The Gun Club - Fire Of Love

gonna buy me a gun just as long as my arm
kill every!one who ever did me harm

Jack on Fire for me, but I wouldn't separate any track out - this is one of my favorite albums of all time, top ten for sure

i love the whole album to death too, but sex beat and heroin really ARE stand-alone klassic ***** tracks and it's perfectly understandable if everyone who votes in this poll voted for sex beat. it would be like voting in saints debut poll and not picking stranded. kinda.

shoulda said - IT WOULD BE perfectly understandable...

Yeah I voted Sex Beat and would vote I'm Stranded on a Saints poll

Sex Beat and Heroin, for sure, but I also love Black Train. That guitar sound... Brrrow-bbroowww BrrrANG!!

"this is one of my favorite albums of all time"

mine too, but i like Miami even better than this,which is still a little underrated i think.

Intense, scary album. One of my first vinyl LP purchases, still have it, lovely New Rose edition. (Which I can't play, because the turntable amp is in the shop!) All mixed up in my head with Junkyard, which came along around the same time.

Fire Spirit was my immediate response for some reason, but I'll need to think on it. Preaching the Blues is pretty great too.

i can see clearly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT066mCuS7Q

WOOAH! Great, great stuff, thanks! Pure nostalgia - loved the audience reaction shots.

of course i might just be projecting my own feelings about those two songs. i think they are two of the greatest rock & roll songs of the 80's. or ever. i think i put one of them on almost every mixed-tape i made from 1984 to 1986. for the record though, my fave gun club song is port of souls.

Those are great songs, no doubt about it. It's such a good album, projecting your feelings is the only possible way to choose.

port of souls is great.
so are breaking hands.and yellow eyes. and bill bailey.
someone should poll Mother Juno as well.

agree that Miami's underrated, but so's pretty much all post-Fire of Love Gun Club - which, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to argue that they ever topped FoL, but pretty much everything they did was good. The Divinity double-12" had some real winners on it, Pastoral Hide & Seek better than Mother Juno IMO, Las Vegas Story on par with Miami. this is one of those bands whose music I can't get started talking about because it means a great deal to me - never really a band like them, though many in LA esp. w/similar elements.

some of The Cramps and Nick Cave/BP early 80's stuff has similar elements but it's the combination between punk,rockabilly and of course Jeffrey Lee Pierce' songwriting and beautiful off-key vocals that make them so special.
p.s. never understood why Miami is considerd a badly produced album - it's clear and perfect.

sadly, i sold my copies of miami and las vegas story AND my copy of pastoral hide and seek when i had a rekkerd store in philly. i'd like to hear them now.

for the love of ivy, i guess. the way it builds up and calms down again. the rawness of the riff and the devilish vocals and lyrics. i'm gonna buy me a graveyard of my own.

This is weird, I just finished a 3000+ word piece on JLP, and Zeno, I argue the same thing -- that Miami is nowhere near as badly produced as history has decreed.

I'd have to go with "Ghost on the Highway", just, over "Jack On Fire" and "Heroin".

Anyway, in the course of being immersed in Gun Club and solo Pierce stuff, I think there are few bands/artists who can top them. Absolutely incredible stuff throughout their career.

heroin! "i know because i'm the indian wind along the telegraph lines" gaaaah what a jam

xpost
Most everything I've read about Miami has succeeded in putting me off wanting me to hear it, which is ridiculous of me, given how much I love Fire of Love.

i never got into miami though i love almost everything else from the gun club.

The Death Party EP is one ferocious artefact - were those tracks tacked onto one of the LPs for CD release?

I love Miami. Fuck the hataz! It's not as good as Fire Of Love but not much is.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

love the fuckin beat on promise me but voted sex beat

i could swear i posted on this but cant see it. Oh well She's Like Heroin to Me gets my vote

Digging around just now and I found the Trouser Press entry on The Gun Club, which is weirdly begrudging and negative. I don't get how a band this largely ignored (by both critics and fans) could elicit such an aspect of annoyance. Maybe they were trying to head of a resurgence in interest/acclaim or something?

