The Unknowns

 

 

 

The founder of THE UNKNOWNS, Bruce Joyner had trouble of a different kind.  Not long after starting the Stroke Band to show his fellow classmates at Valdosta State how Georgians do punk rock, Joyner was involved in an awful auto accident that broke both arms and both legs and crushed his chest.  He was confined to a wheelchair for a time but willed himself to walk again; and his love of music was intact.  Bruce Joyner began hearing about the growing punk rock scene in Los Angeles – the Dils, X, the Blasters, the Weirdos, and the Zeros are bands that he cites – and he quickly put together a band called the Unknowns.  His band was named one of the four best bands in Los Angeles in 1981, and they got a record deal with Bomp! Records (later picked up by Sire Records) when Bruce Joyner was only 18.  Though the resulting 1981 EP, Dream Sequence didn’t really show the band at their best, the Unknowns’ live performances won them numerous fans among established musicians in the LA area. 

 

Bruce Joyner connected with keyboardist Ray Manzarek (formerly of the Doors) and helped out on the recording sessions for the X album Under the Big Black Sun.  The Unknowns were not a mere thrash band but had multiple influences from surf to reggae to country to new wave that surfaced at different points in their songs.  The article on the band in Allmusic mentions Chris Isaak as a kindred spirit, and I would not have made that connection on my own, but it fits. 

 

Joyner left the Unknowns in 1983; when he began recording the full-length album Swimming with Friends with his new band the Plantations in 1986, both Ray Manzarek and X guitarist John Doe lent a hand. 

 

I first encountered the Unknowns on the eccentric Los Angeles punk rock showcase New Wave Theatre on late night TV in the early 1980’s, and I saw them perform on the show at least twice.  At one of them, NWT host Peter Ivers stuck a mike in front of a little girl who was maybe six years old, and he asked her if she knew who the next band was.  She said, “I don’t know”; and Ivers responded, “Neither do we:  the Unknowns!”  (If I remember correctly, that’s three months in a row where I have referenced New Wave Theatre – actually only twice). 

 

The song I remember best is “The Streets”, filled with idiosyncratic whirs and whoops and odd lyrics about the Shadow and the CIA, all performed against the backdrop of a swooping melody.  Peter Ivers would interview the bands after their performances in a most bothersome way, often closing with the question, “What is the meaning of life?”  I remember Bruce Joyner giving a short rant in response to one of his questions about how “the world would be a helluva lot better place if people only worried about theirselves and not so much about other people”.  The Unknowns are perhaps best known for the sexually charged “Pull My Train”, which has a relentless, pounding beat that even most punk bands couldn’t muster. 

 

The Unknowns played a gig once with Tom Petty and rock legend Del Shannon; and Bruce Joyner became good friends with Shannon as a result.  Del Shannon had two fabulous hits in the early 1960’s, “Runaway” and “Hats Off to Larry” (often misheard as “Hats Off to Mary”) and later had joint concerts with the Beatles while on a European tour in 1963.  He was the first American artist to cover a Beatles song, “From Me to You”.  Joyner recalls that Shannon was scheduled to play on one of his records the week after he killed himself.  I think of Del Shannon as being one of the Prozac suicide casualties:  someone who committed suicide out of the blue that seemed somehow connected to his taking that once ubiquitous drug (1960’s radical Abbie Hoffman was another). 

 

The suicide of his friend prompted Bruce Joyner to return to the South; he also lived in France for a while.  He is still active in music and has started several more bands over the years; I picked up a great album last year called Way Down South (1983) by the Plantations in his inimitable style – his first album after leaving the Unknowns. 

 

The entire recorded output of the Unknowns was released on a Marilyn Records CD in 1994 called Bruce Joyner and the Unknowns (though I was able to order it much more recently).  It consists I suppose of the cuts on the EP and LP plus an equal number of demos (mostly but not entirely of different songs) – 24 tracks in all that are a revelation to anyone who thinks that punk rock is one-dimensional.  Bruce Joyner’s own reminiscence of the band in the liner notes begins:  “The Unknowns were underrated, and our place among our peers seems to have been forgotten”.  Hopefully I have done my part to put an end to that. 

 

(June 2011)

 

 

 

There are several YouTube songs by the Unknowns (also known as Bruce Joyner and the Unknowns); here is a striking performance taken from New Wave Theatre of their song “The Streets” (also known as “Shadows Stalk the Night”) that also shows off the other wacky stuff on that channel besides punk rock:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqRQcWJVnbk .  This is another live performance (from 1990) of another great song, “Dream Sequence”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfg0sS8nhAY .  If you need any other proof that The Unknowns are not like anybody else, check out this demo performance (audio only) of “Common Man”:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO4_5A5pwEE .  There are other Unknowns songs on YouTube, plus additional Bruce Joyner music from his bands the Plantations and Reconstruction. 

 

(June 2013)