THE DREAM SYNDICATE’S HEAVENLY FEEDBACK FROM HELL!

“We played the Mudd Club in New York, and we went on at 2 or 3 in the morning. I was amazed that people were watching us that late on a Monday night. I said, ‘Wow, this is something! Don’t you people have to work tomorrow or anything?’ Afterwards, some guy came up and asked, ‘Do you realize you did the opening monologue from the Velvet Underground’s 1969?’ I said, ‘C’mon!’ He said, ‘Yep, Lou Reed says the same thing on 1969.' So, that’s right. I learned how to talk by studying Lou Reed interview albums.”

—Steve Wynn

One of 1982’s best rock albums was The Days Of Wine And Roses by the Dream Syndicate, the finest band to come out of L.A. since the Blasters, X and, possibly, the Doors. The album was an impressive debut—dramatic, scary and exhilirating— from a group of young rock ’n’ roll connoisseurs who originally wanted nothing more than to play loud covers of ’60s garage rock classics.

The Dream Syndicate formed in October, 1981, with Steve Wynn on vocals and guitar, Karl Precoda on lead guitar and Kendra Smith on bass. Wynn and Smith had met three years earlier when both were English literature majors at the Davis branch of the University of California. Wynn, a local rock critic at the time, and Smith shared similar rock interests, which led to the formation of their first group together, the Suspects. The band released one independent single before disbanding in early 1980. They briefly formed another group (the Icons) before Smith moved to L.A. Wynn played in several other bands, including Go Dee Dee, the Long Ryders and 15 Minutes (the latter released an .early version of “That’s What You Always Say”), but the pair kept in touch, and their friendship eventually led to the reason I’m writing this story.

Initially, the Syndicate was pretty much “limited” to long guitar improvisations, and things didn’t really click until Smith recruited drummer Dennis Duck, formerly of L.A.’s defunct Human Hands. “That was the turning point,’ admits Wynn. “Up until Dennis, we just jammed on songs forever and ever. Dennis gave us the confidence that we could really play, this stuff and get away with it. Three weeks later, we made the EP.” The EP—comprised of four original compositions and released on the band’s own Down There label—caught the attention of Flesh Eaters vocalist Chris D., who got the band signed to Ruby, a subsidiary of Slash Records. “The label signed us entirely on his recommendation,” says Wynn. “They never heard us, but they said, ‘Oh, Chris likes you that much? OK, we’ll take you.’ ” Chris produced the album, and the result is some of the most compelling music to come out of California since the peak of ’60s psychedelia.

Although the LP manages to transcend depression with its gloriously manic dual guitars, the subject matter is still pretty grim—broken hearts, broken dreams, sexual brutality, suicide and even a tribute to John Carpenter’s murder masterpiece, Halloween. A lot of it makes me think of Van Morrison's line from Common One: “It ain’t why, it just is”—which makes sense, as Wynn claims the line ties in with the essays of Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish philosopher from the 1800s, who greatly influenced his lyrics.

As a result, I expected the Dream Syndicate to be a group of intense manicdepressives, but nothing could be further from the truth. Wynn and Smith are both incredibly witty, artti-intellectual rock “scholars,” who joke about everything from th$ Lou Reed comparisons that’ve been thrown their way to the band’s forthcoming gig at Kansas’s Leavenworth Prison, and their main ambition in Michigan seems to be acquiring some White Castle hamburgers before they leave the state. Plus Smith has one of the greatest laughs I’ve ever heard (and if it sounds like I’m a bit smitten...well, what can I say?).

“We are far from gloomy messes,” laughs Wynn. “We don’t sit around and get depressed about human mortality or man’s inhumanity to man. We’re actually having a great time. All the dark, brutal things on the album are treated like ‘I’ve got to get this off my chest,’ so it does turn out exhilirating because it’s trying to get beyond these problems. I could write easy, escapist things about loye, but I prefer to write about ugly things—cliving into the ugliness, pulling things out, smashing them up, and coming out still ahead. I don’t think any of it is depressing. The album doesn’t end by saying: ‘Well, things are ugly, and you just have to die with it.’ It’s actually saying: ‘Well, things are ugly, but what the hell? You can pull through.’ We have a new song called ‘It’s Going To Be Alright,’ and it’s not sarcastic. People have heard it, and thought, ‘Sure, things are going to be alright, ha, ha, ha,’ But, really, things do work out. As I get older, I’m becoming more of an optimist.

“I’m basically shy, and the main reason I like playing onstage is it’s the only time all day where I get mad, intense, morose, depressed, excited and all those things. It’s the only time that I can get everything out of my system. It’s this great catharasis, even better than est or gestalt screaming!”

Much has been made of the band’s similarities to the Velvet Underground, and although a lot of it seems to be more than Coincidence, Wynn claims that the line about being “born a thousand years ago”—which he borrowed from the Velvets’ “Heroin” for “When You Smile”—was the only intentional “steal.” (He admits to copping the band’s name from Outside The Dream Syndicate, ar\ early ’70s experimental LP by Tony Conrad—it was Duck’s idea—but claims they had no idea at the time that Conrad had once played with John Cale, Angus Maclise and Lamonte Young in an avant-garde group that was also referred to as the “Dream Syndicate.”) Wynn’s vocals actually remind me more of Iggy Pop or a less depressed/suicidal Ian Curtis than they do Lou Reed, but the Velvets’ influence can be heard in the amazing melodies the band gets from feedback, atonality and minimal chord structures. On the other hand, there isn’t a band around adhering to these devices that can’t be traced back to the Velvets, and as Captain Beefheart once sang: “Everyone’s doing it, hope they don’t ruin it.” The Dream Syndicate definitely don’t ruin it.

