Divine Horsemen

Chris D from the early LA punk group The Flesh Eaters went on to perform in the group Divine Horseman.

This is another classic example of taking a more traditional folk/country style of music and fusing it with punk rock, along the lines of Tex And The Horseheads and The Gun Club.

Indeed on the first album, which tends to feature guest musicians rather than a regular line-up, Jeffery Lee Pierce (Gun Club) and Texacala Jones (Tex & The Horseheads) are both present as well as other famous names like Kid Congo Powers (Cramps, Gun Club), John Doe (X) and Dave Alvin (Blasters).

At times this also reminds me a bit of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, with a kind of Southern Gothic atmosphere to the music and lyrics.

Time Stands Still

01. When The Rain Comes Down
02. Lilly White Hands
03. Past All Dishonor
04. Frankie Silver
05. Sanctuary
06. Heat From The Sun
07. Little Sister
08. Hell’s Belle
09. Time Stands Still

Devil’s River

01. My Sin
02. Sapphire
03. Devil’s River
04. He Rode Right Into Town
05. Come Into This Place
06. Tenderest Kiss
07. Love Call
08. Too Young To Die
09. It Doesn’t Matter
10. Middle Of The Night

Tex & The Horseheads

Tex & The Horseheads

01. Oh Mother  02. Lock Me Up  03. Short Train  04. Guitar Obsession  05. Chicken Bounty Hunters  06. Clean The Dirt  07. Border Town  09. Big Boss Man

Coming from Los Angeles, Tex & The Horseheads are another example of country/blues punk music. Fronted by the husky voiced and exotic looking Texacala Jones, they had a Jack Daniels drinking/ Marlboro smoking sort of image.

This is their first album that came out on Bemisbrain Records. They also had one other studio album – Life’s So Cool – and a live album that was recorded in the Netherlands.

I don’t know much else about the group, apart from that some of the members also played with Rik L Rik, Weirdoes and Funeral.

Although they have a more typical punk rock sound, here are the two Funeral EPs – Waiting For The Bomb Blast and Funeral.

 

Funeral x 2 EPs

01. Waiting For The Bomb Blast  02. Politicians Are Sick  03. Plastic God  04. Ant Trap  05. Will To Live  06. Outer Edge  07. Darkness On Your Doorstep  08. Bloody Hands

When in Leeds…

The first time I travelled to see a group outside my immediate hometown area was in 1989 when I went to see The Vandals at The Duchess Of York in Leeds. This also happened to be the first show organised by the gig promoters Flame In Hand – the same people behind Crackle record label and mail order.

I knew of the Vandals from seeing them on the movie Suburbia and I had probably managed to get myself a copy of When In Rome… by this point, so I was expecting a pretty exciting punk show – what I wasn’t expecting was a load of Hell’s Angels to turn up and start beating the crap out of people and even set some guy’s hair on fire.

Despite this traumatic initiation, I soon became a regular attendee of shows at the Duchess (most of them organised by Flame In Hand) and Leeds in general, especially when I went to University there a few years later.

It was also shortly after this show that I bought the new Vandals album Slippery When Ill – once again I was expecting some exciting punk rock and once again I was in for a shock, it was cow punk!

I’d never heard anything like this before. Despite my initial disappointment this album quickly grew on me, partly because of the humour running through all the songs, but also because I found I really liked the mixing of punk and country as it really seemed to work. I’d always had a bit of a soft spot for my Dad’s Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, etc records and the added element of punk really appealed.

In retrospect, of course, I can see there were lots of groups throughout the eighties that had been taking punk and mixing it with more traditional types of music – especially genres that maybe had a tradition of protest or support of the outsider/underdog, such as folk and blues as well as country. The Pogues were already a popular group at this time and then of course there were others like Gun Club, Blood On The Saddle, Tex & The Horseheads, Blyth Power – all groups which I went on to discover and love.

Slippery When Ill

01. Clowns Are Experts(At Making Us Laugh) 02. Susanville 03. Desert Woman 04. In America 05. Elvis Decanter 06. Goop All Over The Phone(Pleasant All Over The Bill) 07. Shi’ite Punk 08. Gator Hide 09. Long Hair Queer 10. (Illa Zilla) Lady Killa