Considering that they first began life in California back in 1981, it is quite staggering to believe that this is The Dream Syndicate’s first-ever full tour of the UK. By way of explanation for this apparent anomaly, the band’s singer/guitarist Steve Wynn tells us that the band had spent far too much time in Norway! Joking aside, there was a 23-year hiatus to consider after The Dream Syndicate had broken up in 1989, though they did reform eleven years ago. But regardless of the reasons why, the main thing is that they are here now and what is even more, support on this 11-date tour of Scotland and England comes from Rain Parade, another band who were originally associated with the Los Angeles’ Paisley Underground scene of the 1980s and who, also like The Dream Syndicate, reunited and resumed touring in 2012.
For this tour, Rain Parade are performing as an acoustic duo, featuring one-time college roommates and the band’s co-founders, Matt Piucci and Steven Roback. Even when operating as a duo, though, it is all still there in these classic tunes. ‘I Look Around’, ‘Broken Horse’, ‘What She’s Done To Your Mind’ continue to ooze that heady cocktail of neo-psychedelia, proto-garage, and jangle pop. And when The Dream Syndicate’s drummer Dennis Duck joins Piucci and Roback for their last song, ‘No Easy Way Down’ emerges out of a squall of feedback like some spectacular expression of dissonance and melody.
Steve Wynn is already familiar with the Brudenell. He was here as recently as a fortnight ago, stood at the bar, he says, watching Luke Haines and Peter Buck play and dreaming that one day he would be on that very stage himself. Were his career in music to suddenly falter – and on tonight’s evidence alone that would seem to be extremely unlikely – an alternative vocation in stand-up comedy surely awaits.
Realising his dream, Wynn cuts a debonair figure in his open-necked shirt and purple smoking jacket. He is joined there by long-standing Dream Syndicate members Duck and bassist Mark Walton. Due to other scheduling conflicts, the band’s other regular member, guitarist Jason Victor can’t make this tour. Enter as special guest, Vicki Peterson from The Bangles, another brilliant staple from the 1980s Paisley Underground psychedelic explosion. It all makes for a veritable Paisley feast.
And they aren’t hanging around. Arriving a couple of minutes before the scheduled 9 o’clock start, straining at the leash, the four musicians plunder The Dream Syndicate’s illustrious back catalogue of 15 songs. They immediately launch into ‘Where I’ll Stand’ from last year’s Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions, confirming as they do so that this isn’t merely some misty-eyed nostalgia trip and that the band is just as relevant today as it was forty years ago.
Songs crackle and fizz, no more so than on an incendiary run from ‘That’s What You Always Say’ – initially a 1981 recording from Steve Wynn and often seen as a catalyst to the whole Paisley scene – the prophetically entitled ‘Burn’ and a couple of thunderous readings of ‘Put Some Miles On’ and ‘Now I Ride Alone’. By the time they get to ‘The Days of Wine and Roses’, complete with a little taster of Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love?’, the Brudenell is really rocking.
And yet still there is time for a four-pronged encore, a celebration of all things Paisley Underground. They return with a Bangles’ song – no, it’s not ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’, despite Mo Salah’s heroics last Sunday at Anfield. It’s ‘Hero Takes A Fall’ and replicates the 3 x 4 album of a few years back when four bands from the Paisley scene each covered the songs of others. Both Matt Piucci and Steven Roback are back on stage for the Rain Parade’s ‘You Are My Friend’ before the assembled throng pay their respects to the recently departed Tom Verlaine by lighting the touchpaper to a celebratory version of Television’s ‘Glory’.
Forget the minor inconvenience of our current cold snap, get to one of the remaining dates on this tour by any means necessary. You miss it at your peril.
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos of The Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade (Acoustic) can be found HERE
