Fire of Love

by The Gun Club

Overview

The Gun Club's debut is the watermark for all post-punk roots music. This features the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce's swamped-out brand of roiling rock, swaggerific hell-bound blues, and gothic country. With Pierce's wailing high lonesome slide guitar twinned with Ward Dotson's spine-shaking riffs and the solid yet off-the-rails rhythm section of bassist Rob Ritter and drummer Terry Graham, the Gun Club burst out of L.A. in the early '80s with a bone to pick and a mountain to move -- and they accomplished both on their debut album. With awesome, stripped to the frame production by the Flesh Eaters' Chris D., Fire of Love blew away all expectations -- and with good reason. Nobody has heard music like this before or since. Pierce's songs were rooted in his land of Texas. On "Sex Beat," a razor-sharp country one-two shuffle becomes a howling wind as Pierce's wasted, half-sung half-howled vocals relate a tale of voodoo, sex, dope, and death. The song choogles like a freight train coming undone in a twister. Here Black Flag, the Sex Pistols, Son House, and the coughing, hacking rambling ghost of Hank Williams all converge in a reckless mass of seething energy and nearly evil intent. As if the opener weren't enough of a jolt, the Gun Club follow this with a careening version of House's "Preachin the Blues," full of staccato phrasing and blazing slide. But it isn't until the anthemic, opiate-addled country of "She's Like Heroin to Me" and the truly frightening punk-blues of "Ghost on the Highway" that the listener comes to grip with the awesome terror that is the Gun Club. The songs become rock & roll ciphers, erasing themselves as soon as they speak, heading off into the whirlwind of a storm that is so big, so black, and so awful one cannot meditate on anything but its power. Fire of Love may be just what the doctor ordered, but to cure or kill is anybody's guess. ~ Thom Jurek

Product Details

Release Date:	07/05/2011
Label:	Munster
UPC:	8435008825614

Tracks

1. Sex Beat
2. Preaching the Blues
3. Promise Me
4. She's Like Heroin To Me
5. For the Love of Ivy
6. Fire Spirit
7. Ghost On the Highway
8. Jack On Fire
9. Black Train
10. Cool Drink of Water
11. Good By Johnny

Album Credits

Performance Credits

The Gun Club   Primary Artist
Chris D.   Vocals (Background),Vocals (Background)
Terry Graham   Drums
Jeffrey Lee Pierce   Guitar,Vocals,Slide Guitar,Vocals (Background)
Tito Larriva   Violin
Ward Dotson   Guitar,Vocals,Slide Guitar,Vocals (Background)
Rob Ritter   Bass
Tito Larnia   Violin
Lois Graham   Vocals,Vocals (Background)

Technical Credits

Traditional   Composer
Kid Congo Powers   Composer
Chris D.   Producer,Remixing,Photography,Cover Design,Producer
Chris Stein   Engineer
Pat Burnette   Engineer
Vitus Matare   Engineer,Producer
Jeffrey Lee Pierce   Arranger,Composer,Remixing
Tito Larriva   Producer,Remixing,Remastering
Tommy Johnson   Composer
David Nolte   Digital Transfers
Robert Johnson   Composer
Jonny Bell   Remixing,Audio Restoration
Ed Clover   Photography
Hermann Deutsch   Photography
Judith Bell   Drawing,Illustrations
Pat Burnett   Engineer
Noah Shark   Engineer
Ed Colver   Photography
W.B. Seabrook   Photography