the article i have been waiting for.
Was it that many years ago...yes it was as the loss of hair and firm teeth confirm. Saw the Parade OPEN for a rotten local band in flint, MI called the strolling bones and the 4 or five songs they played before they were kicked off the stage were perfect..Yeah I loved all of these bands and somehow have original vinyl of them all..try not to listen to them much cause I don't want to wear them out but yeah, yeah, yeah...

This is great! I like how you don't go for the obvious songs, either. I'd've been sorely tempted to choose "You Are My Friend" by Rain Parade. Beautiful, sublime, sad song.

If you're bringing in the Bangles, can I mention Wednesday Week? Completely lost to history, it seems, but they had good songs and sharp Bangles-y harmonies. Not very paisley, but a good listen.

Arrive without Travlling is a great album, unfortunately I only have it on cassette. Great playlist.

Another cool thing about that P.U. scene
was that it helped to fuel a backlash of
more "Garage Punk" oriented 60's styled
bands around L.A. such as The Pandoras,
The Unclaimed,etc that were into a more
fuzzed out,raunchy take on the 1960's
sound.

To echo a previous comment - the article I've been waiting for. This was the stuff I listened to while the mainstream was listening to something else in the 80's. Glad to see someone remembers that fine Opal album, and Green On Red's great lost Gravity Talks. Rain Parade had a beautifully recorded live in Tokyo where they did Green On Red's Cheap Wine, Television's Aint That Nothin', and a live version of their own Prisoners that'll send chills up your spine.

Howcum all this doesn't get a decent CD release? I've been looking for Dream Syndicate's Medicine Show for years.

BTW, a friend of mine saw Steve Wynn fron DS a few years back, and his encore (or so he claims) was The Days of Wine & Roses album from start to finish. Would've loved to have been there.

Forgot - thanks for giving me some excellent reading today - a well written overview.

Thanks everyone. Like Vern, this was exactly what I listened to most when it was new; Rain Parade, Bangles, Long Ryders, Dream Syndicate are permanently etched into my brain.

Why indeed is it so hard to get this stuff on CD? I've been thirsty for Crashing Dream, the Rain Parade's Island album, never on CD; I found half on p2p lovingly converted to mp3 from vinyl by a devoted fan.

Another good one is by Matt Piucci of Rain Parade plus a member of the Windbreakers (I think?) called Gone Fishin' on Enigma in 1986.

Sidebar on Rain Parade: in the 90's, Piucci, S. Roback, and one other recorded together as Viva Saturn. I can never find their stuff, either.

Rhino records? Sundazed? Here's a market just waiting to be tapped...

I listened to a lot back then, but in unearthing my old cassettes, I found lost treasures. Good noews is, the Three O'Clock's "Arrive Without Travelling" is available from Amazon (not from iTunes, sadly). I also loved the Bangles, and still do. While the Paisley Underground centered around California, I think the Smithereens deserve a mention here.

To my mind, the '80's had a huge variety of great music, most of it unnoticed on a large scale and now unremembered. I still listen to newer stuff, but I often find more pleasure in the older, less well known stuff.

To be truthful, I have more music than one man could listen to, it doesn't stop me from buying more.

While it's nice to see Thin White Rope get their props, I have to take issue with your inclusion of them (and True West and Game Theory, too) in the Paisley Underground. I'm not usually a stickler for genre labels, but the sound coming out of Davis at the time was much darker in tone than most of the P.U. bands.

I spent the 80's in Sacramento. For what it's worth, Davis is light-years away from either SF or LA, spiritually speaking, although it's a relatively quick two hour drive to the Bay Area.

Crashing Dream? I think the closest you'll get is a CD called Demolition which was all the demos from before Crashing Dream. The demos were pretty edgy compared to the final product. It included a live version of Crashing Dream - a great lost song, as well as about 10 extra tunes. I snapped up the only copy I've ever seen, on a label I'm not familiar with - I think it's called 060 Records.

This post reminds me of 2 great sites, one titled "Lost Bands of the New Wave Era" and the other is the Boston Rock and Roll Museum, lots of lost treasures there.

not sure where you want to put the davis bands of the time but certainly those aforementioned were much closer in spirit to the p u of s f and l a. more importantly they were friends. and there was a lot of cross-cultural stuff happening in davis at the time. house parties, the coffee house....

unfortunately the davis noise ordinance all but did away with anything remotely underground then and its oppression continues.

Thanks for the input, T

I included a couple of Davis bands on this list, but I find the fans of the Davis bands get irritated to see them lumped together with paisley underground.

Actually, you've made me curious to see if I can put something together on the 80's Davis scene; it really was active and had a culture like you mention, but I've seen very little about it.

I'll also have to do some hunting for tunes; a lot of Davis bands are hard to find now...

Just wanted to pass along the word that singer Gavin Blair, guitarist Richard McGrath, and myself -- AKA True West -- will be on stage together for the first time in 21 years when we play at the International Pop Overthrow festival (IPO) in Seattle on 26 August at The Crocodile.