{"id":386,"date":"2011-01-02T22:42:04","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T22:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicurbanism\/?p=386"},"modified":"2012-11-11T05:12:57","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T05:12:57","slug":"great-moments-in-selling-out-the-paisley-underground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/2011\/01\/02\/great-moments-in-selling-out-the-paisley-underground\/","title":{"rendered":"great moments in selling out: the Paisley Underground"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first heard about the so-called Paisley Underground in 1985. Sitting in the office of a drivers ed classroom, I flipped through a copy of People magazine, where I read a feature about the Los Angeles scene of 60s garage, country-rock and pop revivalists, and gawked at photos of groovy kids in paisley shirts and Beatle boots. MTV\u2019s general coverage of college radio music was spotty back then, confined mostly to \u201cIRS: The Cutting Edge\u201d (hosted by Peter Zaremba), while interviews or record reviews of the Paisley Underground had to compete with cover stories of Sting or Keith Richards in the pages of Spin Magazine. So, I accessed these bands directly via the record store and traded cassettes: Green On Red, the Long Ryders, the Rain Parade, the Three O\u2019Clock, True West, Plasticland, Plan 9, the Fleshtones, the Fuzztones\u2026 (Yes, for those who remember, the radius from Los Angeles extendspretty far<\/em>\u00a0as that list goes on.)\u00a0Being an impressionable 16 year old at the time, I fell pretty hard for a scene that flourished in my imagination.<\/p>\n

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The Paisley Underground, I\u2019d go so far to say, was a contributing factor to my decision to attend UCLA the next year. While visiting the campus, a chance opportunity to catch a free lunchtime concert on campus (the Textones, I believe it was) led me to believe I\u2019d be seeing these bands regularly, so I enrolled with record collection and paisley shirt in tow. However, by the fall of 1986 this \u201cscene,\u201d if it ever existed as coherently as it was publicized, was over. The Dream Syndicate (post-Karl Precoda) was still actively gigging, and I think Long Ryders played one more gig at the Roxy for their second major-label album, but otherwise that was it. The Rain Parade and the Three O\u2019Clock were defunct; Green On Red had moved away (to Europe?); I never really cared about the Bangles; and the rest, who knows? Diving into college radio, I moved on and never really looked back. Still, to this day I remain deeply fond of the Paisley Underground and its diaspora, notably the Rain Parade offshoots (Opal, Mazzy Star, Kendra Smith indirectly) and the Davis CA bands (also never seen in concert: Game Theory, Thin White Rope).<\/p>\n

What happened to the Paisley Underground? Certainly those bands were linked together by a large dose of hype, only to join the legions of mostly forgotten underground\/college radio\/\u201calternative\u201d groups and performers who came before Lollapalooza and Nirvana. But this scene\u2019s present obscurity is instructive. I won\u2019t focus on their musical or aesthetic appeal today, but I posit these bands were sincere in their creative intent and respectful of, if not totally gassed to be participating in, the cultural ripple of roots\/retro Americana created by the splash R.E.M. was making. And, let\u2019s not forget, they embodied an early\u00a0local<\/em>\u00a0movement too, at a time when localism would resonate in so-called alternative music with increasing force: Athens, Minneapolis, Austin, Seattle.<\/p>\n