Dyan Diamond
In The Dark
MCA-3053
01. Baby, What You Want Me To Do (Jimm
y Reed)
y Reed)
02. Western Avenue (Dyan Diamond – Kim Fowley)
03. Hot (Dyan Diamond)
04. Teenage Radio Stars (Dyan Diamond)
05. Someone Like Me (Dyan Diamond)
06. Back On The Strip (Dyan Diamond)
07. Mystery Dance (Elvis Costello)
08. Animal Girl (Dyan Diamond – Kim Fowley)
09. Nervous (Chris Spedding)
10. Your Neighborhood (Dyan Diamond – Kim Fowley)
11. In The Dark (Dyan Diamond)
12. Gonna Rock Ourselves To Death (Dyan Diamond)
In 1976, 14-year-old Dyan Diamond auditioned for Kim Fowley and won a spot in Venus & the Razorblades. The band only released the single “Punk-A-Rama” on Greg Shaw’s BOMP Records in 1977 and a posthumous album the following year...but had a fairly high profile due to Fowley's ability to generate press coverage. After Fowley severed his ties with the Runaways in 1977, he pushed Diamond forward as a possible break-out solo star, putting her under contract to Fowley with a record released by MCA Records.
While Diamond’s 1978 release “In The Dark” includes three covers of Jimmy Reed, Elvis Costello, and Chris Spedding, it primarily features Diamond’s song writing. The album was lumped into the “punk” category at the time due to the Fowley connection and her prior band’s name-dropping and scene exploitation in "Punk-O-Rama," but in retrospect "In The Dark" is a solid pop-rock record. The album features plenty of hard rocking numbers, but it's far more stylistically diverse than (to pick a name not entirely at random) a Runaways record.
“Someone Like Me” and “Your Neighborhood” are mainstream mid-tempo pop songs with solid lyrics. Several of the songs have a bit of a rockabilly sound while others are third-generation variations on the Chuck Berry shuffle. And while she’s not the first person to do a cover of an Elvis Costello song, she was one of the earliest. (Recent research revealed this was the likely the second Costello cover after Barry Christian's version of "Alison.")
MCA Records issued the record worldwide, in France, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the UK. In the U.S.A. it was also issued on cassette and 8-track cartridge.
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| Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph, June 9, 1979 Hopefully "Scunthorpe" won't trigger a robo-censor. |
My favorite song on the album was “Teenage Radio Stars,” which marries a mandolin solo to a reggae beat which was odd at the time. Bluegrass reggae is still a weird idea today. The mandolin player is Chris Darrow who played with Kaleidoscope and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. On the other hand, my wife says it's "plodding," but she doesn't like it when I go on a Burning Spear binge, so don't let her dissuade you.
Diamond also co-wrote songs with Leon Russell on his 1978 album Americana, one of which ("Elvis and Marilyn") was later covered by Marty Balin on his 1981 "BALIN" album.
This is the only record that Diamond put out under her own name. Traces of her are rare on the Internet - she doesn't even have a WIKI. I found a reference to a KSAN broadcast from the Old Waldorf in 1978, and a KALX broadcast on the UC Berkeley student radio station, but I've never been able to track down a copies.
I pulled all the press clippings I could find on Newspapers.com, and a few pages from trade publications that mentioned her. She played live shows from August 1978 until June 1980. Billed with Joan Jett, Nick Gilder, Yesterday and Today in the clubs, she played a New Year's Eve show at the Cow Palace, opening for Sammy Hagar, and Rick Derringer. After June 1980, there's nothing in the newspaper archives. That's it...a solo career for just two years, ages 16 to 18, and then nothing. Did she give up on music? Go to college?
I digitized this from a clean copy of the vinyl and removed the clicks n' pops in Audacity. This has never been released on CD...not even in Japan, who usually puts out CDs by obscure American bands. Flac files of wavs, and 300 dpi scans of the front and back covers, and the disc labels.
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