10-5-60

Album Review

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Sid Griffin and his fellow Long Ryders loved the Byrds with all their hearts, but they rarely made their affection quite so obvious as on their debut EP, 10-5-60. The photos on the front and back cover clearly echo old Byrds promo shots, and the opening cut, "Join My Gang," sounds like some long-lost outtake from Turn! Turn! Turn!, while "I Don't Care What's Right, I Don't Care What's Wrong" and "Born to Believe in You" wouldn't have been out of place on The Notorious Byrd Brothers. But if 10-5-60 doesn't always speak of a startlingly original vision, the truth is hardly anyone short of the Byrds did this kind of stuff quite so well, and they absorbed the trappings of mid-'60s folk-rock so completely that they sound less like a throwback than some vintage band who somehow passed through a wrinkle in time and ended up in 1983 — they walk the walk and talk the talk. And Griffin was thankfully still getting the revved-up snottiness of his days with garage mavens the Unclaimed out of his system, because the rave-up title track (written with fellow Unclaimed vet Barry Shank) is one of the hardest rocking cuts the Long Ryders ever released, and it ranks among the most exciting performances to come out of the '80s garage revival. The Long Ryders would gain a lot in the way of depth and ambition by the time they next entered a studio, but 10-5-60 proved they already had the talent, vision, and energy that would make them one of the more memorable American bands of the 1980s. [10-5-60 later appeared as a bonus on the CD release of the group's first full-length album, Native Sons, with an outtake, "The Trip," added to the running order.]