Noah Counte

I'm in a mood, and this is how I'm feeding it. It's the Gun Club. If you like blues or punk, or blues and punk, you may find them to your liking.

The Gun Club came from LA punk scene in the early 80s. What they played was called punkblues, cowpunk, roots rock, and sometimes deathrock. Leader Jeffery Lee Pierce early discovered that having a band meant free drinks, a problem that would lead to his undoing, and his early death. Pierce wrote for a punk music fanzine in LA that had grown out of a reggae fanzine, so he was exposed to both genres, and traveled to Jamaica to review bands. It was this experience (probably), that led him to take punk to it's roots in a way that other bands had not.

Pierce met Kid Congo Powers (who left to play with The Cramps before the Gun Club cut a record, and later played with the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) outside a Peru Ubu show (a seminal early US punk band), and they decided to start a band. They called it The Cyclones, but the lead singer took off after one show. So they changed the name to "The Creeping Ritual," and Pierce took over vocals. The rest, as they say, is history. The band broke up a couple of times, reformed with new members - sometimes with past members - and had a constant stream of excellent and well-known producers, but never a "hit." Still, they have influenced generations of bands

Pierce experienced failing health due to a lifetime of drugs and drinking (a cautionary tale, boys and girls!), and died of complications from a stroke while visiting his father in 1996. Before his death, he did a good bit of accoustic work, played live with the Bad Seeds a number of times, and wrote an autobigraphy that was sharply critical of many of his former bandmates.

Enjoy. Notice I couldn't let this go without a cover version - today it's Credence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle" by