Placebos and Private Cure-Alls : In Praise of the Joneses

Fuuuuuuuck. Has it really been fifteen years since the loss of my cassette copy of (the history making BYO records comp) Someone Got Their Head Kicked In and the purchase of best-of/odds-and-sods collection Criminal History?

Decade-and-a-half timespans aside, as this guy said, talent is worth waiting for, and as soon as I espied a smudgy jewelbox festooned with four dreamy, suburban post-Dolls (proto-'Mats?) lookin everywhere but the direction of Chris Amaroux's lens in the Den's dusty ole used section (next to the Big Gulp machine), I knew that the wait would be over. That moments later--shiteatin grin plastered to wideyed middleaged mug--I'd be plunkin down a splendidly spent $6.99. And moments after that I'd be rippin through Thundersesque air guitar lead after beautiful fuckin lead to such gems as "Pillbox," "She's So Filthy," and "Graveyard Rock."

Criminal History indeed. Criminal that a talent of such magnitude could go overlooked for so goddamn long. What else besides criminal negligence could explain why our heroes would, despite their best efforts, forever be relegated to cult status? If that. Sub-fuckin-cult staus. Pick up any book (or watch any movie) about the 80s LA rock scene and you'll find these Joneses erased from public memory. No mention of them in Decline (hell, they'd have been appropriate for either part one or two!), Another State of Mind , The Dirt (Joneses copyist Nikki Sixx didn't mention them once, not even as a desperate attempt at some much-needed street cred), We Got the Neutron Bomb (sure, reading all that wasted ink on Zolar X and Kim Fowley was amusing and all, but...), or any of the revisionist 'histories of rock and roll' specials PBS unleashes every other year.

Fuck it. Sympathy For The Record Industry (the only label with the good taste to cobble together this fine, fine batch-o-jams) knows better, I know better, and hopefully you will after reading this. For those who don't know, the Joneses were sort of a Westcoast Heartbreakers/Dolls/Stones/Slade/Mott/Pistols amalgamation which reared its lipstick-traced, quaalude-stuffed gob, and teased-out red-dyed head some ten years after "Trash," "Personality Crisis," and "Lookin' For a Kiss," all shot through the bored ampheatmine aggro of Orange County punk (TSOL's Mitch Dean was their first drummer, and skater Steve Olsen manned the below-the-knees thunderbroom for a time). It's classic, hi-energy, tarted-up, be-rouged, junkedup, fuckedup, scarf-on-the-mikestand rock and roll, complete with whining, cop-siren Les Pauls (courtesy of the Joneses' single constant, Jeff Fuckin Drake), tightass thunderhoofed tubthumpin that'd make Jerry Nolan blush and bratty adenoid sneers about chicks in ripped fishnets, drugs, booze, death, lust, love, booze, drugs, and chicks in ripped fishnets. Perfect.

Not only were the Joneses a sort of 'missing link' betwixt the likes of Social Distortion and Guns'N' Roses, but they represent LA's last chance for the real fuckin thing, before that drug called MTV came round and duped an entire generation of shouldaknownbetters into buying (into) the well-supervised rebellion known as 'hair metal.' Good bye baby, and amen.

(Listen to and/or buy the Joneses here)