Diamonds in the Mine #1

Opal: The Early Recordings

I’m introducing a new series here I’m calling Diamonds in the Mine. I’ll feature creative works that have had a huge impact on me and my work. Today I’m featuring Early Recordings by Opal, which came out on Rough Trade Records in 1989.

I spent a couple years in the early 80s just listening to hardcore punk. Maybe a little Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath, but at least 90% hardcore. The album that brought me out of my hardcore rut was The Days of Wine and Roses by The Dream Syndicate. It’s a mind-blowing album that really holds up, by a band that’s still around over 40 years later. The Dream Syndicate sent me way down a couple different musical rabbit holes I’ve never left: The Velvet Underground and The Paisley Underground. I spend my senior year of high school obsessed with that music, plus the other places the hardcore punk led me: Replacements, Husker Du, Minutemen, R.E.M., X. That was the year I saw clearly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. All that music just took over and made me who I am.

The Paisley Underground - which I believe is a media-created brand name, described a group of friends in L.A. half a generation older than me who had slightly different takes on 60s inspired, experimental pop rock. This was the original “record collection rock.” The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles, The Three O’Clock, and my personal favorite, The Rain Parade. I’ll write another one of these about their 1983 debut, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. It’s one of the greatest psychedelic rock albums ever made, and it’s been a major source of influence and inspiration for my own music-making. But if I could only have one, I’d pick Opal.

Rain Parade’s lineup for the debut consisted of three core members: Guitarist Matt Piucci and brothers bassist Steven Roback and guitarist David Roback. All three wrote and sang lead vocals. It’s a flawless rock album, but for me the standout has always been the sparse, melancholy Carolyn’s Song. I first heard Power Trip in 1985. I didn’t know Big Star’s music yet; I had no frame of reference. It just sounded magical to me, just like Dream Syndicate did before I found The Velvets. Carolyn’s Song is very much a tribute to Big Star’s Third, and it clearly foreshadowed the next moves for David Roback, who cleansed his musical palate with a community recording project called Rainy Day. Rainy Day, which featured a cover of Big Star’s Holocaust. Anyone talking about Big Star in 1984 was a serious music head.¹

Sadly a lot of the music I’ll mention today is not on streaming services or iTunes. Rainy Day is on YouTube. This is such a great album, it’s so worth your time. It’s a bunch of friends paying tribute to their favorite artists. I especially love this version of Bob Dylan’s I’ll Keep It With Mine by Susannah Hoffs. She is so charming, so obviously a soon-to-be star.

I don’t know if the estate of gunslinger Clay Allison objected, but Clay Allison soon renamed to Opal. Following the thread from Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade, I bought their debut album Happy Nightmare Baby when it came out in 1987. I liked it, but it left me a little disappointed. It’s a dark, spooky blues-influenced album that made me feel a little uneasy. I listened to it a few times before I shelved it. Competition for the shared turntable was fierce in those heady days of one musical revelation after another.

I never knew that Opal had two EPs before Happy Nightmare Baby, Fell From the Sun (1984) and Northern Line (1985). Then in 1989, Rough Trade reissued the two EPs as Early Recordings.

I might never have heard this, one of my absolute favorite albums had Rough Trade not gone into receivership around 1990. Soon after the release of Early Recordings, the U.S. label sold all its inventory to a cut-out distributor who flooded chain record stores with cut-outs of every imaginable Rough Trade U.S. title. My friends and I would hit the mall stores and come out with armfuls of albums by Lucinda Williams, Galaxie 500, The Ophilias, and yes, Opal’s Early Recordings. I bought at least a half-dozen copies on various formats (including cassette), and gave them away to friends. I just wanted everyone to hear this music.

Opal became Mazzy Star when Kendra Smith left the band. Her replacement, Hope Sandoval, is a great singer with a very different timbre. I used to have a tape with Kendra singing Ghost Highway, and I liked it a lot better. I’ve come to appreciate Sandoval, but I struggled with her voice at first. Kendra’s voice has this magical presence. It doesn’t matter if she’s a good singer because she’s perfect for the songs. I can’t imagine the songs being any different, they are perfect. Spare but inviting, mysterious. I used to think maybe she was some sort of a witch. Not like Stevie Nicks in her silk tunic, but like, a witch for real. There’s definitely some magick going on. Her follow-up to Opal is called Guild of Temporal Adventurers; I assume that’s a clue.

My theory on why Early Recordings is such a masterpiece is that these were essentially home recordings, without any real pressure. They created in their own environment, at their own pace, with David in the producer’s chair. After David left The Rain Parade, the remaining members signed with Island Records and made what seemed at the time an ill-advised, poorly produced follow-up album Crashing Dream in 1987.

I hated Crashing Dream when it came out. It wasn’t about David Roback fan loyalty (though I had some), because I loved their EP that came between the albums, Explosions in the Glass Palace. Crashing Dream feels inorganic and fussy, dated, somebody else’s idea of what the band should be. To my ear, David Went the opposite direction and made something natural, classic, effortless and timeless. There’s a lesson in there. The Rain Parade made the same mistake almost every underground band that signed to a major label made - they let their guard down creatively. Maybe they had to, maybe they thought it would help them grow their audience. In the music business, it’s called getting in your own way.

I recently revisited Crashing Dream and it isn’t quite as terrible as I remembered. The songs are good. The issue is the production, which even sounded dated in its day. I hated 80s music in the 80s…it all sounded so 80s. That’s why those Sub Pop and SST albums sounded so great at the time - mainstream music sounded so terrible. That’s why Early Recordings sounds so good - they probably couldn’t afford the gear that made those records sound so bad. They used old gear not only because it sounded better, but also because it was dirt cheap. For the record, Matt Piucci is one of my all-time favorite guitarists and a huge influence on my playing; but Opal beats The Rain Parade at their own game with the psychedelic rock masterpiece Lullabye, which with David’s lead vocal and the extended guitar jam would have made perfect sense on a Rain Parade album. And for that matter, it probably has some of the same people playing on both albums. Steven Roback has a distinctive bass style that is evident on Opal’s recordings.

David Roback passed away in late February 2020 from cancer, in that last naive moment before it all went to shit. His musical timeline is spectacular, one of the best ever. Everything he did was great. It’s wonderful that he connected commercially with Mazzy Star. Fade Into You has become an evergreen streaming hit, and it will easily reach a billion streams on Spotify. It’s timeless, but so is Opal, The Opal catalogue is in some sort of limbo right now, probably related to David’s passing. His Wikipedia page has claimed for several years that a re-release of Happy Nightmare Baby and a compilation of everything else is due “imminently” through InGrooves. If anyone knows the status of the reissues, let me know. Or if I can help in any way.

I’m talking to you, who read this entire essay. YOU need to hear THIS album. Preferably on vinyl. On your choice of mind-altering substance or enjoy it completely sober like I do now, over 30 years since I first fell in love with this perfect music.

1. I remember the day I first heard Big Star, in early 1987. I’d just become friends with Evan Dando, but I hadn’t quite yet joined The Lemonheads. Evan came over to our apartment and he brought one thing with him, a vinyl copy of Big Star’s Radio City. We listened to it a few times, then I taped it and wore out the tape. I found the other records and taped them as well. I completely understand why Roback would want to pay tribute to that album in the early 80s, and I understand how much Big Star’s Third shaped the sound of Opal.