Long Ryders Follow Different Trails

The Long Ryders have spread out in different directions, but only bassist Tom Stevens has ridden into the sunset--he’s moved with his wife and kids to Michigan City, Ind.

His three former band mates, however, have returned to active duty in the L.A. clubs. Singer/guitarist Sid Griffin and drummer Greg Sowders have formed a new band, while singer/guitarist Stephen McCarthy has been performing around town both with a new band of his own and as a solo acoustic act.

According to Griffin, his and Sowders’ new band--which Griffin says he’s leaning toward calling the Land of Hope and Crosby--bears less of the country and folk influence that marked the Ryders.

“It’s a bit of a cross between Television and the Faces,” he said of the new band, which will play an acoustic set tonight at the Breakaway in Venice. “We’re aiming for a guitar thing with the sloppiness and craziness of the Faces.”

McCarthy too says his band (which probably will be called Walker Stories--a term referring to oral traditions as well as a nod to writer Walker Percy) is moving away from the Long Ryders sound to a more R&B-influenced; style . . . “not that it sounds like Al Green.”

Though Stevens and McCarthy both left the Ryders before the band officially called it a day, Griffin says the handwriting was on the wall before the release of the band’s 1987 album “Two-Fisted Tales,” when he sensed an indifferent attitude coming from Island Records after the band’s biggest supporters at the label had been fired.

“We were flying up the ladder of success and all of a sudden they took the ladder away,” he said.

Concurred McCarthy: “It was a dead end. I don’t regret a day I played in the Long Ryders, but it was futile. I quit before it got to the point of beating each other on stage.”

Long Ryder fans don’t despair, though. There’s still more music coming from the group: The Long Ryders Fan Club will be releasing a live 90-minute audiocassette late next month. Among the tape’s highlights will be jams with the bands the Chesterfield Kings and That Petrol Emotion, a 1985 Club Lingerie performance of “Route 66” on which the band was joined by English troubadour Billy Bragg, and a phone conversation between Griffin and Johnny (Rotten) Lydon culled from a Griffin appearance on radio station WBCN in Boston. The tape will be available for $8 by mail from the Long Ryders Fan Club, P.O. Box 266, Hollywood, Calif. 90078.

IN TRIPLICATE: They’re the darlings of hip Hollywood. . . . They’re featured in a recent issue of People. . . . They’ve wowed the nation with their “singsational” renditions of the likes of “Walk Like an Egyptian” and “Neutron Dance” on Letterman and “Good Morning America.” . . .Their legion of fans includes such powers as George Michael (who asked them to sing one of his songs) and Luther Vandross. . . .

But success hasn’t spoiled the Del Rubio Triplets. Though the blond, middle-aged sisters Millie, Eadie and Elena may have finally achieved the celebrity they set after some three decades ago, they insist that their most rewarding activity remains performing at nursing and retirement homes--as they have done an average of more than three times a day for the past 10 years.

“It’s a calling for us--a real calling,” said sister Millie, speaking from the San Pedro mobile home the three share. “It’s more than going out and singing. It’s almost like a love affair. No money in the world could pay for the joy we get out of it.”

Still, Millie admitted that concerts they’ve given over the past few months outside of such settings--including well-received shows in New York, Atlanta and Seattle--have given them the bug for a real national tour, they’d want to use that as an excuse to play more care facilities. “We’d love to get a van and go across the country and visit retirement and nursing homes,” Millie said, noting that “Bambi,” their 1971 Plymouth station wagon with 382,000 miles on it, is itself ready for retirement. “Then if we have other shows at night that would pay our way.”

PRIME TIME: The Sierra Madre-based Prime Movers, dismissed around Los Angeles a couple years ago as “U1 1/2,” is finding it hard to live down the bad rep--even though it hasn’t applied for some time. According to bassist/singer Severs Ramsey, that somewhat-deserved epithet was the result of a five-month period in 1986 when the band--at the suggestion of its then-bosses at Island Records--took on singer Gregory Markell, whose vocal and physical moves were similar to U2’s Bono.

“Up to that we’d been compared to U2, but also to Peter Gabriel and even Gang of Four,” Ramsey said. “After that it was just U2.”

Now the band, without Markell, has returned to the local Birdcage Records label where it started. A new album, “Spooked,” which features a tough, big guitar sound (including a guest appearance by Big Country’s Stuart Adamson), is gaining good college and alternative air play around the country--save for Los Angeles, where many people still remember the old days.

“We just did a tour opening for Thomas Dolby across the U.S.,” Ramsey said. “People in the East knew the album better than out here. It seems we are known for (the past) here.”

VIVE LE FRANCE: Do Parisians know more about the L.A. music scene than your average Angeleno? It would seem that way, thanks to the weekly “MusiCalifornia” television series aired on the French Antenne 2 network. The show, produced in Los Angeles by a team of Frenchman who now live here, has become a popular regular half-hour segment of the 90-minute “Infants of Rock” series.

“The young French are curious about what’s happening in California,” said director Claude Gagnaire. “(We show) the beginnings of new trends in music, things they will see in France in two or three years from now.”

Gagnaire claims that one installment of the show has helped spur a skateboard boom in France, while another looking at L.A. gang culture and the music that has come from it (i.e. rappers like Ice-T) helped make the movie “Colors” a French hit--though it bombed in the United States. Programs ready for the new season include one on female bands featuring the Bangles, Pandoras, Precious Metal and Razebrae, and a slam dance special with Black Flag, D.I. and the Vandals.

Will “MusiCalifornia” ever be seen in California? Could be. English versions of the introductory segments with host Nadine Dark (chosen because she speaks French with a “cute American accent,” Gagnaire said) have been shot, and that version is already being aired in Malaya and Singapore. But distributor Joel Cohen is still looking for American outlets, so for the time being, to see the show you’d better make sure your passport is up-to-date.

BUZZWORDS: More than $2,500 was raised for the AIDS Hospice Foundation at what organizers say will be the final event held by A Celebration, a music/charity/social organization formed by local U2 fans in May, 1986. About 350 people turned out for the event, held at the Cover Girl club in Culver City and featuring live performances by Divine Weeks, Black Daphne, Milo Binder and Mark Davis. Co-founder Julie Borchard reported that between May, 1986, and December, 1987, a period in which the group held monthly gatherings at the old Lhasa Club, more than $3,000 was raised for the support of two Third World children “adopted” through the World Vision organization, as well as $2,500 for Amnesty International. . . .

KaTy’s Color Club, the club using the Santa Monica Boulevard site of the abortive attempt to resurrect the Ash Grove, was closed Sept. 9 by the Los Angeles City Fire Department. According to proprietor Mike Giangreco, the club (which gets its name from the photo lab that shares the building) was cited for inadequate emergency exits and several fire hazards. Giangreco hopes to have the situation rectified sometime next month. Meanwhile, he is continuing to book acoustic shows at the Breakaway in Venice, with upcoming shows there set to include the Life Is Grand Band on Oct. 15 and the Beef Sisters on Oct. 28. . . .

Dramarama, which has a couple songs in the movie “Nightmare on Elm Street IV” (songs that aren’t included on the sound track album), is returning to concertizing after a six month layoff. The band will be opening for the Smithereens at the Hollywood Palladium on Saturday.