This is driving me nuts. I used to have a tape of a band from the early 80s that I can’t remember the name of. They had a song on there called East of Eden and another one called After the Flood. The lead singer was a girl with a really great voice. If I can’t get help with these hints, I can provide some lyrics. I know I’m going to feel like an ass when someone tells me.
PLEASE HELP!
LONE JUSTICE: Personnel: Maria McKee, Ryan Hedgecock, Marvin Etzioni, Don Heffington (Benmont Tench, of Tom Petty’s band, was an occasional fifth member from’84-’85)
I think they opened for Petty, circa '84.
Lone Justice. The songs you mention are from their debut album, also called Lone Justice. The singer’s name is Maria McKee. I wouldn’t call them "rockabilly’, though; more like alt-country, even though there wasn’t such a thing back in 1985 when it came out.
That’s them. Back in '85 we did call it “rockabilly.” As stated above, alt-country wasn’t so named.
Thanks for the help. Now I can order the album.
I recently saw a local band that describes their music as rockabilly/cowpunk. They were great. Kinda like country, but with a bunch of screamed “f@ck yous” mixed in.
Well, not to be pedantic about it, but . . . . Most of us didn’t call Lone Justice “rockabilly” even back then. There was a rockabilly revival scene then, but they weren’t part of it, either in spirit or by association. What there was was a group of bands that were connected with the L.A. “paisley underground” scene but separate from it stylistically – Lone Justice and The Long Ryders being the paradigm cases, with Green on Red working both sides of the fence. Musically, these bands were more country-rock, Gram Parsons-loving, Byrds-imitating, etc. than their psychedelic pop-rock brethren like The Three O’Clock, Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate, et al.. Roots-rock is usually the label that’s given to the proto-alt-country groups coming out of Southern California in the 1980s, though I’ve never really liked that moniker either. The Blasters sort of straddled the line musically between the rockabilly and roots-rock groups, while being more connected socially with the L.A. punk scene than with the “paisley underground” movement, as were musically similar groups like the Beat Farmers, Rank & File, etc. The Gun Club was about the only true rockabilly/psychobilly group to come out of the L.A. scene, and they decamped for New York soon enough.
–rackensack (who did four years of college radio from 1982-1986, and bought Lone Justice the week it was released, after months of critical hype)
Wow, now there’s some band names from the past. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone speak of The Three O’Clock, although I was able to find “Jet Fighter” online about four years ago. I’d kill to have a CD of Dream Syndicate’s “Medicine Show”.
Los Lobos is sometimes linked with this scene, although back then and especially now their sound encompassed a hell of a lot more than just ‘roots rock’.
Where’d you do your college radio stint?
I prefer the term “y’allternative.”
It’s possible, though, that I’ve been using it long enough that it doesn’t make me look clever anymore. Rats.
They’re one of my faves from that scene – I even like their “overproduced” later releases on IRS and Paisley Park.
Me too. I’ve had to make do for nearly 20 years with a battered factory cassette copy I picked up at a used record store a couple of years after it was released (my roommates in college had a copy on vinyl, so I made do without a copy of my own until after graduation). Damn. Now I want to put on my copy of Days and Wine and Roses and pick up my bass and play along with Kendra Smith, and I can’t cause my parents and sister-in-law and her two kids and my three kids and wife are all sleeping upstairs, and I only have a couple of days left until I have to get on an airplane Sunday to be on the road for work almost all of the next three weeks, and it’ll be July before I get a chance to scratch this itch. Thanks a heap, buddy. 
On the mighty ten-watt voice of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, KHDX, FM 93.1. Our signal almost covered all of campus, except on the north side where a bunch of pine trees on the hill next to the antenna soaked up most of the power. On a good night the signal would reach as far as the freeway a mile or so from the antenna, so if you happened to tune in just as you passed the U.S. 64 exit off of I-40 going west, you could listen for two or three minutes until you passed the U.S. 65 exit.
Hey, that’s ten watts more than I had. Get this: I worked at KLA, the UCLA on-campus station, in the late eighties. We didn’t even have a broadcast license, because frequency slots in the LA market are at a premium. Our audience was everyone who hooked up their local cable system to their stereo, and everyone in a couple of campus restaurants. In other words, nobody listened to us. Try doing a shift at 3am when you have a ticket giveaway “to the tenth caller” . . . “OK, to the third caller” . . . “Heck with it, anyone who calls can have these tickets!” And you still didn’t give them away.
That’s chillingly similar to the station I volunteered at in the early 80’s. At least having no one win the tickets meant that the DJ’s got to go to a lot of free shows. Win two tickets to the Cramps, just call in… anyone? No one? Good.