The EP's commercial failure contributed to the group's temporary breakup, The band was dropped by A&M after the label rejected its demo for "Slide Away", later released on the semi-official It's Too Late to Stop Now. Live!, the last record to feature Precoda on guitar (he left soon afterward to pursue a career in screenwriting) and the first appearance of bassist Mark Walton. and U2 and released the five-song live EP, This Is Not The New Dream Syndicate Album. Medicine Show was recorded in 1984 in San Francisco with producer Sandy Pearlman and released that year by A&M Records. She was replaced in the Dream Syndicate by David Provost.
Subsequently, Smith left the band and joined David Roback (formerly of Rain Parade) to form Opal. Rough Trade Records released the album's lead track, "Tell Me When It's Over", in early 1983 as the A-side of a UK EP which also included a live cover of Neil Young's " Mr. Days of Wine and Roses "sent shockwaves through the American underground in the early 1980s," but MTV favored a different kind of music. The band signed to Slash Records, whose subsidiary Ruby Records released its debut and by far best-known album, The Days of Wine and Roses, in 1982. Influences on the band, which was soon deemed "a seminal force in the city's '80s underground rock evolution", were the Velvet Underground, Neil Young and Television. The band quickly achieved local attention for its often aggressively long, feedback-soaked improvisations. Cutler engineering and producing, and released on Wynn's Down There label. A four-song EP was recorded at the home of Tom Mehren in Pasadena, with Paul B. On February 23, 1982, the Dream Syndicate performed its first show at Club Lingerie in Hollywood. Smith joined on bass and brought in drummer Dennis Duck (Mehaffey), who had played in the locally successful Pasadena-based band Human Hands.ĭuck suggested the name "the Dream Syndicate" in reference to Tony Conrad's early 1960s New York experimental ensemble (better known as the Theatre of Eternal Music), whose members included John Cale.
Wynn also recorded a 1981 single with a trio that he called 15 Minutes, which included members of Alternate Learning.Īfter Wynn moved back to Los Angeles, while rehearsing in a band called Goat Deity (with future Wednesday Week sisters Kelly and Kristi Callan), Wynn met Karl Precoda, who had answered an ad for a bass player, and the two formed a new group, with Precoda switching to guitar. While attending the University of California, Davis, Steve Wynn and Kendra Smith played together (with future True West members Russ Tolman and Gavin Blair) in a band called the Suspects, regarded as the first new wave-influenced band in the Davis, California, music scene. History Formation and early years (1981–1983)
Bandleader Steve Wynn reformed the band in 2012, and a fifth studio album was released in February 2017. The band is associated with neo-psychedelia and the Paisley Underground music movement of the bands in that movement, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Dream Syndicate "rocked with the highest degree of unbridled passion and conviction." Though never commercially successful, the band met with considerable acclaim, especially for its songwriting and guitar playing. The Dream Syndicate is an American alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California, originally active from 1981 to 1989, and reunited since 2012. Ruby/ Slash, Rough Trade, A&M, Chrysalis, Enigma, Big Time, Anti-, Fireġ5 Minutes, Opal, 45 Grave, Continental Drifters