The Dream Syndicate defied all expectations with their major label debut. Forty years later, Medicine Show remains as unsettling as ever.
The stark painting by Mac James featured on the cover of The Dream Syndicate’s Medicine Show (1984) is of an abstract figure in medium close-up, rounded head and shoulders taking up the entirety of the sleeve. The figure is sloppily outlined and filled in black, the face a swirl of white and gray scratches and marks. On first glance, the earth tone of the beige sleeve and imprecise figure may suggest some heartland rock dollar-bin filler. But the longer you look at it, the more unsettling it becomes. All at once it evokes a weathered scarecrow, a face bound in barbed wire, or even a body given over to rot. It’s impossible to shake the sense of corrosion produced by the image, especially if you’re staring at it while listening to the record. The greatest tension on the album is between each narrator’s spiritual and moral decay, and the expressionist album cover provides the perfect counterpart; there’s more to grasp than initial impressions suggest. Medicine Show was the band’s sophomore record and first release on a major label, and the album art immediately indicates their disregard of critical expectations. They followed their beloved debut, a 45-minute exercise in the catharsis of impulse over musical restraint, with an album so devoid of joy or release that it feels confrontational by its very existence.
Critical and popular consensus is split regarding Medicine Show. The more commonly held opinion reads that the band had lost its touch and delivered a safe and boring commercial rock record. The album’s defenders claim that it’s a lost masterpiece and an underrated highlight of their catalog, one offering a far darker and more revealing side of the band. The Dream Syndicate arrived in the early-1980s as the Los Angeles punk scene was mutating. Founding members Steve Wynn, Karl Precoda, Kendra Smith, and Dennis Duck went quickly from first rehearsals and demos to finding themselves at the forefront of America’s early indie rock scene with their 1982 debut record, The Days of Wine and Roses. Between frontman Wynn’s growing talents and aspirations and the band’s collective sense of musical restlessness, conflicts soon arose when it came time to follow up on their early success. What I wouldn’t argue is that Medicine Show has been misunderstood; from every indication I can find, it was precisely the album that the band was prepared to make at the time. Released in May of 1984, Medicine Show at 40 reveals an album less contentious than it once was, but forever worthy of reappraisal.
LA’s Paisley Underground scene was a loose-knit, critic-coined grouping of bands mining the disparate sounds of the city’s psychedelic ’60s heyday. The slipperiness of the very category itself is why the term is essentially useless in 2024 — and yet it has become the de facto descriptor applied to a grouping of bands as different as Green on Red (haunting southwestern psychedelia turned besotted proto-alt-country), Thin White Rope (jagged and desolate Can-inspired desert rock), and even The Bangles. The Dream Syndicate stood out among their peers for their shit-stirring precariousness. Legends abound of early gigs devolving into feedback-drenched cacophonies, and throughout their early run they seemed the only Paisley band indebted to the wilder sounds of punk rock proper.1
Following a self-titled EP on Wynn’s own Down There Records, The Days of Wine and Roses caught an incredible amount of buzz, dominated college radio, and made a mark on European indie charts. Treading ground that had yet to be proven in the pre-marketable phase of so-called alternative music, Wine and Roses is a marvel of post-punk LA rock. Coming out on the Slash label and produced by Chris D. (whose own incredible band The Flesh Eaters were one of the most inspiring and distressing of that city’s amorphous punk groups) it was the kind of forward-looking record that was guided yet not defined by its influences. Before the band had a chance to plan its next moves, founding bassist Kendra Smith left the group abruptly after their first US tour, leaving them scrambling to find a replacement.2 Her departure coincided with the band’s biggest opportunity yet, when they were asked to open for U2 on every date of their nationwide tour. Wynn and the rest of the group quickly consulted acquaintance Dave Provost, who was added to the band without even a rehearsal. He joined them on the road after a brief bit of coaching by Smith.
The aftermath of Wine and Roses’ release saw the band grow beyond the scope of what tiny independent label Slash could handle. The group was soon pursued by a host of major labels, an early installment in the ’80s sweepstakes that saw underground acts like Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, and even Boston’s underrated Big Dipper courted by mainstream outlets. The band ultimately decided to sign with A&M records. After honing their chops on tour before larger audiences, they entered the studio with veteran producer Sandy Pearlman, best known for his work with Blue Öyster Cult, which appealed to the more classic rock-oriented Precoda, but approved by Wynn for his production for The Dictators and The Clash. Pearlman’s production style was typical of major label procedures, with months blocked off at a top-of-the-line studio. No longer working graveyard shift, the band spent two weeks recording basic tracks, with Pearlman requiring several takes and editing together composite versions from these. So meticulous was Pearlman’s process that Provost often found himself called back after two weeks of bass overdubs to fix just a single note. For his part, Precoda took six weeks to record his guitar parts, meshing well with Pearlman and seizing the opportunity to experiment and take his time in the studio.
