“Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs played the dark Chinese basement club in Hollywood called Cathay de Grande with Carlos Guitarlos on lead guitar. His voice was a drill, a grinder, a plow, a scooper and a plunger. Kathleen and I danced to the jailbirds many nights in the 80s.”

The words of Tom Waits concerning the raucous bar-band supreme much beloved by the cream of LA’s early 80s punk cohort. Pigus Drunkus Maximus captured them in their 1981 prime with a bunch of guests over three midnight-to-dawn as-live sessions. The tape sat around for more than half a decade before becoming the final release on Steve Wynn’s Down There label in 1987 and going out of print shortly thereafter.

Top Jimmy had begun life as James Paul Koncek and after a peripatetic childhood ended up at Hollywood High where he became fast friends with a young Billy Zoom. Doing time as an X roadie he would front a shifting line-up of luminaries Top Jimmy & the All Drunk All Stars, and one time, while Ray Manzarek was producing X’s Los Angeles, he sang ‘Roadhouse Blues’ with all the surviving Doors.

This was a time when X, The Gun Club and The Blasters were becoming kings of LA, and Jimmy’s dirty ass, bluesy rock’n’roll rampage fitted right in. He found a rambunctious guitarist in Carlos Ayala aka Carlos Guitarlos, a rhythm player in Dig The Pig (Richard Aeilts), drummer Joey Morales, and bassist Gil T. They’d regularly be augmented by saxophonist Steve Berlin, and a host of others from the fraternity would sit in.

Becoming Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs they’d play a residency ‘Blue Monday’ in the basement of an old Chinese restaurant Cathay de Grande which Wynn would DJ for free beer. The nights became legendary with folk like Waits and David Lee Roth turning up regularly to let off steam to a mix of Ayala originals and choice covers.

These recordings date from 1981; Steve Berlin had been working for a Dutch film-maker and got studio time as a trade. He produced it all, the band was augmented by drummers DJ Bonebrake and Tony Morales, along with Blasters piano-player Gene Taylor, and it’s eleven tracks and no let-up. “A band cranking on all cylinders” Berlin would recall later.

There’s a pair of Dylan covers (‘Obviously Five Believers’ and ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’), Hendrix’s ‘Spanish Castle Magic’, and Haggard’s ‘Working Man’s Blues’. There’s no version here of ‘Roadhouse Blues’ but you can hear Jim in Jimmy’s vocals on Johnny Paycheck’s ‘11 Months And 29 Days’. Ayala/Guitarlos has three songs of which the standout is the glorious frenzy of ‘Dance With Your Baby’ with wailing sax from Berlin and crazy piano from Taylor.

Thorough sleeve notes from Chris Morris, great photos from Gary Leonard – you really need the vinyl edition to see them properly and read the legend – and testimonials from Wynn, John Doe, Russ Tolman Maria McKee among others. Top Jimmy is sadly long gone but this is more than just a historical document; it’s a living record of a grand time, of a current in music that still lives, and it deserves to be heard.

Available now on East Of Lincoln Productions via Blind Owl Records.

Photos by Gary Leonard.