Rolling Stone journalist and Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad was inspired to write his acclaimed chronicle of 1980s indie rock, Our Band Could Be Your Life, after watching a rock ‘n’ roll TV miniseries which, in its discussion of punk rock, went from the Ramones, to Talking Heads, and then leapt straight onto Nirvana, overlooking a decade’s worth of underground music. So what was that TV series guilty of cutting out?
Our Band Could Be Your Life profiled 13 bands that were highly influential on 1990s grunge and alternative rock, with heavy emphasis on the hardcore punk scenes at SST Records and Dischord Records, and noise rock recorded by the Chicago-based Touch & Go Records. The new Cherry Red Records box set This Can’t Be Today: A Trip Through the US Psychedelic Underground 1977-88 showcases a gentler side of 1980s American indie rock, the so-called Paisley Underground in California, which was an inspiration for one of the decade’s biggest stars, Prince.
As is typical for such box sets, the primary audience will be listeners who were and are fans of the music, who can enjoy listening to classic songs and rarities from the likes of the Bangles, the Dream Syndicate, Green on Red, and the Long Ryders, as well as quibbling with a couple of its inclusions and omissions. For listeners unfamiliar with the scene, what can they expect to hear?
The Paisley Underground, which took its name from the psychedelic Paisley pattern, fused the spirit of punk rock and a sound which drew broadly from 1960s rock. The logic of punk rock has always been about as fuzzy as a Grateful Dead guitar solo. The Clash song “1977” imagined a musical landscape with “no Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones” and promoted the notion that the titular year was pop music’s year zero. Still, it didn’t take long for legacy artists to be readmitted into the modern rock canon.
The American garage bands from the Nuggets albums, German experimental rock acts such as Can and Neu!, and British glam rock bands like Roxy Music and T. Rex have all been cast as proto-punk, alongside the Stooges and the Velvet Underground. According to the This Can’t Be Today booklet, the Paisley Underground blended their influences with the baroque pop of Love, the roots rock of the Byrds, and an outlook inspired by outsider figures from the 1960s counterculture, such as Skip Spence of Moby Grape.
What the 1980s underground continued to defy was the jaded, album-oriented rock of the 1970s, a period in which the mainstream music industry had muzzled the rebellious rockers of the counterculture and made their music respectable for mass consumption. According to the box set liner notes, emblematic records for grown-up record buyers were the likes of Who’s Next, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Rumours. For musical kids coming of age in the latter half of the decade, listening to Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd or “I Can See For Miles” instead of “Baba O’Riley” was making a political statement.
This attitude might have perplexed Pete Townshend, who two years after Who’s Next wrote Quadrophenia, an album dedicated to the 1960s British mod youth movement. It might also have ruffled Roger Waters, who followed the success of Dark Side by excoriating his music industry bedfellows with weird and wonderful songs like Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar. Fleetwood Mac‘s original incarnation as a British blues-rock band led by guitarist Peter Green, another tragic counterculture figure, remained overlooked as blues-rock failed to overcome its image as testosterone-fuelled dinosaur rock.
As the pop music of the 2020s continues its retrofuturistic fascination with the sounds and fashions of the 1980s, there is a golden opportunity to become acquainted with the underground music of the time. Listeners who are unaware of the 2000s garage rock revival may be completely unfamiliar with the vibe of 1960s pop that has inspired multiple stylistic revivals, although the weakest moments on this box set evoke the nostalgic excesses of 1990s Britpop, or worse, the intentional kitsch of the Austin Powers soundtracks.
No synthesizers were used on the three discs of This Can’t Be Yesterday. While no snares were gated in the making of this music, the drum sounds are typically subjected to a lot of reverb, sometimes overwhelming the ringing guitars, swirling organs, and occasional droning sitars. Discs One and Two are filled with angsty, energetic power-pop, whilst Disc Three takes a more wistful turn – “Regenisraen” by Game Theory is the highlight of the set, featuring gorgeously florid folk-rock guitar playing that is matched by swooning Beach Boys vocal harmonies.
Listening to this set makes being a 1980s indie rock fan sound quite exhausting, keeping track of what was either cool or sucked on any given day. On the other hand, tribalism provided a powerful identity. It was probably a very fun way to blow off some steam in an era when FM radio and MTV were recognised as the true musical gatekeepers, not the hipsters staffing the local independent record store. This Can’t Be Today showcases one facet of the richness of 1980s pop music and, by extension, the 1960s pop music that inspired it.