This lack of spontaneity and stiflingly controlled environment grated at Wynn, particularly after recording Wine and Roses in three overnight sessions with Chris D. Most trying were the six weeks spent recording vocal takes for the album’s eight songs, which led to a great deal of tension between Wynn and the producer, as well as his lead guitarist. In Pearlman’s eyes, the months of recording were typical of the major label world, and Wynn’s combative attitude was a hindrance to the band’s potential for success. Though he ultimately realized that the meticulous retracking did contribute to the soul-baring vocal takes that feature in several songs, Wynn doesn’t remember the process fondly: “For those six months, I became a bad guy. Not a cruel guy, not a malicious guy, but just a dark, self-obsessed, hard-drinking guy going to bad places… All of your confidence goes away.” The unique results yielded by the session are perhaps best exemplified on “Armed with an Empty Gun,” where Wynn doesn’t so much sing lines like “my head pounded with fever” as he rasps them, exhausted and worn to his limit. Likewise, the sociopathic playboy of “John Coltrane Stereo Blues” finds a more chilling expression on the album version, standing in direct contrast to the more traditionally sung renditions available on live recordings from this time period.
Regarding the more commercial production of the album, which resulted in accusations that the group had sold out, there’s a more complicated issue at play. From lyrics directly copping phrases from Lou Reed to the band’s willing admiration of the groups that inspired them, there was nothing coy about the initial era of the band. In Wynn’s own words, the approach to Medicine Show was “less of the Velvets and more Neil Young,” a phrase commonly used as a dig against the more reined-in sound of their sophomore release. Wynn and the other members were perfectly willing to embrace ’70s hard rock in their music, most evident on the album’s second track, “Daddy’s Girl,” which affects a sort of barroom boogie rock that feels hopelessly anachronistic against the band’s underground credentials. Despite his reputation for feedback-drenched guitar displays, this more traditional foundation was Precoda’s aspiration all along. Wynn recognized the contradictions of the album: Precoda made a perfectly recorded showing of his talents, whereas Wynn’s lyrical contributions were dark and unsettling. The underlying tensions in the band’s motivations were likely bound to surface at some point, but the major label recording experience exacerbated these rifts and showed the tumultuous qualities that made their early records and performances so thrilling. Ultimately, this all led to Precoda’s departure from the band following Medicine Show.
While the songs on Medicine Show are more accessible in this form, one can’t deny the emotional and thematic complexity that emerges from the album’s lyrics. It is often hinted at or derided, but never necessarily accounted for, that Wynn is a better lyricist and songwriter than he is a vocalist. I’d argue that he leans into his vocal limitations, wringing the maximum impact from the words he’s penned. As a result, his lyrics can drip with venom, quaver with desperation, or even carry the weariness of self-loathing nihilism. All these elements come to the fore in the album’s strongest trio of songs, the dirgelike tracks that comprise its middle portion.
“Armed with an Empty Gun” is a hell of a statement for a songwriter who’s just been given a major label deal. While every song on the album proceeds like a short story, it’s easy to conflate this madness with the existential darkness of Wynn’s personal life during the recording process. This is a noir tale, with Wynn’s narrator detailing a border crossing gone wrong that turns out just right, as there’s no one to call his desperate bluff — despite how badly he seems to want to be caught in his lie of holding a loaded weapon. The song also betrays the influence the Velvet Underground still had on the band. The jerky rhythm, powered by Dennis Duck’s simple, unwavering drum pattern, points to the influence of Mo Tucker’s rudimentary pounding, while Wynn’s closing line, “I couldn’t hit it sideways baby,” is pulled straight from “Sister Ray.” The vocal chants that ride the song’s outro to its demise seem less the affectations of melodic dynamism than internal voices coalescing to urge the worst possible decision for the narrator.
