Named after a dark plantation legend, The Unapproachable Panther Burns’ “art damage” project was initially the 1979 brainchild of confrontational rock’n’roll performance artist Tav Falco and the late Alex Chilton, who enthusiastically handled drums along with guitar duties. After impressing Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis at a New York show, an album was recorded at Sam Phillips’ Memphis studio, but rejected.
Acquiring future Gun Club guitarist Jim Duckworth, they tried again at Ardent studios, recording everything in one take to emerge with the sizzlingly shambolic rockabilly hellfire of Beyond The Magnolia Curtain, successfully capturing their uproarious live assault on such primal missives as Bourgeois Blues (bolstered by the Tate County Mississippi Drum Corps).
When Panther Burns took to the road, Chilton departed, with New York post-punk dynamo Jim Sclavunos (now a Bad Seed) joining on drums. By 1982, Falco was being embraced by Chris Stein’s downtown enclave, resulting in recording the tighter Blow Your Top EP at NY’s venerable Plaza studios, released on the Blondie’s guitarist’s Animal imprint. Both records have been beautifully repackaged and annotated in this first instalment of eight reissues covering Falco’s rip-snorting back catalogue, now standing as one of the era’s most timelessly unhinged joyrides, steered by a true original.
