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Jan.09 Cover - The Long Ryders |
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Written by Fred Mills
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 Long May They Ryde
Twenty-One Years After Their Initial Breakup, The Long Ryders Are Saddling Up Once More
Nowadays it’s easy to forget, in this post-No Depression milieu where groups like Whiskeytown, the Jayhawks and the Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt/Wilco axis are icons routinely namedropped whenever the notion of “alt-country” is invoked, that once upon a time it seemed novel for an indie-rock band to wear boots, Levis and buckskin jackets, cite Gram Parsons as an influence, and employ mandolins, banjos and steel guitars as key components in their instrumentation. In the mid ’80s, however, that was precisely the scenario in America. Back then, if an artist came out twanging, it was more than just novel – it was borderline subversive.
Such was the case with the Long Ryders, who formed in L.A. in ’82 and during their five-year tenure operated at the forefront of the so-called “Paisley Underground” scene. Even among their peers they stood out. With the possible exception of Green On Red, the Ryders’ sound, which incorporated such influences as the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Mel Tillis, Merle Haggard, the Flamin’ Groovies, NRBQ and the Buffalo Springfield (the front cover of their first album was even an homage to the sleeve of unreleased Springfield LP Stampede), was markedly different from the psychedelia of the Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate or the pure pop of the Three O’Clock and the Bangles. You could call it proto-Americana, but it wasn’t calculated as such; the Ryders simply played the kind of music they wanted to hear, and not too many other bands were playing it at the time.
By the time the Ryders called it a day in 1987 they’d topped the college radio charts, tasted major label success in the U.K, had headlined overseas festivals in front of tens of thousands of fans and entered the households of countless American homes via a now-notorious Miller beer TV ad campaign (more on that shortly...). Yet two decades is a long time in music biz years, and in 2009 the group’s pioneering efforts in making der twang und strum palatable for punks and alterna-rockers alike are largely overlooked. Just to cite an example, one of last year’s most talked-about Americana-themed music books, Pitchfork contributor Amanda Petrusich’s It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music, contains nary a reference to the Long Ryders, a glaring omission by any measure but also unfortunately indicative of how myopic the Pitchfork generation can be sometimes (if a tree falls in a forest and no blogger is there to post the news, does it make a sound?).
The Long Ryders, however, were among the most beloved bands of my generation, pre-Internet music geeks raised on college FM and swapping live tapes as if passing along c90-sized Holy Grails. This was our music.
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