{"id":23343,"date":"2022-07-10T05:30:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-10T09:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23343"},"modified":"2022-07-08T10:53:34","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T14:53:34","slug":"album-review-the-gun-club-the-las-vegas-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/10\/album-review-the-gun-club-the-las-vegas-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Gun Club — The Las Vegas Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Blixa Sounds\u2019 campaign of reissues of The Gun Club\u2019s catalog continues with a new, expanded version of the group’s third album, 1984\u2019s The Las Vegas Story<\/i>. Continuing with the moody, atmospheric punk aesthetic of their previous work, The Las Vegas Story<\/i> may well be the group\u2019s high water mark. While 1981\u2019s Fire of Love<\/em><\/a> was a compelling and accessible work, to my ears the band took a step backward for Miami<\/em><\/a>, their second release. But Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his band mates seem to have reconciled their musical impulses for The Las Vegas Story<\/em>. The production strikes the perfect balance between polish and scuzz, and Pierces\u2019 songwriting is at its sharpest.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to cede some of the credit for the album’s success to the return of guitarist Kid Congo Powers, who was a founding member but quit before the first record was made. But the truth is more likely that it\u2019s the chemistry of all involved that results in this highly successful outing. The music portended a bright \u2013 and potentially commercially successful \u2013 future for the Gun Club.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s music is often given the blues label, and while there\u2019s an undercurrent of that genre here, The Las Vegas Story<\/i> doesn\u2019t limit itself to the I-IV-V blues idiom; the songs have much more in common with alternative\/college rock of the era.<\/p>\n

Blixa\u2019s reissue appends a ten-song live set recorded in August 1984 at Scorgie\u2019s in Rochester, NY, mere weeks after the release of The Las Vegas Story<\/i>. Sadly, the band splintered not long after that gig, breaking up in January 1985. They\u2019d re-form within two years, and continue for nearly a decade, finally capitalizing (at least to some extent) upon the critical acclaim they had earned.<\/p>\n

The 2022 expanded release also includes a \u201chome movie\u201d on DVD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blixa Sounds\u2019 campaign of reissues of The Gun Club\u2019s catalog continues with a new, expanded version of the group’s third album, 1984\u2019s The Las Vegas Story. Continuing with the moody, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,53,59,62,64,65],"tags":[4409],"class_list":["post-23343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-post-punk","category-punk","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-the-gun-club","cat-9-id","cat-53-id","cat-59-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23345,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23343\/revisions\/23345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}