“Bullet with My Name on It” stands out as the sole solo-songwriting contribution from Karl Precoda, as well as an already bleak album’s true descent into darkness. It speaks to the inevitability of bad things coming, this time in the form of a bullet on his trail, bound to strike. The snaking guitar lines that lead into each verse reveal just how on edge Precoda’s work remained throughout his tenure in the band. The lyrics are defined by dreams that serve either as premonitions or revelations: “I had a mouth, but I couldn’t speak.” Again, the paranoia feels decidedly atypical for a breakout album from a critically hyped band. Following this, the narrative of “Medicine Show” is set against a loping, bluesy shuffle that adds an ominous note. Wynn takes a detour through a Southern Gothic grotesquerie of murder and a last-ditch effort at redemption leading off with a perfect turn of a phrase: “I’ve got a Page One story buried in my yard.” This is where newest member Provost stands out, his rudimentary bassline holding down the track, the guitars largely escaping via scratched and strangled notes underneath the monolithic rhythm.
Though shorn of the fierce edges and feedback-laden chaos of the band’s debut album, Precoda plays no less ferociously on Medicine Show. He is given ample space to stretch out thanks to the longer track lengths. Though the sound itself is less revelatory, closer listening reveals that Precoda’s work is more exploratory as a result of his clean tone. Not only does Provost’s bass provide a more traditional rhythmic grounding than Smith’s on Wine and Roses, but the clearer production reveals the group’s instrumental interplay in a far more concise manner. Likewise, the more ambitious arrangements, featuring organ and piano, give Medicine Show a cinematic feel.
Album opener “Still Holding on to You” is a tale of potential necrophilia wrapped up in the album’s neatest pop song. The track’s heartland rock bounce and Stones-y guitar encourage a surface-level reading of a relationship gone wrong as Wynn’s narrator pines for a lost love. But the final verse hints at the finality of the circumstances as well as his solution. The soaring organ buried conveniently in the mix invests an optimism that is clearly impossible by the last lines, regardless of how one chooses to read the construct of the song: “The room was hot, and her skin was cold… I heard her call my name.” That Velvet Underground swipe didn’t pass muster for a lot of fans, but fits in perfectly against the hopeless lovelorn desperation of Wynn’s lyrics. As dark as the concept reads on multiple listens, the soaring group vocals chanting the song’s title and clean production must have signaled something drastic to fans of the first album.
“Daddy’s Girl” is the weakest track on the album. The production is too spacious for the arrangement and leaves the song feeling like something is missing right in the middle. Even Precoda’s solo feels like he’s reining himself in. Here the narrator details his peculiar relationship with his girl, who wants “the kind of man who married ma.” The track does form a sort of lyrical continuity with the penultimate track, “John Coltrane Stereo Blues,” with the ready-to-please womanizing narrator of “Daddy’s Girl” taking his girl to the liquor store to “wipe out everything that came before” offering a flipside to the urbane psychopath of the later track. The hints toward incestuous relations and the narrator’s willingness to take advantage do add an unsavory element that defines the remainder of the album.
Whereas Wine and Roses is defined by a sort of melancholic longing that complicates its more raucous moments, Medicine Show finds the band eager to explore the unrequited emotions that they stirred up. “Burn” stands as the album’s first truly revelatory track, where Medicine Show starts to show its hand and the heartland desolation at its core. Wynn’s lyrics speak to a spiritual and philosophical barrenness that find apt representation in the imagery of razed barns and empty cornfields. Stifling small town depression that personal pride refuses to acknowledge infects the lives of every character here, people trapped and at odds with the lives they’ve been living. They’re unsure of how to make a change or even why they would want to do such a thing.
This is Wynn at his most literary. “Burn” weaves three disparate threads of small-town isolationism into a single narrative of doubt and indecision that never offers moving away as a solution. There’s a rejection of the wider world in “Burn” that suggests the lots people have been dealt are what they must accept. That lack of resolution is best represented in the second verse about a friend who can’t come to terms with what he once believed and felt: “One by one he found some flaws / Now he’s not so sure” being perhaps the most apt manner of addressing the quiet devastations of his maturation. From a musical standpoint, this is also where Precoda is given a chance to shine with a solo that entangles itself around the piano backing. The final verse ends with Wynn repeating, “Someday there’s gonna be hell to pay / Yeah I know.” The line conveys the core of the album’s themes, of the bad ideas and impulses present beneath every surface just waiting to arise, and the consequences unseen and unintended that feel like inevitabilities once they arrive.
