The 5000th Best Band of All Time

The Long Ryders are quite possibly the 5000th best band of all time. They were active in the '80's as part of the Paisley Underground scene. This was a scene of bands that lovingly recreated '60's and '70's hard-rock and psychedelic music informed by punk rock. Well-written, well-performed, and energetic, these bands are mostly forgotten. The movement was a reaction to the primitivism of L.A. Hardcore. The best-known bands to come out of that scene were the Bangles and Mazzy Star (which was an offshoot of a side-project of members of the Dream Syndicate and the Rain Parade). Overall, the bands in that scene made some pretty good music, and if you're at a record store that has used vinyl, you really couldn't go wrong picking up something by the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade, the Three O'Clock, or the Long Ryders themselves. And if you're at a college radio station, go dig through the vinyl stacks, pull out those records, find the adoring reviews written by DJ's and check out the visible track burn on the platter.

The Long Ryders were led by country-rock devotee Sid Griffin. He was so heavily indebted to the Byrds, Buffalo Springfields, and the Flying Burrito Brothers that their first full-length Native Sons reproduces the cover of a Buffalo Springfield album. And what a fine album it was. "Ivory Tower" features Gene Clerk on vocals and would rank highly in the Byrds cannon if it had actually been written by them. "Run Dusty Run" is a driving number about betting on a horse race in order to have money to elope. "Never Got to Meet the Mom" is a cute song about trying to say that right thing to a liberal girl. In fact every song on the record is pretty good. Generally, it's fun and upbeat and the band members seem like good guys with good record collections.

I like this band, and I listed to their albums every couple of months. And while 5000th is awfully high on the list of all bands, if you haven't heard this band, it's not worth making a huge effort to hear them. A couple of their albums are very well-done but they are not some forgotten '80's masterpieces like Mary Margaret O'Hara's albums. The Long Ryders were not very sonically original. I'm not sure that their melding of country rock and punk is all that noteworthy given X's much less-contrived take on the same a couple years earlier. And there's little to tie them to their time as a historical piece. Even the take on a liberal girl's political checklist in "Never Got to Meet the Mom" ring false. If you're going to compare country-classicist singer-songwriters, the handful of really great songs that Ryan Adams has written wins against the Long Ryders. I guess the band has reunited and I'd see them if they were in town. But since the mid-80's, Sid Griffin has found his natural calling as a music historian.

I suppose this post makes it sound like I hate the band. But it's more my attempt to explain what a rock band is up against. If you're given the choice between hearing a Byrds album or a Long Ryders album (which you would have in a record store if there were any left), the choice is pretty straightforward. Maybe if you like seeing live music, they would have been a fun night out with friends twenty-five years ago. And it is perhaps even worse now that you can call up entire back-catalogs from iTunes or sample old videos on youtube. And unfortunately, the solution a lot of bands try to the problem or originally is quirk. As in some odd production tricks or arrangements. Like double-tracked falsettos, or cracked notes, irritating grooves, or an almost unnerving over-reliance on space and emptiness (apologies to fans of Bon Iver, Bonnie Prince Billy, Bon Animal Collective, and Bonny Grizzly Bear). Embracing your lack of originality (see garage-band revival of 2002) is not a better solution.