The Day Before Wine and Roses: Live at KPFK, September 5, 1982 (Live at KPFK)

Album review

As the punning title indicates, this welcome document of an early Dream Syndicate show, recorded live-in-studio for Los Angeles' KPFK station in 1982, captures the fierce intensity of the band's first lineup shortly before the release of the actual Days of Wine and Roses album. Featuring both an array of originals and well-chosen covers, Day Before is arguably the group at its best, well before the endless series of band conflicts and attempts to reach too far too fast slowly ground away at Wynn and company. Precoda is simply on fire here, maybe even more so than on Days of Wine and Roses itself, while the band as a whole gels and makes it clear that channeling inspirations of the past into the present was no crime when done so well. Hosted by longtime DJ/critic Andrea 'Enthal, who sets the stage with her introductory banter as crowds of friends and fans come in -- the show itself started recording at about 2 a.m. in the morning! -- the recording features some amusing comments from the band along with the strong performances. There are some radical reworkings: "Some Kinda Itch" is a slower, smokier number in this incarnation, the late-night setting perfectly matching its strung-out mood, while "John Coltrane Stereo Blues" appears under the name "Open Hour"" as a slightly more stripped-down jam. Other things don't change at all -- "The Days of Wine and Roses" itself, which understandably closes the set, is as blasting as one could want. The inclusion of the covers is explained away by Wynn thus: "If you're going to bootleg this, we don't want to have to worry about the royalties." Some choices are obvious -- Buffalo Springfield's "Mr. Soul" and Bob Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" -- but the revamp of Donovan's "Season of the Witch" is more unexpected but plenty exciting.

© Ned Raggett /TiVo