The Long Ryders: "Looking for Lewis and Clark"

9 October 1985

"Yee haw! Git on down thar! If you've ever listened to Andy "here's a rare deleted import by legendary one-legged bluesman Blind 'Quite Angry' Joe Scroggins recorded on a wax cylinder in 1872 shortly before he was taken into slavery eee bah goom it's reet gradely" Kershaw's Radio 1 show, you'll know that twangy waxings by long-haired "geetar-totin" cowboy bands are rather "hip". 99% of them are fantastically depressing and horrible, but this one's absolutely brilliant."

— Vici MacDonald

It was lunchtime and I was sitting private meeting room that we'd reserved. It was just my second day as bassist for Stereotype and I was being introduced to my bandmates, many of whom I would never end up jamming with. I think everyone knew me or knew of me and I knew all of them but there was a nice formality about the whole thing. All we had to do was wait for Jeff, Stereotype's singer, drummer (though he never got round to acquiring a drum kit which, needless to say, held us back somewhat) and leader who was late. Ethan had only just (unilaterally, or so I thought at the time) let me into the band and it was only right that we should all hash out just what we were going to do. We hadn't the faintest idea about how to actually go about making great records but we had all cottoned on to a revolutionary idea that was sure to make us stand out from every other band that ever existed: we were going to play almost every genre of music. Genius. The door opened.

"Okay," Jeff swaggered in. He had probably been trying to chat up a girl just before coming in but now he was all business. "No country and no rap."

Everyone nodded. No country, no rap. You weren't going to hear any arguments from me (I did quickly chime in with a "and no jazz" which I now find funny considering how much I like it) particularly when it came to the former. Rap was too current and a diverse to be discounted completely even if none of us wanted to have anything to do with playing it. I liked The Dream Warriors, Urban Dance Squad and Monie Love but there was also plenty I disliked. Truthfully, the only thing I really couldn't stand about hip hop was my white classmates who swore by it, made idiotic yet condescending proclamations ("rap has a message") and decked themselves out in LA Raider caps and Chicago White Sox jackets. I knew nothing of cultural appropriation but I did know that these people sucked.

Country music, however, was the real enemy. While many complained (and still do) that it was too depressing that was never a concern of mine — growing up with Morrissey and The Cure and even my beloved Pet Shops (they didn't smile in pictures, you know), I was hardly in any position to critique anyone else listening to sorrowful music. No, it just sounded awful. Weedy, corny, cliched and a parody of the culture it was supposed to represent. My great aunt and uncle were farmers in southern Alberta and they were nothing like the people portrayed in country songs, even though they loved listening to it. And that was the other thing: it was for old people. We all loved The Beatles and we were all into a variety of acts from the sixties and seventies but country music preceded all of them, even current stars like Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood were relics because only the old folk (or, worse, very dull, very sad youths) seemed to like them. Hating country and western music is probably a necessary stage in a young person's musical development. That said, what would have become of Stereotype had we been exposed to something like The Long Ryders at around this time?

Vici MacDonald is no fan of country music — as the above quote makes very clear — but one needn't be a devotee of the Nashville sound to dig The Long Ryders. If anything, it's best if you don't. These guys weren't doing a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (standard rock group who suddenly become country purists), rather they filtered their love of Gram Parsons records through their debt to sixties rock and seventies punk. Such is their devotion to the former Byrd/Flying Burrito Brother that they name drop him in "Looking for Lewis and Clark". Imagining that the "late Tim Hardin" has ascended to heaven, they contemplate a possible conversation between the old folkie and Parsons and wonder if they might have discussed The Long Ryders. (Did Hardin know them himself? He had already been dead for nearly five years by the autumn of 1985 but whatever, I'll go along with it) The song's pounding energy is far more in line with the rock side of their sound and it's hard to imagine someone like Randy Travis singing about "Mubute anthems in Johannesburg" or "diplomats hawking secrets". One of the joys of the Paisley Underground was that it was maybe the first time there was an equivalent to British art school pop stars in the US: young musicians from small towns and often with working class roots who had read some books in university and were fusing down home music with a liberal education.

So, just what does this song mean anyway? Well, I have no idea and, judging by lines like "In a world of love where they burn like Nero / You write a check and you add a zero", I'm not overly sure they know either. But what does it tell you about the state of the world that they must go about searching for people to do the exploring? Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took a lengthy and arduous journey across the Continental Divide but who was there to do likewise nearly two centuries later? Was there anything left to explore? What else was left to do in rock or country music except just variations on everything that came before? For people who name drop themselves in their own song, The Long Ryders are remarkably modest in their aspirations. Still, even if they never amounted to anything more than rehashing what came before with their own spin on it then their recorded output cannot be considered anything else than a success.

Country rock is often seen as a gateway to an appreciation of proper country and western music but what if country music fans were able to better appreciate indie rock through it too? It's possible but the influence does tend to travel in one direction. It isn't likely, however, that MacDonald began to discover Buck Owens and Merle Haggard as a result of this record. As for Stereotype, we, too, wouldn't have gone seeking out The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo — much less Hank Williams' 40 Greatest Hits —  but at least we might have found trace elements on the country periphery to admire, much as I did with Daisy Age hip hop. And at least there weren't any obnoxious classmates claiming that "country has a message" to alienate me further.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Arcadia: "Election Day"

Lardo Le Bon and Nick "Nick" Rhodes (and Ken Taylor on drums) weren't about to let that good looking Taylor and that not-quite-so-dishy Taylor steal all the headlines with The Power Station. Nope, they went off and dyed their hair black and got all artsy and formed Arcadia. MacDonald dismisses this as merely further evidence of the coming dumper for the Duranies and their various spin-offs (something they would manage to stave off until 1990) but, while "Election Day" is a lesser work, the Arcadia project may have been valuable for retrenchment. A stylish, soulful side would eventually be explored to some success — which, incidentally, MacDonald won't be quite as harsh on — and this is probably the first evidence of it. Not a bad record and I doubt the seminal Duran five piece could have made anything more of it but it doesn't quite work. Still, it's a welcome reminder that Le Bon aspired to intellectualism: he seldom pulled it off but it was worth a try.