“John Coltrane Stereo Blues” is often cited as the highlight of the album (and occasionally as the sole redeeming feature by its detractors) and a glimpse of the unpredictable Dream Syndicate of old. There are better versions on tape than this,3 but this is the band back in rave up mode, ratcheting tension from the prolonged instrumental portions in a manner that matches the more sprawling playing on their debut. Wynn’s enigmatic tale of date rape is one of his darkest, most coruscating character studies. His speaker is an urban sophisticate, one comfortable with John Coltrane as a signifier of some presumed cultural refinement, and savvy enough to chill his wine before enacting the most hideous of acts. There is a snarl to Precoda’s guitar here that’s missing on the rest of the album.4 As Wynn’s vocals shift from laidback and calculating sociopathic urges to hoarse, desperate ranting over the course of the track, Precoda’s playing gradually becomes more frantic and violent to match the song’s lyrical components. The obvious parallel is Ron Asheton’s work on The Stooges’ Fun House (1970) and its relationship with Ornette Coleman’s sonic explorations, whereas Iggy Pop’s own vocals waver unpredictably between mumbled menace and fervent ranting. This is Precoda’s showcase, as two thirds of “John Coltrane Stereo Blues” are given over to instrumental overdrive rather than the narrative of the lyrics.
“John Coltrane Stereo Blues” is a perfect example of Medicine Show’s pervading darkness in the face of its more refined production. Cinema of Transgression filmmaker Richard Kern selected the song to score his infamous collaboration with Nick Zedd, “Thrust in Me,” an installment of his Manhattan Love Suicides (1985) series. Kern clearly picked up on the aberrant quality of the lyrics. The song perfectly compliments his and Zedd’s short film of necrophilia, neglect, and all-around sacrilege. Given that Kern’s films were typically scored by the more abrasive likes of Foetus, Killdozer, and the Butthole Surfers, something in “Coltrane Stereo Blues” must have resonated with Kern’s nihilistic vision.
Read more about Richard Kern’s Manhattan Love Suicides
The story in “Merrittville” is a condensed epic of rural justice and isolationist fatalism turned acceptance. The song’s arrangement is close to a piano ballad, certainly, but it’s also a song so unforgiving that it couldn’t help but stick in my mind since my first listen to become my favorite track on the album. Wynn’s narrator is caught in a wheat field by his paramour’s brother and punished by being stranded in the titular town. What follows is an entire span of life lived across an eight-minute track. He’s saved by Sally, “with the narrow hips,” but remains confined to Merrittville despite her best efforts to free his body and mind in her father’s shed. The third verse sees William, “with the holy book,” stopping the narrator in the road on his way out of town, forcing him to his knees to pray and leaving him “to burn in Merrittville.” In between verses are simple riffs punctuated by Precoda’s muted guitar fireworks, all underscored by a steady piano accompaniment. The bridge and Precoda’s solo are the most overdriven parts of the album, which is easy to lose track of given the sweeping grandiloquence of the music. Here’s where it becomes most apparent that his guitar work on the album is pushing into more spacious and desperate areas in its reach for expression, beyond the nasty noise clusters of Wine and Roses. Unlock that key and return to the rest of the album, and it all starts to come into focus.
All these elements, perhaps expectedly, did not lead to commercial or critical success for the group. Medicine Show sold far less than their label had hoped. At the time, indie bands carving respectable careers out of modest sales was not in the cards, and the group quickly found themselves at odds with the major label system they had willingly embraced. As a result, they ultimately asked for their release from A&M, despite still owing money on both the album itself and their recent tour with R.E.M. Amazingly, they managed to escape on top of their contract, an extremely rare instance of an indie band making the system work for them. Though the band broke up for a short stretch before regrouping without Precoda for 1986’s Out of the Grey, they were soon back through the remainder of the decade.5
The 40th anniversary of Medicine Show also bears personal significance as it marks a decade of my own appreciation of the album. Much as I may try to avoid it, it’s hard to listen to this record now and not recall the time and place I first heard it. The tail end of my undergrad years saw my tastes branching out to new areas, investigating krautrock and heavy psych as much as the noise rock that had defined the first half of my college career. Spurred by my discovery of the essential Forced Exposure magazine, I also dove into the first era of American indie rock. The Days of Wine and Roses was an immediate hit when I gave it a listen, part of the soundtrack to a long and blistering summer at home that saw what seemed at the time to be great changes in my world. Spurred by my newfound adventurousness, I decided the band’s controversial follow up was worth investigating — not a decision I would have been likely to make even a few months prior. In little time at all, I realized that I held Medicine Show in nearly equal regard to the group’s debut.
