Review of Don't Shoot

by Eddy Cilia
issued on Mucchio Selvaggio #109 (February 1987)

This and other magazines have made very broad use for three or four years of labels such as "new country" and "country-punk". Sometimes abusing them perhaps: ascribing them badly to decent cowboys who were very little "new" and even less "punk", however… No more polemics, I must speak of this Don't Shoot that would have been a weighty manifest of new-country if it'd been released just its recordings were finished (June 1984), on the contrary coming out nowadays, it appears "simply" an excellent album.
Don't Shoot lines up eleven of the most well-known names of the new American rock: from Danny & Dusty (Dan Stuart, Steve Wynn & Co.) to Divine Horsemen of Chris D., from Julie Christensen (charming wife of aforesaid Chris D.) to John Doe of X, from Stephen McCarthy of Long Ryders to Jack Waterson of Green On Red, from Clay Allison to Romans, from Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs to The Band Of Blacky Ranchette. Some "covers" (Willie Nelson, Hank Williams) and a lot of new pieces of remarkable worth, nearly all of them unreleased otherwise (with the exception of Blind Justice by The Band Of Blacky Ranchette and Freight Train by Clay Allison).
What can I say? If you like the roughest country that has nothing to do with Nashville softness, this LP is what you want. Listen to it, after an "overdose" of Jason & The Scorchers, alternating it with Knitters and with an anthology by Hank Williams.

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