The Dream Syndicate
Medicine Show
Fire Records
Instead of yielding a magical elixir with curative powers, Medicine Show proved to be bad for The Dream Syndicate’s health. Many critics argued at the time that their 1984 sophomore album should be taken off the market, that it was nondescript and too commercial to be anything more than an ineffectual rock ‘n roll placebo. But the Medicine Show went on, its tortured soul screaming as it left the Paisley Underground.
Getting past Steve Wynn’s nervous breakdown and acrimonious infighting, The Dream Syndicate somehow rallied to get the record to the finish line — no small feat in and of itself, the enormous pressure of their major label debut causing them to crack but not fold. Making the necessary repairs, Wynn and company produced a bold, audacious work, slinging around big hooks, searing instrumental forays, and edgy, cinematic storytelling in a wild, swinging party that’s been repackaged in a lavish four-CD deluxe edition loaded with a ton of explosive live material.
That’s where this muscular specimen of Medicine Show really shows off, as The Dream Syndicate stretches out, jamming relentlessly and indulging in whatever cover songs strike their fancy, such as their menacing, mangled revision of “Suzie Q” and rushed, ramshackle readings of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” as well as a jazzy, psychedelic dismantling of Santana’s “Evil Ways” — all taken to rougher, punk-rock places than their originators ever dreamed of. Whether blowing the doors off CBGB’s, the Soap Creek Saloon in Austin, Texas, Club Zadar in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom, and other places, or ripping the guts out of a handful of rehearsal recordings, they also relish taking a hammer and chisel to various Medicine Show tracks to give them interesting definition and character, to even alter their identities in some cases. Not that the originals, remastered and remixed here for increased clarity and potency, needed any of that.
As visceral as ever, often noisy and boisterous, but smoky and seductive, too, Medicine Show still has a manic energy to it that’s raw and exciting, the piano-pounding thrill of a lively, bounding “Armed with an Empty Gun” leaping from the speakers and a funky, cacophonous “John Coltrane Stereo Blues” street hassling Lou Reed with makeshift krautrock grooves and L.A. grit. While the dusky drawl of “Bullet with My Name on It” and the rumbling title track brood away in dark alleys of noir, “Burn” soars with the poetic realism of Springsteen and a mid-tempo “Still Holding onto You” simmers and swaggers, stinging guitar and razor vocals cutting through smoggy organ.
If remnants of its artificially “big” production linger, most of the newly refurbished Medicine Show emphasizes its toughness and burns with sneering misanthropy, Wynn’s narratives served hard-boiled. When reproduced onstage, its contents undergo various transformations, with “Armed with an Empty Gun” and “Bullet with My Name on It” sounding richer, livelier, and more layered in Chicago, but the former growling with propulsive, savage intensity and arty, metallic scything at CBGBs, where a narcotic “The Medicine Show” lives in seedy squalor and homicidal madness and “Burn” drives harder, crashing into its own guardrails before slowing down to gather itself. In Austin, “Still Holding onto You” gets messy and beat up with noisy dissonance, yet it sounds more raggedly tuneful than the studio version, as The Dream Syndicate also slowly carries “Born on the Bayou” out of the swamp and into urban abandonment and apocalyptic visions.
It’s a lot to digest, but well worth the investment of time, money, and careful listening, as 29 of the deluxe edition’s 42 tracks are previously unreleased from The Dream Syndicate’s early ’80s period of transition and turbulence. History should remember Medicine Show with more kindness.
