Staff pick of the week...
This week... Jim picks The Gun Club

Artist: The Gun Club Title: The Las Vegas Story [re-issue] Label: Sympathy FTRI Format: CD Price: $13.50	Tracks on this CD:
	The Las Vegas Story
	Walkin' With the Beast
	Eternally Is Here
	The Stranger In Our Town
	My Dreams
	The Master Plan
	My Man's Gone Away
	Bad America
	Moonlight Motel
	Give Up the Sun
	Secret Fires (bonus track)

A fiery exorcism of cathartic blues-punk and spectral rock from a group of true post-punk roots-rockers, excommunicated Goths and a lead singer who was President of the official Blondie fanclub of the day? Well, it worked, and worked its bloody, hairy, hooded black magick on me…and still does 20 years later it remains one of The Gun Club's most ambitious and haunting albums, and one of my personal Top Fifty Albums Of All Time! Ringleader Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a sinister gutter shaman, malevolent punk seer, and hopped-up freak, and "The Las Vegas Story" line-up of guitarist Kid Congo Powers (The Cramps, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, etc), bassist Patricia Morrisson (The Bags, Sisters of Mercy, The Damned, etc), and rockabilly drummer Terry Graham were one of the fiercest and frightening guitar bands of the decade. A collection of songs about society's seediest underbellies, the dark alleys of the metropolises, and murderous rural dead ends. And in the tradition of true roots music The Gun Club tackles a couple standards by George and Ira Gershwin ("The Master Plan"), and Pharoah Sanders ("My Man's Gone Now"), but it's the fire and brimstone (and wine and heroin) percolating in tracks like "Walkin' With the Beast" and "My Dreams" that still light bonfires in the pagan heart of man. This re-mastered re-issue features the bonus track "Secret Fires", a beautiful ballad lushed-out with pedal steel, originally available on the original cassette version. Remember cassette tapes? Not available on cassette, sorry. But Sympathy was kind enough to offer updated
re-issues of three classic Gun Club albums on CD and warm and punchy vinyl!