*head off

i bought the album for "heroin" but i ended up staying for everything else! i think i have to choose "for the love of ivy" just because it's so crazed and manic. i love it.

The Death Party EP is one ferocious artefact - were those tracks tacked onto one of the LPs for CD release?

No, reissued on its own by Sympathy for the Record Industry, but with extra songs.

Utterly wonderful as "Sex Beat" is I might actually choose "For the Love of Ivy" but like everyone says, hard to separate things out.

EVERY DAY IS JUDGMENT DAY WITH ME

really hard. a toss up among "sex beat", "preaching the blues", "for the love of ivy", "jack on fire" and "she's like heroin to me".

went with heroin as it is the one i felt like listening to right now.

That Trouser Press item is BITTER - did Jeff Lee steal someone's girlfriend?

She's Like Heroin to Me

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow...what a landslide.didnt expect that.
Promise Me is one of the best VU influenced songs ever.
Goodbye Johnny is ine if the best Suicide influenced songs ever.
both got 0 votes but thats understandable with so many great songs to choose from.

Me either. Thought it would be more evenly split between "Heroin", "Sex Beat", "Ivy", "Jack". Very surprised (yet pleased, as it was my choice) that "Ghost" came in equal second!

Great poll. Were you going to poll their other albums? I've been listening to Lucky Jim a lot, lately.

(Soukesian, I don't get it either, really unnecessary... almost like the writer(s) were going out of their way to find negatives... although re: JLP, negatives weren't all that hard to find: Just ask pretty much any of his former bandmates!)

u\i chose Ghost as well - maybe cause it sounds like a Miami track - which i have to say i like even better than this record.
"Were you going to poll their other albums?"
i thought about doing a Mother Juno poll - the 3rd (and final) of my personal favourites of Gun Club records.
but i'm not sure how popular it is,considering the fact that the Miami poll only got 5-7 votes or something..

i love mother juno. gun club + cocteau twins doesn't seem like it should work at ALL on paper, but somehow it really really does.

Miami poll

Zeno you're probably right -- it still amazes me how few people, even on ILM, profess to like the Gun Club, other than their debut.

scott, "The Breaking Hands" in particular is like some perfect hybrid of Treasure-era Cocteaus and solo (Wildweed) JLP. I agree, it's amazing, as are "Yellow Eyes", "Hearts" and "Port of Souls".

5 votes in that Miami poll! WTF?

a little weird that "heroin" would beat "sex beat" by so many - "sex beat" kind of the signature number imo

Wow, didn't see this poll in time but the final results pretty much match my own personal ranking

a little weird that "heroin" would beat "sex beat" by so many

Yeah, first song on the debut album, bursts out like it's got a tiger in its hips, incredible impact. Maybe that impact has been blunted by time, or some people feel it's close to self-parody, containing everything in concentrated form that made them great, who knows? I get kind of emotional about the Gun Club, and so I'm just happy that a few others seem to share this, and voted and commented, etc.

i love them too. i voted heroin because it was their first song i ever heard and i couldn't believe my bimble ears.

slept-on latter gun club jam imo: "keys to the kingdom" from divinity

i voted heroin too. it was either that or sex beat. can't believe sex beat didn't get more votes though. basically, for me, "we sit together drunk like our fathers used to be" beat out "we can fuck forever but you will never get my soul". but just barely. and now i kinda wish i had voted for sex beat.

also, as far as Miami goes, I just have to say: You are president of the Blondie fan club. In your wildest dreams do you imagine that you will get members of Blondie to produce and and play on your album someday? OMG!

Ha ha, especially since Blondie were always kicking him our of hotel rooms when he overstayed his welcome!

*our = out

More slept-on GC stuff: "A House is Not a Home", "Secret Fires".

"sex beat" is amazing but perhaps over heard?

it's all because heroin is more addictive than sex

I thought Sex Beat was going to take this in a walk so I voted for Heroin. :/

I thought Sex Beat was going to take this in a walk so I voted for Heroin. :/

Ha, so it's strategic voting that's the problem.

(I do it all the time on ILM polls, though.)

next time the heroin voters will vote sex beat