Live Oak Blues What happens.

Records That Changed Me

Back in the sweet, pre-reality days of college, within the insular music crowd I was an honorary member of, records got passed around like the cultural totems they are. I learned about “Double Nickels On The Dime” this way, ditto “Berlin.” The record that left a mark more indelible than any of the others was The Gun Club’s “Fire Of Love.” I could hold forth on why this is an important record, that it was the first to crossbreed punk with the blues, that it quickly achieved that state of perpetual newness that all great records have, but really all one needs to know is that it is just as dangerous a record as the day it was released.

There is something feral and unstable about Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s vocals (his lyrics, too, for that matter), and from the opening jugga, jugga of “Sex Beat” to the razor-blade slide of “Preaching The Blues” to the overdriven treble of “She’s Like Heroin To Me,” the guitars are just as crazed and unpredictable. Check out the record’s centerpiece, “For The Love Of Ivy,” a 5:37 trip inside a mind flying back and forth over the edge of madness, musically and lyrically.  Stopping, starting, whispering, screaming. You can almost see someone looking at the wreck his life has become in the mirror and claiming, almost nonchalantly, “you look just like an Elvis from hell” before launching into manic exploration of the limits of musical dynamics.

I walked in the studio a few weeks ago to do my internet radio show, and the DJ who has the show ahead of mine had “Ivy” on the turntable. By my calculations, he was born a good six years after “Fire Of Love” came out. He looked at me, many years his senior, and we both said “hell yeah” at the same time. Anyone who has had this record tattooed on their consciousness knows what that recognition means. “Fire Of Love” is nothing less than a monument. That you cannot find it on the “Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time” is yet another reason why that list is useless.