“Still Holding on to You” provided an immediate hook, but something about the album’s weariness shone through. My senior year was spent in the seeming isolation of Granville, Ohio. I found myself surrounded by cornfields I had come to know over the preceding three years, and the tiny town’s sequestered nature seemed to take on some imagined significance set against Medicine Show’s rural fatalism. As the band have attested, these elements emerged as a result of their tour with U2, when their travel and exposure to more of the country and its heartland locales bled into the songwriting process itself. That revelation clicked with me, as a large part of that initial attraction was the album’s sheer divergence from what I’d heard and known of the band prior. Despite Wynn’s born and bred Angelino sensibility, the album’s best moments play as signifiers for a distinctly midwestern brand of paranoia — things I imagined I could relate to. The haunted cornfields, roadside towns, and faith healing centerpiece of the album recall middle American derangement just as vividly as their debut album captured urban clutter. Songs like “Burn” and “Merrittville” come closer to a Midwestern Gothic sensibility than any band I can name save the masters of that constructed subgenre, Killdozer.
There are countless major label albums from underground groups that don’t pass muster, even in hindsight. These are releases that have their share of defenders, and the merit of each is in the eye of the beholder. Medicine Show is no different, though its status as a misjudged step forward rather than a grave mistake seems to be stronger than most. Its contradictions are precisely why it offers so many rewards in persistence and patience. The extended track lengths, unsavory lyrical explorations, and ambitious arrangements all coalesce into something uneasy, seemingly unnatural. Where the production polish and lack of feedback would seem to denote a defanged incarnation of the band, a one trick pony (as if feedback assaults aren’t themselves the very same), Wynn’s songwriting — his ability to turn a phrase or evoke such cutting internal insights — and the tightness of the band’s playing, show that the edge of Wine and Roses clearly carried over. Likewise, the band’s embrace of heartland rock conventions and the distance they create from almost any element of punk rock initially feel like concessions to commercial success. But the compositions themselves hold such darkness at their core — not to mention five of the eight tracks run over five minutes — that it’s hard to believe that commercial considerations would have been the driving force behind these songs.
I don’t suspect I’ll ever fully contend with my affection for Medicine Show, just as The Days of Wine and Roses purists may never overcome their skepticism of it. Unlike the common underground sensation that you’re letting people in on something that belongs to you, here the feeling is that what you’re sharing is too closed off or personal for anyone to even understand what the attraction is, what the hell you’re talking about in the first place. Medicine Show seems damned to being a five-dollar record. At this point, it’s the sole studio album that’s yet to be reissued on vinyl and remains unavailable for streaming, oversights that should be remedied. After 40 years, it’s long past time for the record to escape the confines of cult appreciation and find the audience it’s deserved all along. Medicine Show is a work that rewards patience. Its uncompromising nature, which once stood as a barricade to its acceptance, should be embraced as its most vital quality. As thorny, contentious, and unsettling as ever, this is The Dream Syndicate’s most distinctive work, the truest embodiment of the band’s early lineup’s divergent sensibilities and an indicator of the path American indie rock would take in the decades to follow.
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- Drummer Dennis Duck most readily embodied the band’s connections to “out” music. He had ties to the Los Angeles Free Music Society and had released the infamous turntable terrorism album Dennis Duck Goes Disco in 1977. He also played drums on LAFMS-associated band The Child Molesters’ notorious debut single, “(I’m the) Hillside Strangler.” ↩︎
- Smith’s subsequent group Opal is massively underrated — and often reduced to a footnote for their pre-Mazzy Star lineage — and deserving of reissue. ↩︎
- See the 10-and-a-half-minute version recorded live on Swedish radio in 1984 on the Ultimate Feedback bootleg, or the 12-minute rendition on the incredible Complete Live at Raji’s set featuring Paul Cutler on guitar in 1988.* See the 10-and-a-half-minute version recorded live on Swedish radio in 1984 on the Ultimate Feedback bootleg, or the 12-minute rendition on the incredible Complete Live at Raji’s set featuring Paul Cutler on guitar in 1988. ↩︎
- Precoda’s phrasings between verses tap into the scaling approach Coltrane himself took up in his period as a band leader, a more exploratory and expressive method of playing that broke from the purely melodic and rhythmic function of his instrument. ↩︎
- These mid-period Dream Syndicate albums generally get short shrift but their power and songcraft can’t be denied, nor can the presence of brilliant guitarist Paul Cutler, formerly of Phoenix, Arizona, and later LA punk maniacs The Consumers and 45 Grave. Cutler also produced the band’s self-titled debut EP back in 1982, as well as Wynn’s 1985 collaboration with Dan Stuart of Green on Red, Danny and Dusty’s The Lost Weekend. ↩︎
