice represents all of Don’t Shoot and its subgenre.
