BRUCE WAGNER
This is taken from the write-up by Greg Shaw in Destination: Bomp! for the SS-20 song “Arnold Layne”: “Once in a while I get enthusiasms that few others seem to share, and this was one of those. I was in awe of Bruce Wagner’s ability to squeeze original ideas out of the boneyard of rock guitar cliché, and I particularly love what he did with old songs. We cut stuff by people including the Seeds, the Stooges, Love, and the Doors, in each case adding something new to songs I thought had already been done to perfection. Against this, SS-20 had Madeleine Ridley’s morbid, gothic poetry, a blend I found intriguing.”
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The album by SS-20 that I have, Dream Life was released on Voxx Records in 1986. As given on the back cover, the cutesy listing of the bandmembers on this album are Madeline Ridley (voices, spiritual advisor), Bruce Wagner (normal Hawaiian guitars, 3-string bass), David Winogrond (drums along the Mohawk), and Greg Berryman (lost weekend bass). They also list the “current line-up” more normally (the same line-up is given for their second album,Son of Fantasy): Madeline Ridley (vocals), Bruce Wagner (guitar, bass), Gary Stern (bass), and Greg Berryman (drums). Gary Stern also was the engineer on Dream Life.
Dream Life provides a delightful ride (trip?) that could be described as psychedelic folk, with meandering melodies, unexpected instrumental mixes, and signature guitar pyrotechnics. The vocals that are both written and sung by Madeline Ridley are a particular treat (Bruce Wagner is the other songwriter listed on the album); here she sounds quite a bit different from the way she sang “Born to be Wild”. Standout cuts for me among the band’s original songs include the opening track “Parade”, “Breakaway”, “You Think it’s Me”, and “The Wake”, plus the two covers of course; but as usual with the UARB’s, the whole album sounds great, and I could easily list all of the songs.
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Before and after their involvement with SS-20, Bruce Wagner and David Winogrond were in a band called Skooshny. The Allmusic article on the band by Bryan Thomas says: “Skooshny is an L.A.-based psych-folk-pop trio who originally came together in 1971, a time that singer/guitarist Mark Breyer later said was ‘too late for the Byrds, too early for R.E.M.’” Skooshny released numerous songs beginning in the mid-1970’s but did not put out an album until Skooshny (1991), a retrospective album that collected their material from 1975 to 1981.
Mark Breyer and David Winogrond had been in a Chicago-area band called Brevity; when they relocated to Los Angeles, they connected with guitarist/keyboardist Bruce Wagner who answered an ad that they ran in a music magazine. David Winogrond also did some work outside SS-20 and Skooshny; he was the drummer for one of the earliest L.A. punk rock bands, the Germs, though not the original drummer.
(December 2017)