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“Richard Meltzer came to see us perform shortly after Lester Bangs died,” says Wynn. “In fact, he’s the one who told us Lester had died. He hadn’t been out to see a rock band in half a year, but he came out to see us, so we were real flattered. After the show, he said, ‘Uh, I don’t know if you heard, but Lester Bangs just died, and I think he would have liked you guys. You’re not unlike the Velvet Underground, a band he liked a lot.’ One of my big disappointments is that Lester never had a chance to see us, and the Velvet Underground were one of the greatest bands of all-time, but there’s more to us than that. If we were just trying to be the Velvets, we could stand there and play ‘Sister Ray’ and i Heard Her Call My Name,’ and be happy with that. But we’re riot a tribute to the Velvets, and, hopefully, the more people see us, the more they’ll realize that.”

While the band members greatly admire the Velvets (“The thing is I never heard them or the Stooges until I was 18,” says Wynn), their real influences were the more popular wild guitar bands of the late ’60s/early ’70s, particularly Creedence Clearwater Revival (Wynn was a member of the CCR fan club at age 8), Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young with Crazy Horse. “If I have any religion at all, I believe in guitar,” he says. “I don’t have any affection for synthesizers or fancy production. I like guitars that sound like they’re at the end of all hell—like James Williamson on Raw Power.” Lyrically, Dylan played a major influential role—the inner groove on The Days Of Wine And Roses reads “Premotorcycle accident,” while all you have to do is play the great title track and Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” side by side to hear the similarities. The influences are evident in their superb choice of cover material (all Dream Syndicated, of .course), some of which includes Eric Clapton’s “Let It Rain,” Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” CCR’s “Born On The Bayou” and “Susie Q.” Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul,” the 13th Floor Elevators’ “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” and the greatest, most psychotic version of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London” I’ve ever heard.

Although Wynn likes the sound of the Fall and the Psychedelic Furs, he isn’t fond of most of the British “psychedelic” bands because “they’re too removed from emotion.” Individually, the band’s musical tastes span a wide range, from Judas Priest and Van Halen (Precoda, once he “suspends disbelief”) to Thelonius Monk and Ken Nordine (Duck) to Wynn’s praises for the pop singles of Hall & Oates (“It doesn’t move me or stay with me long, but I admire it as a great craft.”). All of which sounds a bit odd for a band that’s been labeled a “new music” group.

“Fuck ‘new music,’ ” says Wynn, who takes great delight in telling how the band once had a gang of heavy metal bikers dancing and playing air guitars in front of the stage. “I have no heart for ‘new music.’ We’re not a ‘new music’ band or a subversive, intellectual, Marxist, neo-psychedelic, heavy message band. We’re a rock band, and if we can move someone, that’s great. I used to like Gang Of Four, for instance, but they’ve turned too serious. If you want to start a revolution by appealing to a group of sovereign intellectuals, you’re going to have a real limp-wristed revolution. If the Gang Of Four are really serious about changing world politics, they’d better get in there and talk to the real masses they’re so in favor of. I don’t mean to pick on them. The Gang Of Four is a great band, but this whole ‘new music’ garbage has divided people into either you’re an intellectual and you like the bands the Village Voice writes about, or you’re a pop dummy who listens to Hall & Oates. And you can’t divide it like that. There are people who just want to be moved anyway they can.”

Onstage, the Dream Syndicate’s blend of heavy metal-meets-punk-meets-psychedelia has a great capacity for “moving’’ people. Wynn howls and strums, Smith undulates to the seductive beat, and Precoda (who

resembles a good-looking Joey Ramone) rolls his eyes back in his head like a man possessed, creating incredible walls of noise, changing directions several times during the course of a song, and proving that he may well be one of this decade’s great guitar heroes. The band never plays the same set twice. A lot of it is pure improvisation, and they’ve been known to jam on one song for an entire 45-minute set. Admittedly, one of their goals is to challenge the audience.

“A lot of times when we come into a set, we’ll look at the audience and wonder what we can do to antagonize or challenge them,” says Smith. “And it actually ends up better for everyone. It’s the same way you treat your friends. People you really don’t care about, you just give the superficial treatment. We could do that, but we’d rather make it more interesting and challenging.”

“It’s funny,” adds Wynn, .“because we got a review in L. A. that said we’re rude to our audiences, so we must be assholes with no regard for them. If I thought the audience were all shitheads and I hated them for seeing us, I’d play the same set every night, say the same things, play the same guitar lines, and say, ‘Thank you. God love you, man. Cleveland rocks! Rock ’n’ roll, man! We love you:’ But we don’t do that. We prefer to bring people way down with us, so we can bring them back up with us again.”

So what do they hope to achieve with their music?

“World peace,” laughs Smith.

“The best music I’ve ever heard is the music you hear when it’s real dark and you’re alone,” explains Wynn./‘Suddenly, you hear something like ‘Going Home’ by the Stones—under ybur pillow on a transistor radio—and you listen to it, and you say, ‘Yeah! That’s better than anything I’ve ever heard!’ I can’t explain it, but there’s nothing like it. It’s not like hearing a song. It’s something more than that. And I hope people hear that from us sometimes. Maybe someone will be in their bed in Toledo, and they’ll hear ‘Days Of Wine And Roses’ at 4 in the morning on a school night, and they’ll say, ‘Man, that was great!’ And every time they hear the song, they’ll think about that night they heard it under their pillow. That’s how I grew up listening to rock ’n’ rolllistening to CCR under my pillow. It’s the greatest way to discover music. Unfortunately, today you watch MTV, see a song, and then you go out and buy the single. It takes away all the passion.

“We just want people to be moved by us. It’s guts music. It’s not craft. It’s not calculation. It’s just guts.”

Who could ask for more? W