- The
Unclaimed
- Before The Coal Porters, there was The Long
Ryders, and before The Long Ryders there
was...The Unclaimed. Sid Griffin's first 'proper'
band now hold a cult status as far as the
sixties/garage/psychedelic revival that grew up
around Los Angeles in the early 1980s is
concerned and are for some the epitome of the
garage resurgence. Their look, sound and whole
attitude to garage music at once both encouraged
the likes of Steve Wynn to establish their own
bands, whilst The Unclaimed themselves rem ained
firmly rooted in the sound and look of 1966.
- Effectively The Unclaimed were always Shelley
Ganz's band and it was in response to an advert
in The Recycler that Sid Griffin became involved.
Ganz's ad to start a band along the lines of The
Standells, The Seeds and sixties garage music
immediately appealed to Sid who had quickly grown
tired of playing 'punk' in Death Wish and was
more interested in exploring the sound of the
sixties, perhaps sensing a change in people's
attitude to the music.
- The pair got together in the December of 1978,
immediately hit it off and began looking for the
rest of the group. They found them in the shape
of bassist Barry Shank, guitarist Jeff Kaufman
and drummer Steve Galloway and by April 1979 had
a basic set up with which to work. The band began
playing obscure covers by sixties garage bands,
things so bizarre that even the most avid fan
would not have heard of it before. The idea being
that if the song was familiar to the audience
then it just wasn't obscure enough to be in the
set! So the band deliberately chose to cover
incredibly rare songs such as those that were
only available on unissued acetates by the most
outlandish sixties bands.
- By the end of 1979 Kaufman and Galloway had been
replaced by Matt Roberts (drums) and Thom Hand
(guitar). The band had now picked up a bit of a
following in and around Los Angeles with other
bands beginning to rely on sixties influences and
a revival movement seemed to be beginning. At
this time The Unclaimed also began to add
original songs to their set in addition to tracks
by The Chocolate Watch Band etc. Whilst they were
now making their own 'sixties' music the band had
little chance of putting out a record, as only
Sid had a regular job and the band lacked the
support of a label. However they did find help in
the shape of Dave Gibson who was prepared to put
up some money to enable them to issue a record.
- The result, in September 1980, was the Moxie EP,
a four track single which featured two tracks
each from Griffin and Ganz. The Griffin titles
were Time To Time and the highly acclaimed
Deposition Central (the Acid Song), whilst Ganz
contributed The Sorrow and Run From Home. The
last of these was also later used by Greg Shaw on
the first Battle Of The Garages compilation on
Voxx records in 1981. The EP had a very poor
production which the band were not happy with but
money was tight and they had to settle for what
they could get.
- The band continued to pick up gigs around LA
though in February 1981 they replaced Thom Hand
with Rich Coffee, the former guitarist of Indiana
punk band The Gizmos. About this time Sid Griffin
began to feel somewhat restricted by the definite
sixties outlook of The Unclaimed, joking that if
bands in the sixties wore purple underpants, then
so would they. Eventually this came to a head
with Sid determined to recognise that this was
now the 1980s whilst Shelley Ganz remained
steadfastly planted in the genre of 1966. The
pair's differences could not be reconciled
however, and though they remained friends, Sid
Griffin left The Unclaimed in November 1981 to
eventually form The Long Ryders.
- This in itself would not have been an enormous
blow to Shelley, but Sid also took with him Barry
Shanks, and for a short time Matt Roberts as
well. When Roberts was eventually coaxed back
into The Unclaimed early in 1982 Shelley also
recruited Ray Flores on bass to once again bring
The Unclaimed back to a four-piece. In this
format the band put out a six track 12" EP
called Primordial Ooze Flavored Unclaimed on
Hysteria Records. Whilst the line-up on this
mini-album does not credit Sid Griffin I believe
he was involved in recording at least some of the
tracks when he was still with the band though
perhaps he and Shelley could confirm this. In
1983 the band were also featured on the
compilation LP The Rebel Kind (alongside The Long
Ryders) with Ganz's No Apology on which they were
described as "well seasoned veterans of Los
Angeles' garage scene".
- Whilst The Unclaimed continued to play live gigs
with The Droogs, The Last and the upcoming Rain
Parade, Shelley's fixation with 1966 was
beginning to have the same effect on the rest of
the band that it had on Sid Griffin and despite
their cult following , Coffee, Flores and Roberts
left to form Thee Fourgiven recording with
Dionysus Records.
- That was to all intents and purposes the end of
The Unclaimed. Shelley Ganz continued with the
name however and a fluid line-up, which included
Yard Trauma front-man Lee Joseph. Ganz took the
band over to Europe on tour, only to return
alone, unable to cope with life on the road! The
rest of the band carried on without him (!)
perhaps emphasising how far The Unclaimed had
fallen, that their mainstay could leave and the
band not suffer any adverse effects. The results
of this tour were heard on Rock And Hard Rolls:
Live In Europe 1987, a 16 track live album on
Dionysus Records which featured not only The
Unclaimed, but curiously and ironically Thee
Fourgiven and Lee Joseph as well! Apparently Ganz
went on to record tracks for a full length album
which never saw the light of day and which do not
appear to live up to the standard that The
Unclaimed had shown previously on record. This
ultimately left Ganz as the leader of a band of
major influence on the LA music scene in the
early 1980s without major success themselves. It
was Ganz's determination to hold on to the
sixties feel to his music which unfortunately
meant that The Unclaimed failed to firmly
establish themselves amongst the LA bands of the
period and remained influential only by virtue of
the fact that they re-established a love for the
sounds of the sixties garage bands.
(The above article first appeared in Issue 8 of Rebels Without
Applause).
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