Danny and Dusty - The Lost Weekend

In 1985 I was handed an advance cassette from an A&M rep for a new release. He said he didn't know what the label was going to do with it cause it was... well... he didn't know. I know what I did with mine: I wore that cassette out over a decade of beer-fueled roadtrips. It wasn't art, but screw art - I wanted drinking buddies.

Danny and Dusty was a one-off project thrown together by an inbred clique of Paisley Undergrounders. Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate and Dan Stuart of Green on Red, along with members of their bands and members of The Long Ryders spent 36 drunken hours recording this ode to pool halls and booze. It was never meant to be taken seriously - and it shouldn't be.

The Lost Weekend never sold, but over the years it earned a reputation and has held up better than a lot of the participants' more serious endeavours. There are stupid songs and games of one-upsmanship as well as hints of the darker tones for which the Wynn and Stuart were known. It isn't slick or awesome. What it is though, is a perfect moment in time that, like a good photograph of you and your best buddies on your best day, makes you happy and sad simultaneously.

From allmusic:

For years, legend had it that this "Paisley Underground" supersession — starring Dan Stuart from Green on Red and Steve Wynn from the Dream Syndicate, with three-quarters of the Long Ryders joining members of the two above-mentioned groups as the backing band — was recorded in a mere three days over a long weekend in 1985. In his liner notes to the 1996 CD reissue, Wynn sets the record straight; actually, the basic tracks were cut in a single beer-fueled recording session (lasting a whopping 36 hours), with the guys calling it quits on Saturday night in order to give themselves Sunday to recover. Fortunately, their muses appear to have been knocking 'em back right alongside them; The Lost Weekend is often sloppy, but just as frequently inspired, with Stuart and Wynn throwing their best Dylan-gone-goofy wordplay at each other, and the players (especially Chris Cacavas on piano and Sid Griffin and Stephen McCarthy on guitars) generating a good and greasy faux-country groove that sounds like a well-oiled honky tonk band having some left-of-center fun before last call. Most of the cuts are played for a laugh, or at least a smirk (most notably "The Word Is Out" and "Song for the Dreamers"), but "Miracle Mile" and "Down to the Bone" prove that the darker sides of Stuart and Wynn's musical personas could still cut through the boozy haze, and "Send Me a Postcard" is a lovably wobbly buddy number that makes the guys sound like a post-modern Waylon and Willie. For the most part, The Lost Weekend is studiedly non-serious, but for sheer entertainment value it's stood the test of time better than much of Steve Wynn and Dan Stuart's official product from the period; it's wiry roots rock that's low on pretension and high on good times. Or cheap beer.

There are moments when the good times are so clever you don't want the song to end. Song For The Dreamers namechecks its way through a who's who of characters from Fidel Castro to Fred Gwynn, Jackie O to Ryne Sandburg. One of those names is the noir author Jim Thompson who could easily have been responsible for the darker tunes on the record that find their gallows humor in the lowest of low-lives. And so it goes, from laughs to trash. You recognize these (maybe not so) lovable losers and thank your lucky stars you aren't one of them anymore (I hope).

So pop the caps off some longnecks, park your ass on a milk crate (preferably in your garage) and crank it up. Like I said, it ain't art, but it's a damned good time.

addendum: The record, appropriately enough, ends with a cover of Knockin on Heaven's Door, but with an added verse of their own. In a conversation over a beer with Padre a couple of years after this came out Dan Stuart told the Padre that his added lyrics were better than anything Dylan ever wrote in his life. Stuart was always a dick.

An exquisite vinyl rip requiring a password: PVAcblog
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